Abstract

In recent years, the reflection on parties, which has always been a crucial theme of science and political theory, has aroused renewed interest. In this context, growing attention is returning to some issues that have long been underestimated: that of «internal democracy» in the parties and that of the forms and purposes of participation within a party. The article presents a review of the main lines of research on the issue of «infra-party» democracy. Among these, very promising appear those researches which are based on the theoretical model of deliberative democracy and which assume parties both as deliberative agents – acting on the public sphere – and as deliberative spaces that favor and promote internal forms of public deliberation.