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Parties Change: So What?
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Parties Change: So What?
Toward a Research Agenda on Consequences of Party Change
by Robert Harmel
Texas A&M University
Prepared for presentation at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, 27-31 August
Copyright American Political Science Association
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Introduction
More than a decade ago, in the wake of perceptions that political parties were no
longer adequately performing important roles for their democratic systems, coupled with concerns that they might be ill-suited – both in their organizational structures and their standard operating procedures/strategies – to avoid complete obsolescence, a significant amount of attention in parties’ research turned to their abilities to reform themselves: to change, innovate and/or adapt. While some new research focused on historical tendencies for parties en masse to alter their purposes, roles, and organizations to fit changing times, and the evidence that they might be doing so again, others focused on questions related to the relative influences of “environment” and “internal factors” in shaping and re-shaping parties’ organizations and issue profiles. Underlying these strains of party change research, there is an assumption that the change is purposeful, motivated by expectations of “results,” whether electoral, governmental, policy-oriented, or related to internal workings of the party itself.
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And yet, though party change could presumably alter both
the effectiveness of parties and their internal politics, and though research on party change has documented and attempted to explain a multitude of party changes across many established democracies, relatively little research has been directed at measuring or explaining variant consequences of such change.
1
For a synthesis of the party change literature and further on the various strains
within it, see Harmel, 2002.
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1
____________________________________________________
Parties Change: So What?
Toward a Research Agenda on Consequences of Party Change
by Robert Harmel
Texas A&M University
Prepared for presentation at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, 27-31 August
Copyright American Political Science Association
____________________________________________________
Introduction
More than a decade ago, in the wake of perceptions that political parties were no
longer adequately performing important roles for their democratic systems, coupled with
concerns that they might be ill-suited – both in their organizational structures and their
standard operating procedures/strategies – to avoid complete obsolescence, a significant
amount of attention in parties’ research turned to their abilities to reform themselves: to
change, innovate and/or adapt. While some new research focused on historical tendencies
for parties en masse to alter their purposes, roles, and organizations to fit changing times,
and the evidence that they might be doing so again, others focused on questions related to
the relative influences of “environment” and “internal factors” in shaping and re-shaping
parties’ organizations and issue profiles. Underlying these strains of party change
research, there is an assumption that the change is purposeful, motivated by expectations
of “results,” whether electoral, governmental, policy-oriented, or related to internal
workings of the party itself.
1
And yet, though party change could presumably alter both
the effectiveness of parties and their internal politics, and though research on party change
has documented and attempted to explain a multitude of party changes across many
established democracies, relatively little research has been directed at measuring or
explaining variant consequences of such change.
1
For a synthesis of the party change literature and further on the various strains
within it, see Harmel, 2002.
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