Thomas Poguntke

New politics and party systems: The emergence of a new type of party?

Building upon theories of new politics, this article suggests an ideal‐typical model of New Politics parties that integrates all important aspects of a political party: organisation, ideology, membership and electorate. It is then demonstrated that for Germany, Sweden, and Austria such a model is necessary in order to distinguish between conservative or centrist ‘Green’ formations and parties that are genuine products of the ‘new politics’.

The decline of membership-based politics

In one of his last publications, Peter Mair documented how party membership had declined substantially in virtually all European democracies. As his collaborators on this piece, it seems pertinent that we take these findings as a point of departure and discuss what they mean for our understanding of party democracy. After all, the collapse of membership figures calls into question one of the central elements of our conceptualization of representative democracy, namely that it is based on voluntary political participation within political parties. All authoritative typologies of political parties consider the role of members to be one of their defining elements, although the cartel party most clearly envisages the marginalization of party members by professional party politicians. The traditional organizational allies of political parties (e.g. trade unions, organized religion) are subject to similar processes of erosion. In this article, we review the evidence of the social anchorage of political parties and discuss how political parties and party democracy can survive in an age where amateur politicians are becoming an increasingly rare species and parties are being transformed into organizational vehicles for those to whom politics is a profession rather than a vocation.

Green Parties in National Governments: From Protest to Acquiescence?

The comparative analysis of the record of Green parties in national governments shows that they have had only limit impact on national policy. No doubt, the march through the institutions has changed the marchers more than the institutions. Furthermore, the Green parties are ill placed to wield much blackmailing power in coalition politics. Still, much depends on their skill to exploit a rather limited room for manoeuvre in order to implement reform and attract sufficient electoral support. The record is, however, very mixed. The example of the Finnish Greens shows that Green parties can thrive in government, while the German Greens have suffered badly at the polls.

Goodbye to movement politics? Organisational adaptation of the German green party

Following the unexpected failure of the West German Green Party to cross the five per cent hurdle in the first all‐German elections the Greens have implemented substantial organisational reform. The electoral decline of the Green Party, which became already visible before unification, can partially be attributed to organisational deficiencies. Some of the organisational principles of grassroots democracy have proven to be incompatible with the need for efficient political performance under the conditions of parliamentary democracy. In addition, effects of the political system of the Federal Republic have changed the distribution of power between party arenas, thereby necessitating organisational adaption. It can be concluded that the Greens have succeeded in creating a more efficient organisational structure without sacrificing the central elements of grass‐roots democracy. This has been an important step towards electoral consolidation, since the politics of the united Germany will hold a less favourable...

Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies How parties organize in the 21st century

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.

How European Integration Changes National Parties: Evidence from a 15-Country Study

This article examines the impact of European integration on the balance of power within national political parties. It does this by drawing on the results of a survey of key actors in up to 55 parties in the 15 pre-2004 enlargement member states. The analyses show that, when they are involved in EU-level decision-making, party elites are relatively powerful vis-à-vis their national parties and that in a number of instances their intra-party power has also increased over time. National parties have, to some extent, attempted to constrain their elites but appear to be fighting a losing battle. Although there are some minor differences by country and by party, the empowerment of party elites is a general phenomenon. This research provides an empirical dimension to the existing research on the Europeanisation of national political parties and presents an important substantiation of the widely discussed democratic deficit that exists within the EU system of governance.

The Presidentialization of Party Leadership? Evaluating Party Leadership and Party Government in the Democratic World

In this chapter, we seek to assess the nature of contemporary party leadership across the democratic world. We start by reviewing a number of well-known models of party organization with particular reference to the implications they carry for the relative power of leaders over their parties, noting the very definite tendency of more recent models to emphasize leadership autonomy. We then proceed to examine the clearest assertion of the view that party leaders have generally become more autonomous of their parties, which is the ‘presidentialization’ argument proposed by Poguntke, Webb, and colleagues (Poguntke and Webb 2005a). This entails a recap of the original argument, along with a review of recent additions to the literature and evidence that bear upon the thesis. We conclude by discussing the implications of this argument for the party government model of representative democracy.

Still the same with a new name? Bündnis 90/Die Grünen after the fusion

More than two years after German unification, the Greens finally created a joint party organisation with their ally in the east, Bundnis 90. This article analyses the most important junctures on the path towards the new party, Bundnis 90/Die Grunen, and defines its most important organisational, ideological and social characteristics. The Achilles heel of the new party, which is more moderate than the Greens of the 1980s, remains their lack of a stable electoral base.

The influence of Europarties on Central and Eastern European partner parties: a theoretical and analytical model

This article provides a comprehensive theoretical model for analysing the influence of European party federations (Europarties) on their Central and Eastern European (CEE) partner parties. It draws on the concepts of Europeanization and party change and is, in principle, applicable to similar processes of party enlargement elsewhere. In the process of their Eastern enlargement, Europarties have searched for suitable CEE partner parties on which they have tried to exert influence. Thus far, little is known about the precise mechanisms involved and the actual impact of these processes. We argue that Europarty influence leads to party change on the side of the CEE partners, which brings about ‘West-Europeanization’. Europarties are expected to apply a double strategy that consists of a process of political exchange based on a largely asymmetric power relationship in favour of Europarties and a socialization strategy in which Europarties try to socialize their partners and convince them of the appropriateness of change. We present the theoretical and analytical tools for the analysis of the arguably largest extension of transnational party organizations, which provides ample testing ground for more general theories on party change. Furthermore, we present preliminary empirical evidence on the two most important cases, namely the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists, which indicates that Europarties played an important role in the development of CEE parties and party systems in general.

Towards a new party system The vanishing hold of the catch-all parties in Germany

The results of the 2009 Bundestag election and subsequent Land elections suggest that the German party system is changing fundamentally. A few facts suffice to corroborate this statement: Volatility has now reached levels that were last recorded in the 1950s; turnout in national elections has reached an all-time low; the two large parties have had unprecedentedly poor results in the Bundestag elections while all three smaller parties reached more than 10 percent. The article shows that German catch-all parties are about to lose their hold on the electorate and, as a result, can no longer rely on being the senior parties of government. The article analyses these changes systematically using a range of quantitative indicators covering the entire post-war period. It shows a seminal erosion of the forces which have stabilized the German party system in earlier decades and discusses the repercussions for the functioning of German party democracy.