ABSTRACT
Contemporary analyses of the role and actions of political parties criticise both their claim to continue to occupy a central position as primary mediators in the polity, and their performance as agents of democracy. Parties, along with other traditional representative mechanisms, are widely understood to have become displaced from their role as the dominant input channels in the political system, both by new forms of participation, and new methods for governments to discern popular opinion. The emergence of interpretations of democracy differing from the once-dominant constitutional model has been a common consequence of this.
