Political parties appear to be in crisis. The recent wave of democratic deconsolidation in several established democracies has been accompanied by the collapse, authoritarian takeover, or external capture of mainstream political parties, the partisan capture of state institutions, and a rise in hyper-nationalistic and exclusionary partisan rhetoric.¹ While political parties have long been a central object of study in political science, constitutional theory scholars have, by and large, ignored this key democratic institution.² In part, this has been due to the influence of the American and the British constitutional traditions which, unlike their European continental counterparts, are largely silent on political parties. This silence is largely a feature of big-C constitutional codes in the anglophone world. Small-c constitutional statutes, conventions, and judicial precedents in these states do, admittedly, engage extensively with political parties.³ But the large-C textual silence is nonetheless indicative of the level of salience this key constitutional institution has been given, both in constitutional practice and constitutional scholarship. More substantively, big-C codes largely design key state institutions in a democracy. Parcelling off considerations about political parties to small-c statutes and conventions has the effect that the party system has to take the design of key state institutions as a given. As this paper argues, however, bringing parties to the forefront of the constitutional imagination has very important implications for how we ought to think of fundamental institutions and offices of the state. Furthermore, big-C constitutional change tends to require the buy-in of opposition parties, whereas small-c changes can usually be made by the ruling party/coalition alone. It is simply bad design to let one of the competing players unilaterally change the rules of the game. It is no surprise that continental big-C codes, led by Germany after the Second World War, are far more explicit in their attention to parties and their relationship with democracy. Even so, the Anglophone silence is mimicked in comparative constitutional studies scholarship, dominated as it is by American constitutional discourses. It is almost impossible to properly understand the functioning of different institutional arrangements without a close attention to the party system in which they operate.⁴ Constitutional scholarship that confines itself to institutional analysis alone, without understanding how they are conditioned by political parties, is looking at a seriously distorted picture of constitutional practice.

中文翻译：

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宪政理论中的政党

政党似乎处于危机之中。在一些成熟的民主国家中，最近的民主解体浪潮伴随着崩溃，专制政权或主流政党的外部占领，党派对国家机构的占领以及超民族主义和排他性党派言论的增加。¹尽管政党长期以来一直是政治学研究的中心对象，但宪政理论学者基本上都忽略了这一关键的民主制度。^[2]部分原因是美国和英国的宪法传统的影响，与欧洲大陆的传统不同，美国和英国在很大程度上对政党保持沉默。这种沉默在很大程度上是英语世界中大C宪法规范的特征。诚然，这些州的小国宪法法规，公约和司法判例确实与政党广泛接触。³但是，大号C文本的沉默仍然表明这种关键的宪法制度在宪法实践和宪法学术上都具有很高的显著性。实质上，大C代码在很大程度上设计了民主制中的关键国家机构。废除关于小型法令和公约的政党的考虑，其结果是，政党系统必须将关键的国家机构的设计作为既定的方法。但是，正如本文所论证的那样，将政党带到宪法想象力的最前沿对我们应该如何思考国家的基本机构和职务具有非常重要的意义。此外，大政党的宪法变更往往要求反对党的支持，而小政党的变更通常只能由执政党/联盟进行。让其中一个竞争的玩家单方面更改游戏规则是很糟糕的设计。毫不奇怪，第二次世界大战后德国领导的大陆大C代码在关注政党及其与民主的关系方面更加明确。即便如此，英语的沉默还是被比较宪法研究的学者所模仿，而美国的宪法话语则主导了这种比较。如果不密切关注其运作所在的政党制度，几乎不可能正确地理解不同制度安排的功能。他们对政党及其与民主关系的关注要更加明确。即便如此，英语的沉默还是被比较宪法研究的学者所模仿，而美国的宪法话语则主导了这种比较。如果不密切关注其运作所在的政党制度，几乎不可能正确地理解不同制度安排的功能。他们对政党及其与民主关系的关注要更加明确。即便如此，英语的沉默还是被比较宪法研究的学者所模仿，而美国的宪法话语则主导了这种比较。如果不密切关注其运作所在的政党制度，几乎不可能正确地理解不同制度安排的功能。⁴宪法学者仅将自己局限于制度分析，而又不了解政党的条件如何，他们正在看一看严重扭曲了宪法实践的画面。