"Contemporary trends in party organization: Revisiting intra-party democracy" (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database Project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project's first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this article, we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focusing on parties' resources, structures and internal decision-making. We examine organizational patterns by country and party family, and where possible we make temporal comparisons with older data sets. Our analyses suggest a remarkable coexistence of uniformity and diversity. In terms of the major organizational resources on which parties can draw, such as members, staff and finance, the new evidence largely confirms the continuation of trends identified in previous research: that is, declining membership, but enhanced financial resources and more paid staff. We also find remarkable uniformity regarding the core architecture of party organizations. At the same time, however, we find substantial variation between countries and party families in terms of their internal processes, with particular regard to how internally democratic they are, and the forms that this democratization takes.
Political Parties, 2002
There are good reasons for re‐examining existing classifications of parties and seeing if others can be developed. However, reworking categories is a complex process, requiring further research and interaction between theory and data. This chapter is a preliminary effort, and focuses primarily on parties in established liberal democracies. The first half examines the adequacy of existing party categories in light of the literature in sections entitled: Categories and concepts in the comparative literature; Cadre versus mass parties; and Parties of mass integration, catch‐all parties, and beyond’ (to the cartel party). The second half considers ways in which contemporary parties might be compared in sections entitled: New bases for classification? Vote‐seeking, office‐seeking, and policy‐seeking parties; and Patterns of change in Western European parties.
Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies
Party Politics, 2016
This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database Project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project’s first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this article, we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focusing on parties’ resources, structures and internal decision-making. We examine organizational patterns by country and party family, and where possible we make temporal comparisons with older data sets. Our analyses suggest a remarkable coexistence of uniformity and diversity. In terms of the major organizational resources on which parties can draw, such as members, staff and finance, the new evidence largely confirms the continuation of trends identified in previous research: that is, declining membership, but enhanced financial resources and more paid staff. We also find remarkable uniformity...
Who Has the Body? Party Institutionalization and Theories of Party Organization
American Review of Politics, 1993
This analysis seeks to codify and elucidate an emerging consensus among party scholars concerning the phenomenon and significance of the institutionalized party. More than the mere bureaucratization of party organizations, by adapting to environmental challenge an evolving "web of party" has sprouted new linkages between elites and non-elites, as well as among national and subnational executives and legislatures. Party scholarship, dominated until recently by non-institutional perspectives such as progressivism, behavioralism, and pluralism, needs to examine party institutionalization in a broader institutional context, i.e., as compared with Congress, the Presidency, and other prime political institutions, for which the advent of the institutionalized party has far-reaching implications.
Intra-party democracy beyond aggregation (Party Politics 2018)
2018
Contemporary scholarship on intra-party democracy pays a great deal of attention to aggregative procedures like primaries or membership ballots, but widely ignores deliberative procedures within parties. This article begins by highlighting why scholars should care about deliberation within parties, discussing several functions intra-party deliberation is said to serve in the democratic theory literature. It then goes on to explore the deliberative credentials of political discussion among party members, drawing on group interviews with party members in two Social Democratic parties in Germany and Austria. Two issues are investigated: the preconditions for deliberation among party members and their justificatory patterns. The results of the analysis suggest that parties can be genuine vehicles of deliberation, and thus point towards a research programme on intra-party democracy that differs quite starkly from that which prevails.
Rethinking intra-party cohesion
Distinct fields of research have talked the issue of intra-party cohesion: the literature on party factionalism, based on structural approaches of party organizations; legislative studies, stimulated by new institutional approaches; and studies applying Hirschman's (1970) trilogy of 'exit, voice and loyalty' at the intra-party level. Using a network-based analysis of bibliographic data, this paper analyses the connections between these fields, and shows that Hirschman's legacy has been weakly integrated by the two other fields, despite providing relevant tools for the study of intra-party cohesion. This paper argues for a greater integration of these research fields, in order to rethink the concept of cohesion in and between the different faces of the party. It critically examines how cohesion has been conceived throughout these literatures, and apprehends its multidimensional nature through a comprehensive theoretical framework. On this basis, the paper discusses the methodological implications and challenges of studying intra-party cohesion. Among these challenges, it points out the need to extend our understanding of intra-party cohesion beyond the ideological dimension and beyond the legislative arena, and to develop empirical examinations of socio-psychological and material forms of cohesion, in order to better understand the process of intra-party cohesion.
Party System Institutionalization: Do We Need a New Concept?
Studies in Comparative International Development, 2014
This paper revises the conceptualization of party system institutionalization, as defined in Mainwaring and Scully's (1995) groundbreaking work. Regarding the rules of aggregation involved in conceptual structure, my argument resonates with Goertz and Mahoney's (2012) identification of two different "cultures" in contemporary social science. They understand one culture as building what Goertz calls "family resemblance" concepts, usually measured through a latent variable approach. The other culture understands concepts as structured in terms of "necessary and sufficient" elements, which can then be measured using an ontological approach. I claim that party system institutionalization has an implicit "family resemblance" structure and show that conceptual structure to be empirically and theoretically inadequate. In its current form, the concept of party system institutionalization also suffers from deficiencies when it comes to indicator validity and aggregation, as per (Munck and Verkulien, Comp Polit Stud 35(1):5-34, 2002) criteria. Problems of validity are caused by analysts' frequent reliance on a single indicator for operationalizing the concept. Problems of aggregation and conceptual structure arise from inconsistencies between the implicit theoretical assumption that party system institutionalization is conceptually linear and non-linear patterns that are not only theoretically plausible but also empirically observable in a large set of cases. Therefore, this paper advocates revising the concept and the way it is currently applied in the comparative party system literature. Such revision will permit better understanding of both the characteristics and dynamic evolution of party systems.
CALL FOR PAPERS (EPHEMERA): Political parties: Exploring the inner life of party organizations
Deadline for submissions: April 1st 2019 As an organizational species, political parties seem to face impending extinction. No matter what yardstick we use to measure their vitality, political parties currently display an undeniable image of terminal crisis. Party membership is approaching rock bottom in most corners of the world, particularly in countries like France and the UK where less than two percent of the population are registered as rank and file (van Biezen et al., 2012). Similarly, voter turnout has plummeted worldwide since the middle of the twentieth century, currently reaching a level well below 70 percent (Solijonov, 2016). Voters' tendency to identify with specific parties is likewise declining due to the reconfiguration of class-consciousness and the emergence of more ‘liquid loyalties’ in the electorate (Ignazi, 2017: 201). Finally, people’s trust in political parties is at an all-time low, with politicians deemed less trustworthy than complete strangers and more dishonest than second-hand car salespeople (Newton et al., 2017). As such, it seems fair to conclude, as many have done, that the party is – or, should soon be – over (e.g. Hardt and Negri, 2004; Holloway, 2002; Rosavallon, 2008; Tormey, 2015). However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the party’s pending death are greatly exaggerated. Financially at least, political parties have never been stronger. Owing particularly to a significant increase in public funding since the 1980s, parties are today more resourceful than ever before. In fact, most European parties receive more than two-thirds of their income from state subsidies alone (Falguera et al., 2014). On top of this, a range of countries are currently going through a process of 'constitutionalizing' political parties, thereby acknowledging them legally as ‘desirable and procedurally necessary for the effective functioning of democracy’ (van Biezen, 2011: 187). The combination of growing public discontent and state consolidation have thus created a paradoxical situation in which political parties are as powerful as ever yet increasingly seen as illegitimate representatives of common interests (Ignazi, 2017). Furthermore, within the past decade, a wave of young radical parties on both sides of the political spectrum has sparked a sense of party revitalization. Podemos in Spain, Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, SYRIZA in Greece, The Pirate Party in Iceland and Germany, Feminist Initiative in Sweden, and The Alternative in Denmark figure here as prominent examples. Inspired by ‘new global revolutions’ like the Occupy Wall Street and Los Indignados (Mason, 2013), these parties have sought to restore the legitimacy of party politics by introducing a number of organizational innovations meant to increase membership participation. For instance, Podemos have redefined intra-party democracy by structuring its organization around local ‘Circles’ where members and non-members can deliberate about various policy issues (Pavía et al., 2016). Similarly, The Alternative has constructed its entire political program through a bottom-up process inspired by the open-source community (Husted and Plesner, 2017), while Jeremy Corbyn and the Momentum movement have managed to turn Britain's Labour Party into one of the biggest membership parties in Europe (Seymour, 2017). Towards the other end of the spectrum, Movimento 5 Stelle have reconfigured Italian politics by relying heavily on Internet technology for mobilizing support and coordinating events (Tronconi, 2016), whereas the Dutch anti-Islam PVV has gone the opposite direction by creating a party with only one member. Such organizational innovations point to the need for a deeper understanding of how political parties have traditionally organized, and how this new wave of contenders challenge the dominant mode of coordination within party politics. However, despite the abundance of research on political parties, we still know very little about the inner-life of parties, as the scope of research is often limited to questions of formal structure (Krouwel, 2006). This means that classical organizational themes like culture, identity, learning, strategy, decision-making, and management have been surprisingly underprioritized if not entirely neglected by the literature on party organization (see Barrling, 2013; Heidar and Koole, 2000; Lawson, 1994). In the mid1990s, Peter Mair argued that while there is a number of ‘surprisingly evident lacunae’ within the ‘ever-growing cumulation of knowledge’ of political parties, the 'empirically grounded study of parties as organizations (...) has long constituted one of the most obvious of these lacunae' (Mair, 1994: 1-2). Today, 25 years later, this lacuna still persists as our knowledge of how party organizations work, change, and adapt remains limited. The absence of empirical studies of ‘parties as organizations’ is particularly surprising given the fact that classical texts on political parties emphasize the question of organization as crucial to understanding party politics. For instance, Michels (1911) famously characterized his iron law of oligarchy as a problem of organization, rather than of ideological dispositions. Similarly, Duverger (1954: xv) argued that modern parties are distinguished not by their actual policies or by the composition of their membership base, but by the ‘nature of their organization’. Of course, such arguments have not gone unheard (Dalton et al., 2011; Katz and Mair, 1994; Scarrow et al., 2017), but most contemporary studies of party organization approach the topic through quantitative methods and by relying solely on official sources of data like organizational charts, statutes, budgets, or membership statistics (Bolleyer, 2016). Hence, within political science at least, qualitative and ‘immersive’ accounts of party organizations seem virtually non-existent (see Schatz, 2009). The same is true for organization studies. Here, the problem is not methodological or analytical but empirical: while political scientists have deployed a somewhat restricted understanding of what it means to study political parties, organizational scholars have generally overlooked parties as interesting study objects. Save for a handful of recent examples (Fredriksson Almqvist, 2016; Husted and Plesner, 2017; Karthikeyan et al., 2016; Moufahim et al., 2015; Ringel, 2018), parties completely escape the analytic gaze of organization scholars. The purpose of this special issue is to remedy this shortcoming. We thus invite contributions across academic disciplines that employ qualitative methods to explore the inner-life of political parties. Themes of interest therefore include, but are not limited to: • Organizational procedures for increasing membership participation • Managerial practices for keeping members ‘in line’ and ‘on board’ • Modes of power and control in party politics • Party leadership and followership • Attempts to build enthusiasm and engagement internally • Relations between political ideology and organizational culture • Prefigurative practices and adaptation of social movement techniques • Oligarchic tendencies and ways of countering these • New technologies of decision making (i.e. liquid democracy) • Political branding, image, and identity constructions • Communication and discursive practices within parties • Ways of marketing ideology to internal stakeholders • Methodological challenges to studying parties While we encourage empirically grounded submissions that focus on the above, theoretical contributions and historical analyses are also welcome. Furthermore, we are equally interested in research that investigates the role and impact of political parties on society (e.g. how do parties organize society?). The crucial thing is that all submissions somehow advance our understanding of political parties as organizations. In accordance with ephemera's subtitle, we thus invite authors to explore the intersection between theory and politics in (party) organization. Deadline for submissions: April 1st 2019. All contributions should be submitted to the issue editors: Emil Husted (ehu.dbp@cbs.dk), Martin Fredriksson (martin.fredriksson@liu.se), Mona Moufahim (mona.moufahim@stir.ac.uk), and Justine Grønbæk Pors (jgp.mpp@cbs.dk). Please note that three categories of contributions are invited for the special issue: articles, notes, and reviews. However, we are also open for discussing the potential publication of other types of submissions, such as interviews, interventions or documentations. Information about the different types of contributions can be found at: http://www.ephemerajournal.org/how-submit. Contributions will undergo a double blind review process. All submissions should follow ephemera’s submissions guidelines, available at: http://www.ephemerajournal.org/how- submit. For further information, please email the issue editors.
Increasing Intra-Party Democracy, Blurring the Lines of Representation?
While legislative parties usually work as united bloc in parliamentary democracies, individual legislators have different perceptions of their role of representatives. Some legislators tend to exercise their mandate primarily as the delegates of their party, while others feel above all tied to their voters; and others rather exercise their mandate as trustees. The extent to which legislators develop these various styles varies across countries, parties and individuals. At a time when representative democracy is put under pressure and parties are entering processes of intra-party democratisation as a response to this crisis, this research investigates the potential impact of intra-party democracy (IPD) on legislators' style of representation. Using quantitative data collected in the frame of the PartiRep MP Survey and of the Political Party Database (PPDB), we investigate this relationship across 14 parliamentary democracies. The findings do not point to a clear and unidirectional impact of IPD, but they indicate the relevance of party specificities and organisational features in understanding the way representatives view and exercise their role.
A deliberative model of intra-party democracy (Journal of Political Philosophy 2016)
Existing accounts of intra-party democracy mainly focus on candidate selection and neglect other important democratic practices within parties, in particular deliberation. This paper outlines a deliberative model of intra-party democracy. It begins by subjecting existing models of intra-party democracy to normative scrutiny, highlighting the relative merits of a deliberative approach. It then identifies local party branches as key sites of intra-party deliberation and probes their deliberative credentials. In a third step, the paper explores several ways in which the deliberations of the party branches can be connected to policy decisions, and goes on to suggest alternative institutional designs which practitioners can avail themselves of if traditional channels of preference transmission are defective. In closing, the paper pinpoints several empirical challenges the model faces.