Party Reform

Abstract

How parties organize has been the focus of seminal research in political science. However, it is only recently that the field has developed publicly available, large-scale comparative datasets, such as the Political Party Database (PPDB), that allows to compare detailed features of party organisations over time and across both parliamentary and presidential democracies (Scarrow, Webb, Poguntke 2017). This development offers the unique opportunity to investigate the extent of party agency in regards to organisational reform (Sikk and Köker 2023). In this panel, we welcome papers that explore in comparative perspective how and when parties develop or change strategies regarding internal organization (Harmel and Janda 1994, Gauja 2016). We also welcome papers that focus on the consequences of party-driven organisational reforms for electoral politics (Döring and Regel 2019), representation, or public policy (Wenzelburger and Zohlnhöfer 2021).

Title	Details
Blurring to Survive? The effect of intraparty democracy on elite blurring strategies	View Paper Details
Adaptation and Institutionalization: Political Parties' Response to External Shocks	View Paper Details
How parties (don’t) protect: Party rules on hindering and handling harassment, intimidation and violence among members, candidates and elected representatives	View Paper Details
Why using deliberative democracy to conduct intra-party reform? The reform of the Christian-democratic Belgian French-speaking party	View Paper Details
Reform for survival or for a change? Bulgarian parties' reform strategies in comparative perspective	View Paper Details