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On Partisan Political Justification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2011

JONATHAN WHITE  and
LEA YPI
JONATHAN WHITE*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
LEA YPI*
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, University of Oxford
*
Jonathan White is Lecturer in European Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London UK WC2A 2AE ([email protected]).
Lea Ypi is Post Doctoral Prize Research Fellow in Political Theory, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, New Road, Oxford, UK OX1 1NF ([email protected]).
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Abstract

Political justification figures prominently in contemporary political theory, notably in models of deliberative democracy. This article articulates and defends the essential role of partisanship in this process. Four dimensions of justification are examined in detail: the constituency to which political justifications are offered, the circumstances in which they are developed, the ways in which they are made inclusive, and the ways in which they are made persuasive. In each case, the role of partisanship is probed and affirmed. Partisanship, we conclude, is indispensable to the kind of political justification needed to make the exercise of collective authority responsive to normative concerns.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 105 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 381 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

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