Explaining Party Organization: Actors, Conflict, Context

Abstract

This chapter will develop two new conceptualizations of political parties: as strategic responses to electoral markets that are themselves strategically selective and – acknowledging actors’ ability to develop different strategic responses to the same context – as ongoing power struggles between internal factions following different electoral strategies. Through these two new conceptualizations it will become obvious that the three types of factors identified by the various theories of party organization – internal, external and agential factors – can be combined into a single narrative of party formation and party change.