ABSTRACT
In The Principles of Representative Government the French political scientist Bernard Manin argues that from the end of the nineteenth century onwards a new model or ideal type of representative government took shape, which he labels ‘party democracy’. It was characterised by mass parties, which according to Manin emerged around shared social identities. People felt themselves to be represented by one of these parties, rather than by a particular individual, as had been the case before, and they tended to stay loyal to their chosen party throughout their lives. Support for a political party was based more on a ‘feeling of belonging and sense of identification’ than on a party’s political agenda per se. 1 It thus seems to make sense to conceptualise a party’s constituency in terms of a ‘political community’, at least in the era of party democracy, which lasted until the 1960s. In line with the purpose of this volume, this chapter interrogates the construction of these communities.
