Civic Friendship and Partisanship

ABSTRACT Politics and friendship connect to one another in complex and often conflicting ways. Some theorists, following a particular reading of Aristotle, regard civic friendship between citizens as necessary for, even prior to, justice. By contrast, those political friendships that are grounded in shared party affiliations are often taken as signs of partiality and factionalism, as evidence of a lack of amity between those in and those out of the party. In this paper, I explain and argue for productive compatibility between these two forms of political friendship: Trying to rid politics of partisanship is not only not a prerequisite for civic friendship, but serves to undermine one of the mechanisms through which different meanings of civic friendship are articulated. At its best, partisanship provides an associational space within which different meanings of civic friendship can be given concrete, programmatic form. These programmes then compete with other programmes – understood as expressing, amongst other things, different articulations of civic friendship – in wider democratic arenas. Partisanship then, correctly understood and practiced, offers means whereby contests over different meanings of civic friendship can be navigated and given a determinate form.