This paper examines how civics and citizenship education (CCE) can help address the contemporary crisis of party democracy by strengthening the two core functions that the normative theory of partisanship (NTP) (Bonotti and Nwokora 2024, 2025) identifies as essential to democratic party systems: collegiality and linkage. Although parties are often portrayed as declining or dysfunctional, they remain indispensable to representative democracy. The NTP highlights how parties contribute to democratic governance when they behave responsibly toward competitors, uphold norms of civility and public justification, and maintain robust channels of accountability between citizens and elected representatives. Yet these functions depend heavily on citizens’ political agency, attitudes, and engagement—precisely the domains shaped by CCE.
Based on this premise, the paper develops a new theoretical framework that integrates the NTP with Cohen’s (2010, 2020) four ideal types of CCE—Liberal Civic Education, Diversity Civic Education, Critical Civic Education, and Republican Civic Education. This synthesis reveals how each CCE approach can support, limit, or reshape the realization of collegiality and linkage. Liberal Civic Education strengthens procedural knowledge and accountability but offers little for solidarity or structural inequality. Diversity Civic Education enhances recognition and marginalized voice while reframing collegiality around inclusion. Critical Civic Education expands system‑challenging accountability but remains skeptical of collegiality. Republican Civic Education fosters solidarity and communal responsibility yet risks constraining pluralistic voice.
Empirically, the paper applies this framework to Australia through interviews with 50 secondary‑school teachers across New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland. The findings show substantial variation in CCE content and delivery, with teachers often defaulting to Liberal Civic Education to avoid controversy. This tendency supports some NTP goals but narrows democratic learning and limits alternative approaches. Teacher preparedness, resources, and institutional context strongly shape whether more demanding CCE models are implemented.
Overall, the paper demonstrates how CCE can cultivate the civic conditions necessary for parties to fulfil their representative roles. It offers a portable framework for analysing CCE’s democratic impact and provides tools for strengthening party democracy in liberal societies.
