Parties deliberately create the divisions critics accuse them of worsening

Evidence

The creative role of parties means that in one respect the traditional complaint about parties is correct: parties do challenge the imagined unity or holism of the political order. On one hand, political parties seek to bring people together in majority coalitions to govern. On the other, they create and exacerbate divisions. Indeed, partiality and opposition are their raison d’être. While parties at their best are oriented to a conception of the common good, they nonetheless always stand for a part rather than the whole. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 195

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names constitutive partisanship, holding that party-created division is not a defect but their defining function.
• XREF: connects to: Parties organize political conflict rather than merely reflecting preexisting disagreements — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 193; Political parties create the people and majority they then claim to represent — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 194

Broader Connections

• Parties organize political conflict rather than merely reflecting preexisting disagreements #expands (0.85) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 193
• Political parties create the people and majority they then claim to represent #expands (0.80) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 194