Rethinking the Ethics of Partisanship: Lessons from Partisan Women of the Anti-Fascist Resistance 

(Manuscript project)

The role of political parties in democracy has re-emerged as a major debate in democratic theory in response to the crisis of representation and the rise of authoritarian parties threatening democratic life. While some scholars regard parties as a necessary evil, others emphasize their democratic functions in regulating political conflict, enabling equal freedom, and promoting the common good. Yet what it means to be a partisan has rarely been examined from the perspective of women. This project addresses that gap by recovering a novel conception of the party and partisanship from the political writings of women in the European anti-fascist resistance, which I have translated from Italian into English. It identifies overlooked resources from twentieth-century women's political thought that challenge influential canonical theories of the relationship between political parties, political leadership, and popular sovereignty, from Machiavelli and the Italian Elite School to Kelsen, Schumpeter, and Gramsci. Despite their marginalization within dominant postwar narratives of the Resistance, these women articulated a vision of democratic freedom that simultaneously resisted fascist despotism, gender inequality, and other forms of anti-democratic exclusion. I argue that their writings expose the limitations of traditional representative institutions while offering alternative normative and practical resources for rethinking the party and what it means to be a partisan in a democracy.

This article will serve as the basis for my second book project, entitled Partisan Women of the Twentieth Century: Alternative Visions of Leadership, Partisanship, and Political Representation within the Anti-Fascist Tradition. The book examines the political thought of women in the anti-fascist resistance from diverse social classes, party affiliations, educational levels, faiths, languages, and national origins to reconstruct a coherent theory of partisanship, political leadership, and representation grounded in their common struggle for political freedom and gender equality. The project aims to develop, from within an overlooked tradition of political thought, an alternative institutional model of democratic representation and party organization that can address pressing challenges of elite unaccountability, declining citizens' participation, rising social and political inequality, and the dual threat of authoritarianism and oligarchy.