When do parties reform? Causes of programmatic-, organizational- and personnel party reforms in the Belgian mainstream parties

Luypaert, Jasmien; Legein, Thomas

doi:10.1057/s41269-022-00280-5

Acta Polit

2022

DOI: 10.1057/s41269-022-00280-5

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When do parties reform? Causes of programmatic-, organizational- and personnel party reforms in the Belgian mainstream parties

Jasmien Luypaert

Thomas Legein

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Cited by 3 publications

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Opening doors to more intra-party democracy? Local politicians’ perspectives on including voters in candidate selection processes in Flanders (Belgium)

Wauters,

De Smedt,

Goutry

et al. 2024

Acta Polit

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Opening doors to more intra-party democracy? Local politicians’ perspectives on including voters in candidate selection processes in Flanders (Belgium)

Wauters,

De Smedt,

Goutry

et al. 2024

Acta Polit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Between Decline and Distress Innovations: The Transformation of the Belgian French-Speaking Christian-democratic Party (cdH)

Legein,

Rangoni

2024

Political Studies

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Political parties are used to adapt in the face of political challenges, but little is known about how party elites actually perceive crises and ultimately opt for certain types of reforms accordingly. To address this gap, we focus on the complete transformation process of the Belgian French-Speaking Christian Democratic Party (cdH) in 2022 as a case study. Interviews with party elites show how challenges shared by many West-European centre-right parties can create a dependence on the party leader to the point of marginalizing other traditional actors from the definition of a response strategy. We reveal the unprecedented strategy employed by the leader, who positioned an advisor as a surrogate, at the cost of creating major internal dissension. We argue that the likely multiplication of mainstream parties slipping into great distress in the near future could lead to a shift in managing party change, making it more technocratic than political.

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Understanding how bundles of party reforms are shaped: A snowballing sequence in the French-speaking Belgian liberal party (MR)

Legein

2023

Party Politics

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This article introduces the concept of bundle as a new powerful tool in the study of party reforms. The intensive and intricate nature of the engineering political parties undertake to preserve the status quo amidst a challenging environment tends to be obscured by the focus on their so-called ‘conservative nature’. Applied to the process tracing of a large sequence of reforms implemented by the Belgian French-Speaking liberal party (MR) between 2019 and 2022, the bundle concept provides the opportunity to go beyond the narrow vision of party reforms only defined and empirically studied so far through their type, size and success. I triangulate a variety of sources to uncover mechanisms through which a handful of key party actors - as powerful steering agents - perceive and translate environmental factors into specific reforms. The bundle analysis brings notably to light a key sequencing mechanism – a snowball effect – explaining how the sequence actually unfolded and fed on itself, challenging our hitherto accepted understanding of party engineering. This study also offers a transferable conceptual framework with valuable insights for wider use in the field, providing an avenue for theory building through causal analysis.

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When do parties reform? Causes of programmatic-, organizational- and personnel party reforms in the Belgian mainstream parties

Cited by 3 publications

References 50 publications

Opening doors to more intra-party democracy? Local politicians’ perspectives on including voters in candidate selection processes in Flanders (Belgium)

Opening doors to more intra-party democracy? Local politicians’ perspectives on including voters in candidate selection processes in Flanders (Belgium)

Between Decline and Distress Innovations: The Transformation of the Belgian French-Speaking Christian-democratic Party (cdH)

Understanding how bundles of party reforms are shaped: A snowballing sequence in the French-speaking Belgian liberal party (MR)

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