Party institutionalization and intra-party preference homogeneityAbstractThis paper studies the relation between party institutionalization and intra-party preference homogeneity in democracies. In weakly institutionalized parties, it cannot be taken for granted that party actors have similar policy views because they lack the capability or motivation to coordinate agreement and to recruit personnel in line with this agreement. This should matter most when other safeguards against preference heterogeneity are missing. Empirically, we explore the association between institutionalization and intra-party preference homogeneity at the level of candidates to the national legislature based on survey data. In a single-country study, we first look at the case of Germany in 2013 and 2017, contrasting the young and weakly institutionalized Alternative for Germany (AfD) with the older, established parties. In a second step, we study the link between party institutionalization and preference homogeneity in a cross-country analysis of 19 established democracies. We find that parties with high value infusion—parties whose candidates are committed to the party—are generally more homogenous in their policy preferences. Moreover, value infusion is more consequential when the issues in question are not constitutive for the party and when candidates are selected in a decentralized way. Similarly, routinization of internal party behavior—the second dimension of institutionalization that we account for—seems to contribute to preference homogeneity only when parties are less policy oriented and have decentralized candidate selection procedures. |
Institutionalisation without voters: the Green Party in Poland in comparative perspectiveAbstractDespite severe degradation of the natural environment in Central and Eastern European countries under communist rule and its large mobilizing potential in the 1990s, only in a few of these countries did Green parties rise to long-term relevance for the political system. The economic, social and political legacies of the communist regimes influenced the majority of successful Green parties in the region to adopt a centrist (Czech Republic) or right-wing (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) approach. In this context, I analyse the process of institutionalisation of the Green Party in Poland, closest among the CEE Green parties to the left-libertarian model dominant in Western Europe, and compare it with other Green parties in the region. I demonstrate how the support of the European Green Party has allowed the party to survive and partially institutionalise, but it has not been sufficient to ensure political success. |
Definitions and measures of party institutionalization in new personal politics: The case of the 5 star movementAbstractThe emergence of personalized party organizations has called for a redefinition of the concept of party institutionalization (PI). This article brings different strands of literature together and proposes a new multidimensional index of PI. PI is conceived of as the interplay of objective and internal party features with the external environment. The viability of the index is tested through its application to a prominent case of personal party, the Italian Five Star Movement (5SM). Through a detailed analysis of its history, we show that the 5SM has become more institutionalized over time; however, this has especially affected its external facet, while other specific party traits have been less involved. Findings suggest that the stabilization of internal structures to connect party echelon and rank-and-file remains a challenge. |
Timing, sequences and new party institutionalization in South AmericaAbstractWhile party system institutionalization is widely addressed in the literature, the conditions of institutionalization on the level of individual parties are still insufficiently explored, especially for Latin America. The region provides a broad variety of new parties, whose divergent developments cannot be explained by structural or institutional factors. Recently, a range of genetic explanations has been proposed, which attribute new party institutionalization to their conditions of emergence. These accounts, however, leave questions about later stages of party institutionalization open. We propose a more comprehensive approach, integrating different dimensions and covering the whole path of new party institutionalization. We start from the proposition that in the process of party development, tensions and contradictions arise between internal, organizational consolidation on the one hand and external relations to voters and competitors, on the other, which make it difficult to institutionalize in both dimensions at the same time. We, therefore, argue that new parties are only able to institutionalize successfully when institutionalization proceeds in a sequential way, with internal institutionalization preceding electoral rise and external institutionalization. We substantiate our supposition by matching the expected sequential pattern of institutionalization to four empirical cases, the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT), the Uruguayan Broad Front (FA), the Argentine FREPASO and the Venezuelan Causa R. Based on these cases we will show that successful parties indeed follow this script, while new party failure can be attributed to their lack of institutionalized internal structures in the moment of electoral rise. |
Party institutionalization in new democracies: The threat of power personalizationAbstractThis article puts forward a proposal aimed to improve the measurement of party institutionalization. Unlike most related studies, it takes the structure rather than the amount of power of party organizations as the main determinant of their institutionalization. It argues that within the context of recently pluralized political systems in which party organizations regularly serve as the personal political tools of those in charge, party institutionalization primarily relates to the process through which a given party acquires political influence irrespective of its leaders. The article provides a detailed comparison of the developmental trajectories of the ruling parties in Serbia (Socialist Party of Serbia) and Croatia (Croatian Democratic Union) in the 1990s. It shows that, albeit different origins (communist-successor vs. anti-establishment party), the ruling parties ended up with very similar internal organization as a consequence of power personalization, which hindered the process of their institutionalization and determined the course of their political development. |
Podemos' and Ciudadanos' multi-level institutionalization challengesAbstractSo far, the party institutionalization literature has not properly analysed the challenges posed by the multi-level nature of many Western democracies to new parties' institutionalization processes. The aim of this article is to introduce a theoretical framework combining both internal (e.g. party origins, party branch autonomy) and external factors (e.g. cross-level contamination, electoral threshold) to better understand this phenomenon. We hypothesize that through the formative stage and cross-level contamination the party institutionalization processes at the national and regional level will be aligned. They will also be stronger in those regions with better electoral performance and higher levels of branch autonomy. These expectations are then illustrated through the comparative analysis of the origins of the Podemos and Ciudadanos parties and their early evolution in Spain. The main results point out that national and regional institutionalization processes are evolving in the same direction, although not at the same pace. They also suggest that the electoral threshold and the autonomy of the regional branch might also be shaping the way both parties are developing in different regions. |
Party institutionalization as multilevel concept: base- versus elite-level routinizationAbstractThis article adds to the refinement of the concept of party institutionalization by focusing on its multilevel character, capturing possible variation between the institutionalization of the party elite and a party's base. Hence, we argue that debates around party institutionalization as an analytical concept can profit from clarifying whose behavior we actually theorize when specifying and operationalizing the concept's various dimensions. We illustrate this by focusing on different configurations of the internal property of routinization, more specifically, the presence or absence of elite-level and of base-level routinization. We hypothesize that distinct combinations influence whether and to which extent a party's overall organization can be considered routinized or not, which, in turn, affects intra-organizational dynamics. We illustrate the usefulness of our conceptual distinctions using comparative case studies of parties characterized by either elite-level or base-level routinization—from both established and new democracies—to illustrate each dimension's distinct implications for patterns of intra-party conflict and stability. |
Travelling concepts of party institutionalization? A comparative perspectiveAbstractConcepts of party institutionalization and party change were developed during the 1980s with regard to the European mass party model of party organization. Since then we have been observing the breakthrough of new political parties from the whole political spectrum in both, 'established' and 'young' democracies. But the birth and institutionalization of parties has been analyzed separately in different world regions. The focus of analysis in these research studies is either on Western parties and established party systems or on parties and party systems in 'young' democracies. We argue that we should integrate this coexisting research to get a better understanding for the context-specific aspects of a party's first steps of establishment in the party system. This article, first, gives a review on the main analytical concepts of party institutionalization and party change and clarifies how they travelled through different world regions. Second, it discusses the approaches and outcomes of the different contribution made to this special issue. Where do we find commonalities and differences in the analytical concepts – and in their applying in different world regions? How can the comparative analysis of party institutionalization processes benefit from these findings? It is our primary contention in this article, as well as in the entire special issue, that the building of concepts and theory on the institutionalization of political parties can be enhanced by bringing together the research on party institutionalization and party change in different world regions (areas) and by recognizing, that it is a multi-dimensional (objective, internal and external) and sequential process. Therefore we seek a unified language to talk about party institutionalization and clearer boundaries of the concept when we analyze it comparatively in different areas of the world. |
Aktienfinanzierung, Arbeitsmarktmobilität und die Spielarten des Kapitalismus: Der mobilisierende Einfluss von Aktienmärkten im Rahmen der VoC-TheorieZusammenfassungDie Varieties of Capitalism-Theorie (VoC) postuliert, dass Unternehmen in koordinierten Marktwirtschaften kreditfinanziert sind, was ihnen unflexible Beschäftigungsverhältnisse ermöglicht und ihre Produktmarktstrategie sichert. Dem entgegen bestehen in liberalen Marktwirtschaften Komplementaritäten von Eigenkapitalfinanzierung und flexibilisierten Arbeitsmärkten. Diese Dichotomie lässt sich empirisch nicht mehr aufrechterhalten, da vor allem koordinierte Marktwirtschaften seit den 1990er Jahren zunehmend Eigenkapitalfinanzierung nutzen. In dieser Studie wird mithilfe von makroquantitativen Zeitreihendaten aus 24 OECD-Staaten zwischen 1993–2010 untersucht, welchen Einfluss dieser Wandel auf die Arbeitsmarktmobilität in den Kapitalismustypen hatte. Es werden zwei theoretische Erwartungen der VoC-Theorie überprüft. Dabei wird erstens gezeigt, dass Eigenkapitalkapitalisierung tatsächlich moderat mobilisierend auf die Arbeitsbeziehungen von Unternehmen wirkt. Zweitens ist dieser Zusammenhang aber in koordinierten Marktwirtschaften nicht schwächer, sondern eher stärker als in liberalen Marktwirtschaften. Das widerspricht den Erwartungen von VoC, da Arbeitgeber in CMEs auf den institutionellen Wandel durch eine Bewahrung der strategischen Koordination in langfristigen Arbeitsbeziehungen reagieren sollten, um ihren Wettbewerbsvorteil zu bewahren. Das impliziert, dass die VoC-Sicht auf institutionelle Komplementaritäten zu vereinfachend ist, wenn diese eine kohärente Organisation der Wirtschaft als LME oder CME als effizienzmaximierend begreift. Die Studie unterstützt damit Kritik an der VoC-Konzeption von institutionellem Wandel, die vorher nur auf der Grundlage von qualitativen Fallstudien geäußert wurde. |
| Frech, Elena. 2018. Re-Selecting Members of the European Parliament: Candidate Selection, Party Goals, and Re-Election Probabilities |
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