The digital ecosystem: The new politics of party organization in parliamentary democracies

Abstract

Since at least the 1980s, scholars have highlighted parties’ reliance on external actors, with Panebianco’s ‘electoral–professional’ party model spotlighting the increasing role of professionals in supporting party activities and campaigns. Over successive decades, our understanding of the role of external actors, and particularly consultants, has grown. As parties have begun to embrace digital tools and technologies, however, it has become apparent that our understanding of party organization does not reflect the array of actors who support party activities. In this article, we draw on extensive interview data from Australia and the United Kingdom to offer a new conceptual framework – that we call the ‘party-centred digital ecosystem’ – to highlight the functions that different types of external actor provide for parties. Introducing the classification of CLANS to describe these different actors, we discuss the significance of this trend, highlighting the potential for increasingly porous organizational boundaries as parties call on different types of external actor for support.

Professional activists? Party activism among political staffers in parliamentary democracies

“…However, such 'hidden professionals" within the civil service (Panebianco, 1988: 234) are excluded because this would make the population of interest very heterogeneous and practically impossible to identify. Fourth, staffers are employed by party organizations, parliamentary party groups or ministerial offices, which sets them apart from external campaign consultants (Farrell et al, 2001) and firms who offer parties PR -and digital services (Dommett et al, 2020). Although Panebianco's seminal work on professionalization did include such external actors, the author explicitly addressed internal staffers as well (Panebianco, 1988: 229-231).…”

“…Communication experts help elected elites to connect with voters effectively in a mediatized political environment. They run electoral campaigns and promote the (social) media presence of elected elites on a daily basis (Askim et al, 2017;Dommett et al, 2020;Sabag Ben-Porat and Lehman-Wilzig, 2020).…”

“…Independent consultants external campaign consultants (Farrell et al, 2001) and firms who offer parties PR -and digital services (Dommett et al, 2020). By including both party (group) staff and ministerial staff, this study is the first to bridge the conceptual divide between two separate research traditions: one focusing on ministerial policy advisors (Shaw and Eichbaum, 2018), another consisting of party politics scholars who have studied party staff (Karlsen and Saglie, 2017;Webb and Fisher, 2003).…”

Data-driven campaigning and democratic disruption: Evidence from six advanced democracies

“…One possible alternative to developing in-house capacities is the potential for parties to use external companies to analyse data and to create models, and we found significant evidence of this. Developing the idea that parties are drawing on a broader ecosystem of service providers (Dommett et al, 2020), some major and minor parties paid external companies to undertake such work. Companies such as CrosbyTextor, Blue State Digital and Harris Media worked with parties in multiple countries (i.e., UK, Australia, Canada, Germany and the US), often 7 By bespoke we mean that the data management system has been built specifically for that party rather than the party uses a system from an 'off-the-shelf' provider such as NationBuilder.…”

Alternative Imaginations: Confronting and Challenging the Persistent Centrism in Social Media-Society Research

“…Novelty Centrism: Preoccupation with the "New" and "Newness" I concur with Menke and Schwarzenegger's (2019) statement that "it is an old, yet, accurate observation that the 'newness' of media is and most probably will continue to be a catalyst for research in media and communication studies" (p. 657). Specific to studies of social and political implications of social media, research publicised "new politics of food" (Phillipov 2017), "new politics in the Middle East" (Katz 2019), "new politics of party organisation" (Dommett et al 2021), "new politics of extremism" (Mann and Ornstein 2016), "new forms of rioting" (Baker 2011), and many other "new politics". I neither oppose nor disagree with using the term "new politics" in these studies.…”