Entrepreneurial Parties Without Firms and Without Members

Abstract

This chapter analyses two political entrepreneurs, Geert Wilders and Tomio Okamura, who managed to break through, even if they had no major financial or other business assets, and who decided to give up on building a membership or extensive organisational structure. Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands is a good example of a well-thought-out design, where the founding father consistently worked to keep his political personnel cohesive, created effective tools for dealing with party dissent and positioned his party on the politically salient issues of immigration and Islam. Tomio Okamura’s Dawn of Direct Democracy in Czechia, by contrast, provides an illustration of flagrant mistakes made by the leader, especially his lack of interest in internal party cohesion or in an image undamaged by scandal—these factors caused the quick collapse of his party enterprise.