Electoral Defeat As ‘Mother of Party Change’: Towards Objective-Subjective Approach

Abstract

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.

Electoral Defeat and Party Change: When do Parties Adapt?

“…Explaining party change after electoral defeat is a complex task which requires analysis of factors internal and external to the party (Harmel & Janda 1994;Harmel 2002: 127-128;Gauja 2017: 7-9). Theoretically then, electoral defeat is a rich source of hypotheses, but surprisingly the topic has been approached not as autonomous, but as a secondary object of the analysis (Norris & Lovenduski 2004;Langston 2003;Fell 2009;Pacześniak & Bachryj-Krzywaźnia 2019;Louault & Pellen 2019).…”

The Blame Game: Narratives of Electoral Defeat and Party Change. The Case of Four Polish Political Parties

“…The category of defeat is not unambiguous and poses some theoretical difficulties, however, I will not present them in the full extent, since it has been done elsewhere (Pacześniak & Bachryj-Krzywaźnia, 2019). The important thing though is to emphasize that electoral defeat may occur in case of both -governing and opposition parties.…”