Is er een rol voor politieke partijen in de internationale politiek?

While ever more political decisions are taken at the international level, political parties have been slow to move beyond the confines of the nation-state. At the same time, parties hardly figure in theories of democratic international governance. These theories rather feature states, social movements, international law and procedural checks and balances as the key international institutions. In contrast, this article underlines that political parties perform a unique role in linking particular interests to the general interest. With regard to the international realm, that role puts parties in a particularly strong position to ensure political accountability, to highlight the political choices involved, and to communicate these to the public at large, and to do so in ways that none of the institutions mentioned can substitute for. Hence, the article calls for a further theorizing of the potential of political parties in the overlapping and interacting political institutions that constitute the emerging global polity.