There has been renewed interest in political parties in recent political philosophy, as evidenced by the work of Rosenblum, Muirhead, and Ypi and White. My paper will argue that the moral importance of political parties is a function of two dimensions. First, political parties are the sites and sources of political platforms, which, I argue, should form the basis of accountability of elected representatives. Second, and relatedly, parties are appropriate sites of political compromise which, I have argued elsewhere, is an important source of political decision-making in pluralist societies. These functions can however only be carried out however under what I refer to as « broad » rather than « narrow » political parties. And the nature of political parties is a function not only of citizens’ independent political preferences, but also of the incentives that are generated by different electoral systems. We should therefore in reflecting upon electoral system choice attend to the ways in which different electoral systems tend to produce kinds of political parties that can be more or less likely to present the properties that make them most attractive from the point of democratic ethics.

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