The blurring of party-political and parliamentary roles can impede the effectiveness of regulatory regimes

The way in which political parties use state resources indirectly (e.g., parliamentary expenses) receives substantial attention in public debate, particularly when surrounded by perceptions of misuse. Nicole Bolleyer looks at the different ways in which parliamentary resources are used in party-political ways, and argues that attempts to bring about reform will be limited by the reality on the ground

Have changes in counterterrorism legislation before and after 9/11 curtailed civil rights?

Nicole Bolleyer examines the extent and form of legal changes across five western countries in the decades that span 9/11 and finds that in general the level of legal constraints on civil liberties has grown, though with considerable variation between countries and in types of restrictions

The puzzle of non-party actors in party democracy: Independents in Ireland

It is an accepted truth that parties are the central political actors in all liberal democracies. This dominance of parties is often considered the logical outcome of rational politicians’ attempts to maximize their utility in terms of votes and policy influence. However, the last twenty years have seen a number of significant Independent (i.e. non-party) actors emerge in more than a few political systems. From an actor-centred point of view, party affiliation can, depending on the particular environment, be rather a liability than an advantage, which has significant implications for the role of non-party actors in face of weakening party democracies. To demonstrate this point, we deliver an account of the rise of Independents in the Irish political system, opposed to the dominant scholarly perspective that tends to consider Independents as an idiosyncrasy. We show that the choice of organizational independence over party affiliation represents a reaction to incentives inherent in the electoral, parliamentary and governmental stages that can disfavour party as the most efficient vehicle for individual goal attainment. This becomes evident when avoiding the misleading comparison between parties as collective bodies with that of Independents as individuals, instead focussing on the respective strategic positions of the individual MPs

Parliamentary salaries are frequently a source of party funding, but what are the implications for democracy?

In nearly all modern democracies, parliamentarians by now receive a full-time salary in order to attract qualified candidates and representatives from all corners of the society. These payments are, in principle, not intended to constitute an additional source of party income. Yet, Nicole Bolleyer and Siim Trumm have shown that in many democracies they are exactly that. The regular collection of a fixed salary share from parliamentarians is not just a widespread practice, but for many parties also a lucrative one

Advocacy in European Civil Societies: Organizational Trade-offs Between Selective and Collective Incentive Provision

Abstract Civil society organizations (CSOs) are a cornerstone of democracy in Europe. Nonetheless, “civil society” and “political society” should not be equated as membership-based organizations are not necessarily politically engaged. This paper theorizes and empirically examines which membership-based CSOs engage in interest representation through sustained advocacy activity. We propose an incentive-theoretical framework on CSO investments in advocacy activities—a collective, non-exclusive incentive from which also non-members can profit—by organizations fundamentally dependent on member support. Theorizing how CSOs' own structural characteristics, resource dependencies, and government demand for CSO input affect how CSOs reconcile selective and collective incentive provision, we test our hypotheses using new data from four recent surveys conducted in four European democracies. In line with our framework, CSOs organizing individual citizens rather than corporate actors and those pursuing member interests are less likely to engage in advocacy, while CSO professionalization and state funding access enhance CSOs’ propensities to do so. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the former structural CSO characteristics are similarly relevant for CSO advocacy across distinct country settings, while the role of resource variables is mediated by institutional context revealing an important source of inequality in democratic interest representation

From cartel party to traditional membership organization: the organizational evolution of Fianna Fáil

This paper examines patterns of intra-organisational evolution and reform of Fianna Fáil as a party organisation before and after the 2011 Dáil election, widely considered an ‘earthquake election’ that fundamentally undermined Fianna Fáil’s status as the dominant party in the Irish party system. Electoral losses had triggered reform in Fianna Fáil prior to 2011, but such reforms tended to be minor, as the party expected its opposition status to be temporary. This orientation changed after 2011, as the party’s very foundation seemed threatened, having suffered a historic decline of its electoral support and membership. We argue that the post-2011 re-orientation can be usefully characterised as a movement away from organisational characteristics associated with the ‘cartel model of party organisation’ towards characteristics echoing more ‘traditional mass party structures’, an organisational model less dependent on state resources, and more able to generate loyalty through organisational means. Whether the 2011 reforms will lead to lasting change is likely to depend on whether, and if so how quickly, Fianna Fáil can reclaim its position as the major party of government

Political Party Mortality in Established Party Systems:A Hierarchical Competing Risks Approach

Existing scholarship offers few answers to fundamental questions about the mortality of political parties in established party systems. Linking party research to the organization literature, we conceptualize two types of party death, dissolution and merger, reflecting distinct theoretical rationales. They underpin a new framework on party organizational mortality theorizing three sets of factors: those shaping mortality generally and those shaping dissolution or merger death exclusively. We test this framework on a new data set covering the complete life cycles of 184 parties that entered 21 consolidated party systems over the last five decades, resorting to multilevel competing risks models to estimate the impact of party and country characteristics on the hazards of both types of death. Our findings not only show that dissolution and merger death are driven by distinct factors, but also that they represent separate logics not intrinsically related at either the party or systemic level

Why Parties Narrow their Representative Profile: Evidence from Six European Democracies

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this recordIn this paper, we analyse the conditions under which political parties narrow their representative profile (defined by the scope of the issues or the constituencies they represent). This strategy has been neglected in the party literature, which is mainly focused on the adoption of catch-all strategies among mainstream parties or the tendency to stick to core issues among niche parties. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework that includes central external and internal drivers of party change and we empirically test this framework using novel survey data covering 121 parties across six European democracies: The United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Ireland.European Commissio

Constitutional dynamics and partisan conflict:A comparative assessment of multi-level systems in Europe

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleThe case studies revealed that the constitutional nature of a multi-level system indeed shapes its modes of day-to-day intergovernmental coordination and, with it, the way competences are (re)allocated in the longer term. Both in federal arrangements and in confederations, the ‘subunits’ – whose status is constitutionally protected – could more easily defend their decision-making capacity within their areas of jurisdiction because they can veto changes in the allocation of competences, an advantage lower-level governments in regionalized systems do not enjoy. Similarly, in federal and confederal systems day-to-day interaction in Inter Governmental Relations (IGR) predominantly took place in multilateral structures, while in regionalized systems bilateralism was more pronounced. The relative influence of party-political (in)congruence on IGR, in contrast, was more varied than theoretically expected