Party democracy’s erosion destroyed the mediating civil society that stood between citizen and state.

Evidence

The process Heartfield charts not only concerns the loss of a group of core voters. The erosion of party democracy is also about the withering away and crushing of a certain civil society: institutions that stand between the citizen and the state and shape the relationship of the citizen to that state: trade unions, farmers’ associations, churches, neighborhood clubs. Historians repeatedly characterize the Dutch PvdA as a party that had “trunks and roots” all through society, a tree whose branches were visible in every layer of society. In the 1970s, the British House of Commons counted 150 teachers, twenty engineers, and thirty miners among its members, most of whom had come from trade unions or workers’ clubs. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 150

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The ‘trunks and roots’ tree metaphor for the PvdA converses with the trees-as-infrastructure essay - party-rootedness as civic infrastructure.
• XREF: connects to: Unelected bodies captured policy while media seized politics after the 1990s. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 146; Democracy emerges from the tension between state and civil society, not apart from it — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 243; Party democracy’s decline also destroyed the intermediary institutions linking citizens to the state — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 150 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Democracy emerges from the tension between state and civil society, not apart from it #expands (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 243