UC Irvine

The classical problem of the relation between the party and democracy’s principle of popular sovereignty has, in recent years, been the focus of major normative debates in political theory and intense political struggles in contemporary democracies around the world. What leading political scientists and democratic theorists in the field diagnose as the crisis of party democracy is best understood as a deepening division between citizens and their vital institutions of democratic representation. In response, many democratic theorists have sought to rethink and revitalize the role of parties and partisanship in contemporary democratic life. This dissertation introduces Antonio Gramsci to the ongoing debate and provides the first systematic reconstruction of his early twentieth-century thoughts on party democracy.My central thesis is that Gramsci’s concept of the party as a modern Prince offers a compelling alternative to contemporary models of party democracy because it seeks to overcome, rather than regulate, minimize, or intensify, the division between leaders and led. I develop this argument through a survey of diverse historical and contemporary perspectives, ranging from the canons of procedural democracy such as Hans Kelsen and Joseph Schumpeter to contemporary left populists inspired by Niccolò Machiavelli. Against this political-theoretical backdrop, I reconstruct Gramsci as an innovative and relevant democratic theorist of the political party, committed to the realization of popular sovereignty within a representative democratic framework through the ongoing mediation between elected representatives and the citizenry as a whole.The introduction provides an overview of the current crisis, as well as the theoretical debates surrounding it, and it puts forward a new democratic reading of Gramsci’s theory of the party as a modern Prince. Each subsequent chapter is then organized around a critical dialogue between Gramsci and the two main approaches to the crisis of party democracy in contemporary democratic theory. Chapter 2 examines the proceduralist approach of minimalist realists and Kelsenian proceduralists, which defends parties as mechanisms for regulating competitive elections and safeguarding party pluralism. Chapter 3 turns to the left populist approach of agonistic and plebeian radical democrats, which seeks to restore popular power through the anti-elitist leadership of a virtuous “People’s Prince” in opposition to the traditional party system.Despite their differences, both approaches accept the hierarchical division between leaders and led as a permanent feature of democratic politics and regard the idea of a party capable of representing ‘the People-as-a-whole’ as an unrealistic or democratically dangerous myth. In contrast, Gramsci maintained the possibility of overcoming this hierarchical division and theorized the party as the institutional form best suited to building consensus around the common good through cross-class alliances and a reciprocal participatory and pedagogical relationship between party leaders, ordinary citizens, and representative institutions.I argue that, when reconsidered for a liberal democratic context, Gramsci’s theory of the modern Prince provides an important and still-relevant normative standard for evaluating party leadership and reforming political parties in ways that recover its role in stimulating widespread participation, building projects across social divisions, and realizing democracy’s principle of equal freedom. In sum, this dissertation brings to light Gramsci’s largely overlooked views on the relation between the party and popular sovereignty in order to contribute to ongoing debates in democratic theory concerning how democratic institutions might be revitalized in our challenging times.