Parteiinstitutionalisierung, ein mehrstufiges Konzept: Routinisierung von Parteibasis und Parteielite

Abstract

This article adds to the refinement of the concept of party institutionalization by focusing on its multilevel character, capturing possible variation between the institutionalization of the party elite and a party's base. Hence, we argue that debates around party institutionalization as an analytical concept can profit from clarifying whose behavior we actually theorize when specifying and operationalizing the concept's various dimensions. We illustrate this by focusing on different configurations of the internal property of routinization, more specifically, the presence or absence of elite-level and of base-level routinization. We hypothesize that distinct combinations influence whether and to which extent a party's overall organization can be considered routinized or not, which, in turn, affects intra-organizational dynamics. We illustrate the usefulness of our conceptual distinctions using comparative case studies of parties characterized by either elite-level or base-level routinizationfrom both established and new democracies -to illustrate each dimension's distinct implications for patterns of intra-party conflict and stability.

Party statutes and party institutionalization

“…As illustrated in Figure 1, we suggest that routinization can occur via the creation of practices that become regularized over time, whether or not they are codified (regularization), or through adoption and modification of formal rules, such as party statutes (formalization). The concept of regularization reflects arguments in previous studies of PI that the extensiveness of parties’ formally codified organizations is not necessarily synonymous with their levels of institutionalization, because parties’ informal practices and extra-party linkages are at least as important (Bolleyer and Ruth-Lovell, 2019; Levitsky, 1998; Randall and Svåsand, 2002). In contrast, formalization reflects other arguments that have linked routinization to more formal rules, be it the density of rules governing a party’s relations with its followers (Bolleyer and Ruth, 2018: p. 289), or the reification described by Harmel et al (2018).…”

Party Institutionalization and Partisan Mobilization

“…Whereas some researchers have seen citizen behaviour and attitudes as integral to the measurement of PI (for instance, Arter and Kestilä-Kekkonen 2014;Yardımcı-Geyikçi 2015), others have proposed measures (including Levitsky 1988;Bolleyer and Ruth 2019;Harmel et al 2019) that are based exclusively on two dimensions that are internal to parties: routinization and value infusion.…”

“…Parties on the low end of the routinization spectrum function as loose networks or alliances. For our research, we follow operationalizations of routinization that focus on party development at the local level, from where parties may most easily mobilize their followers (for instance, Dix 1992 andRuth 2019). In this conception, one way to achieve high levels of routinization is to cultivate the local party branches characteristic of the ideal-type mass party (Katz and Mair 2002;Krouwel 2012), but it could also be achieved in other ways, such as by local parties having good access to public financing, or by piggy-backing on the resources of sympathetic non-party groups.…”

“…Value infusion affects how supporters relate to 'their' party, and also how parties try to connect with their potential voters. The more that a party is associated with a set of identities or ideals, the less it will make electoral appeals that are primarily personalistic (elevating a charismatic leader) or clientelistic (appealing to individual self-interest) (Bolleyer and Ruth 2019).…”

“…Whereas some researchers have seen citizen behaviour and attitudes as integral to the measurement of PI (for instance, Arter and Kestilä-Kekkonen 2014; Yardımcı-Geyikçi 2015), others have proposed measures (including Levitsky 1988; Bolleyer and Ruth 2019; Harmel et al 2019) that are based exclusively on two dimensions that are internal to parties: routinization and value infusion. One relevant advantage of definitions of PI that focus on party-internal aspects is that they conceive of the party-level dimensions of institutionalization as being distinct from the behaviour and attributes of party supporters, thus making it possible to investigate the relationship between the two.…”