Political Parties and Democracy: What sort of future?

That political parties are in crisis, and potentially on the verge of serious decline, is now more or less accepted wisdom among commentators throughout the established democracies. Once regarded as a necessary component in the maintenance of representative government, and as an essential element in the stabilization and continued functioning of modern mass democracy, political parties are now often seen to be archaic and outmoded. Moreover, being criticized for serving as little more than the vehicles for that class, political parties are now often cited as organizations that stand in the way of democratic renewal rather than as one of the means by which democracy itself might still be sustained. Little more than thirty years ago it would have been reasonably to question whether meaningful political life existed outside the world of parties. Nowadays, it seems more appropriate to ask whether political life still exists inside that world.