Party Rules, Party Resources, and the Politics of Parliamentary Democracies

Autor(en)

Thomas Poguntke, Susan E. Scarrow, Paul D. Webb, Ellin H. Allein, Nicholas Aylott, Ingrid van Biezen, Enrico Calossi, Marina Costa Lobo, William P. Cross, Kris Deschouwer, Zsolt Enyedi, Elodie Fabre, David M. Farrell, Anika Gauja, Eugenio Pizzimenti, Petr Kopecký, Ruud Koole, Wolfgang Claudius Müller, Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, Gideon Rahat, Aleks Szczerbiak, Emilie van Haute, Tània Verge

Abstrakt

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.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, University of Sussex, University of Houston, Unknown External Organisation Unbekannt/undefiniert

Journal

Party Politics

Band

22

Seiten

661-678

Anzahl der Seiten

18

ISSN

1354-0688

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068816662493

Publikationsdatum

11-2016

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Sociology and Political Science

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 16 – Frieden, Gerechtigkeit und starke Institutionen

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/dbf506b5-8982-4b1f-af9b-2cc25e026569