Journal article
Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government
Columbia law review, v 118(4), pp 1225-1302
01 May 2018
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
This Essay argues that the Supreme Court's political party jurisprudence is predicated on a set of theoretical assumptions that do not hold true in the real world of contemporary American politics. The Court's jurisprudence is grounded in a theory of democratic accountability-known as "responsible party government"-which views political parties primarily as speakers and presumes that electoral accountability emerges from the choice between ideologically distinct political parties during competitive elections.
It is time, however, to admit that responsible party government has run its course as a means for achieving democratic accountability. Without claiming that there are easy solutions to the democratic dysfunction., the United States is experiencing, and drawing on a substantial body of empirical literature, this Essay maintains that an alternative path to democratic responsiveness emerges when one focuses on the associational qualities of partisan networks. From this perspective, the primary impediment to responsive governance is a lack of effective social networks and feedback loops through which the interests of ordinary Americans can be filtered up to party elites. The current doctrinal preoccupation with shoring up party elites and their ability to define and control their distinct political brand should be replaced with an attentiveness to a party's capacity to mobilize broad and representative political participation and to facilitate a two-way street of information transmission through party activists.
This Essay concludes by identifying opportunities within existing First Amendment doctrine for fostering partisan networks more capable of producing democratic responsiveness and accountability. Specifically, it suggests extending the Anderson-Burdick framework to cases involving the associational rights of the major political parties.
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Details
- Title
- Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government
- Creators
- Tabatha Abu El-Haj - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Columbia law review, v 118(4), pp 1225-1302
- Publisher
- Columbia Journal Transnational Law Assoc
- Number of pages
- 78
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Thomas R. Kline School of Law
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000482743900005
- Other Identifier
- 991019170341804721
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- Law