Mansfield on political parties

Harvey Mansfield's Statesmanship and Party Government (1965) is a discussion of the contrasting ideas of Bolingbroke and Burke on political parties, with a preference for the latter. Bolingbroke sought to abolish parties—or at least, everyone else's parties; Burke, Mansfield says, saw a certain type of party as an imperfect but more reliable substitute for great statesmen, who might not be on the scene when they were needed. Burke's view was a fairly radical one in his day: previously only Machiavelli had spoken out in defence of parties . . . . CONTINUE