Earlier attempts to justify intra-party democracy have failed. Either they have been inconsistent with democratic premises, or those premises have been flawed in the first place. This article develops a viable defence for internally democratic parties based on the deliberative theory of democracy. Parties should be internally democratic in order to provide a vertical linkage between different deliberating spheres and a horizontal linkage between competing issues. In addition, intra-party democracy makes policy agenda-setting accountable to the public and provides a second-order principle from which to justify exceptions from internally democratic practices when deemed necessary. The article finally considers some of the institutional practices parties could adopt in order to approximate this deliberative ideal.
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