Electoral defeat has sometimes been called the mother of party change, but is this reputation warranted? In this paper we investigate whether party characteristics such as government status, party systemic origins, or ideological family affect how parties respond to defeat. Examining 73 parties in 28 countries, considering party efforts to change their leadership, their programs and their organizations, we conclude that only systemic origin (post-communist vs. West European countries) is a relevant factor affecting depth of party change. Parties take some corrective actions after electoral defeat, however, they are not likely to be a wholesale reforms. Thus, it would be more accurate to describe electoral defeat as a midwife of a party change, not as its mother.

The purpose of the paper is to provide a theoretical framework for the study of electoral defeat and its influence on party transformation. The opening paragraphs present the state of the art on the topic, which leads to conclusions about significant shortcomings in the existing studies. In order to address them, in the following sections of the article, the authors propose an approach to the issue that is based on a two-dimensional perspective. The first one – the objective dimension – takes into account the environmental aspect and institutional nature of political parties. The second – the subjective – emphasizes the human factor and considers the role of the personal experience of collective failure, and its perception and impact on collective actions as a response to it. On this basis several lines of study are suggested together with appropriate methodological approaches.

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Philosophical frames and premises of diversification of the interpretive approachThe interpretive approach seems to be one of those umbrella terms that cover a multitude of extremely diversified research strategiesAt first sight they seem to have nothing in common except the blurred term interpretation and skepticism about naturalism in social sciences. Nonetheless they have solid common philosophical underpinnings that constitute the peculiarity as well as pluralism of the interpretationist approachThe first one — apriorism — defines its ontology, the second one — anti-Cartesianism — specifies epistemology. Both create distinctiveness toward the objective and empirical standards of scientific investigation that deserve to be called not a mere approach but a paradigm.