Party digitalization and website features: a comparative study of party organizations

Most of the empirical literature on political parties has stressed important organizational and functional changes due to the rise of new digital technologies. However, when looking in detail at different parties there is clearly a wide variation in the use of digital ICT. While recent works have focused on the use of social media, there are few comparative (and up to date) studies on party websites. This is surprising as many political parties have increasingly replaced bureaucratic organizational structures with lightweight organizations based on the Internet. Indeed, this medium is still regarded as one of the main tools for parties to mobilize members and voters, as well as to communicate their messages to public opinion and political actors, especially during non-campaign periods. In addition, most of this scholarship adopts a descriptive approach, which does not allow to identifying determinants in the way parties make use of websites. From this viewpoint, two competing paradigms can be found in the literature. The first relates to the role of resources, while the second is based on political factors, such as the original model, ideology or organizational structure. The goal of this paper is to test these two rival approaches through a systematic comparative analysis. Using data collected in the framework of the Political Party Database (PPDB), this paper aims to examine the determinants of party website features (information, deliberation, recruitment, etc.) across distinct types of party organization and countries. By identifying determinants of party websites’ characteristics, this study has significant implications for our understanding of party digitalization, party communication and mobilization. It also allows shedding more light on the normalization vs equalization theories beyond periods of election campaigns.