Institutionalisation of political parties : comparative cases 9781785523038, 1785523031

Table of contents :
Party institutionalisation : concepts and indicators / Robert Harmel, Lars Svåsand, and Hilmar Mjelde --
The institutionalisation of new parties in Greece : (how) does it matter for success? / Zoe Lefkofridi and Kristina Weissenbach --
The role of leader in the process of institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties : Czech ANO and the Public Affairs Party / Vít Hlousek and Lubomír Kopecek --
Institutionalisation of new political parties in Argentina : the case of Propuesta Republicana Party / Cristian Altavilla --
De-institutionalising power of decision-making personalisation : the paradigmatic case of the Serbian Communist-Successor Party / Ivan Vukovic and Filip Milacic --
Inverse relationship between party institutionalisation and party system competitiveness : the transformation of postwar Japanese party politics / Takayoshi Uekami and Hidenori Tsutsumi --
The uneven institutionalisation of the Green Party in Poland / Agnieszka Kwiatkowska --
The Swedish Pirate Party : towards institutionalisation? / Lars Svåsand --
Institutionalisation of a charismatic movement party : the case of Croatian Democratic Union / Goran Cular and Dario Nikic Cakar --
The institutionalisation of parties and coalitions in Romania : an unfulfilled process? / Veronica Anghel --
Party institutionalisation in the Czech Republic / Jakub Stauber --
The organisational fabric between citizens and the government : institutionalisation and intermediary organisations / Frederik Heylen.

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Institutionalisation of Political Parties

ECPR Press ECPR Press is an imprint of the European Consortium for Political Research in partnership with Rowman & Littlefield International. It publishes original research from leading political scientists and the best among early career researchers in the discipline. Its scope extends to all fields of political science, international relations and political thought, without restriction in either approach or regional focus. It is also open to interdisciplinary work with a predominant political dimension. ECPR Press Editors Editors Ian O’Flynn is senior lecturer in Political Theory at Newcastle University, UK. Laura Sudulich is senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, UK. She is also affiliated to Cevipol (Centre d’Étude de la vie Politique) at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Associate Editors Andrew Glencross is senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Aston University, UK. Liam Weeks is lecturer in the Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork, Ireland, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Department of Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University, Australia.

Institutionalisation of Political Parties Comparative Cases

Edited by Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom www.rowmaninternational.com In partnership with the European Consortium for Political Research, Harbour House, 6–8 Hythe Quay, Colchester, CO2 8JF, United Kingdom Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2019 by Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN:

HB 978-1-78552-302-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Harmel, Robert, 1950– editor. | Svåsand, Lars, editor. Title: Institutionalisation of political parties : comparative cases / edited by Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand. Other titles: Institutionalization of political parties Description: London, England ; Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield International, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018050159 (print) | LCCN 2019000063 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785523038 (electronic) | ISBN 9781785523021 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Political parties—Case studies. | Political parties—Public opinion—Case studies. | Personality and politics—Case studies. | Organizational sociology—Case studies. Classification: LCC JF2011 (ebook) | LCC JF2011 .I47 2019 (print) | DDC 324.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050159 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. Printed in the United States of America

We dedicate this book to the two professional associations which made our workshops – and hence this book – possible: the European Consortium for Political Research and the Southern Political Science Association. They are to be commended for providing meeting formats (workshop and conference-within-a-conference, respectively) which make for highly constructive scholarly exchanges.

Contents

List of Abbreviations

ix

List of Tables

xiii

List of Figures

xv

List of Appendices

xvii

Preface and Acknowledgements

xix

 1 Introduction1 Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand  2 Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators Robert Harmel, Lars G. Svåsand and Hilmar Mjelde

9

 3 The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece: (How) Does it Matter for Success? Zoe Lefkofridi and Kristina Weissenbach

25

 4 The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation of Entrepreneurial Parties: Czech ANO and the Public Affairs Party Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček

43

 5 Institutionalisation of New Political Parties in Argentina: The Case of Propuesta Republicana Party Cristian Altavilla

69

 6 De-Institutionalising Power of Decision-Making Personalisation: The Paradigmatic Case of the Serbian Communist-Successor Party Ivan Vuković and Filip Milačić

89

vii

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Contents

 7 Inverse Relationship between Party Institutionalisation and Party System Competitiveness: The Transformation of Postwar Japanese Party Politics Takayoshi Uekami and Hidenori Tsutsumi

111

 8 The Uneven Institutionalisation of the Green Party in Poland Agnieszka Kwiatkowska

133

 9 The Swedish Pirate Party: Towards Institutionalisation? Lars G. Svåsand

155

10 Institutionalisation of a Charismatic Movement Party: The Case of Croatian Democratic Union Goran Čular and Dario Nikić Čakar

171

11 The Institutionalisation of Parties and Coalitions in Romania: An Unfulfilled Process? Veronica Anghel

193

12 Party Institutionalisation in the Czech Republic Jakub Stauber 13 The Organisational Fabric between Citizens and the Government: Institutionalisation and Intermediary Organisations Frederik Heylen

215

239

References259 Index287 About the Contributors

295

Abbreviations1

ABL: ACD: ALDE: ARI: ANEL: ANO: AR: ARI: CDR: CMP: CPC: ČSSD: DA: DPJ: DS: EGP: EP: EU: FC: FDSN/PDSR/PSD:

White Lion Agency (Czech Republic) Center – Right Alliance (Romania) Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Affirmation for an Egalitarian Republic (Argentina) Independent Greeks Yes (Czech Republic) Action for the Republic (Argentina) Affirmation for an Egalitarian Republic (Argentina) Democratic Convention of Romania Comparative Manifestos Project Commitment to Change (Argentina) Social Democrats (Czech Republic) Justice and Truth Alliance (Romania) Democratic Party of Japan Democratic Party (Serbiaa) European Green Party European Parliament European Union Civic Force (Romania) Democratic National Salvation Front)/Social Democracy Party of Romania/Social Democratic Party

1 Most of the abbreviations in the list refer to political parties—or alliances between parties—in the countries covered in this volume. The names of the parties are given here in English, while several of the individual chapters also contain the names in the national languages. If a party name does not include the country’s name, the name of the country has been added in parentheses.

ix

x

Abbreviations

FPÖ: Freedom Party of Austria FR: Renewal Front (Argentina) FSN: National Salvation Front (Romania) FpV: Front for Victory (Argentina) FR: Frente Renovador (Renewal Front) FREPASO: Front for a Country in Solidarity (Argentina) GEN: Generation for a National Encounter (Argentina) Greens/EFA: Greens/European Free Alliance GSS: Civic Alliance of Serbia HDSSB: Croatian Democratic Alliance of Slavonia and Baranja HDZ: Croatian Democratic Union HL: Labor Party (Croatia) HNS: Croatian People’s Party HSLS: Croatian Social Liberal Party HSP: Croatian Party of Rights HSS: Croatian Peasant Party HSU: Croatian Party of Pensioners IDS: Istrian Democratic Assembly (Croatia) IG: Interest Groups JUL: Yugoslav United Left KDU-ČSL: Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People’s Party KSČM: Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia LDP: Liberal Democratic Party of Japan MER: Ecologist Movement of Romania MLS: Freemen of the South Movement (Argentina) MODIN: Dignity and Independence Movement Party (Argentina) MOST: The Bridge of Independent Lists (Croatia) MP: Member of Parliament ND: New Democracy (Greece) NPM: New Public Management NPO: Non-Profit Organisations ODS: Civic Democratic Party (Czech Republic) OF: Civic Forum (Czech Republic) OMOV: One-Member-One-Vote PASOK: Pan-hellenic Socialist Movement (Greece) PCR: Romanian Communist Party PD/PDL: Democratic Party/Democratic Liberal Party (Romania) PDAR: Agrarian Democratic Party of Romania PER: Romanian Ecologist Party PID: Party Identification PJ: Justicialist Party (Argentina)



PNL: PNLCD:

Abbreviations xi

National Liberal Party (Romania) National Liberal Party – Democratic Convention (Romania) PNTCD: Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party (Romania) PP: Pirate Party (Sweden) PP: Progressive Party (Argentina) PP: Political Parties PRM: Greater Romania Party PRO: Republican Proposal (Argentina) PSB: Penn Schoen Berland (Czech Republik) PSDR: Romanian Social Democratic Party PSD+PC: Political Alliance Social Democrat + Conservative Party (Romania) PSM: Socialist Labor Party (Romania) PUNR: Romanian National Unity Party PUR/PC: Humanist Party of Romania/Conservative Party RECREAR Party: Recreate for Growth Party (Argentina) RILE: Right-Left Index SANU: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts SDP: Social Democratic Party (Croatia) SKS: Serbian League of Communists SKJ: Yugoslav Communist League SLD: Alliance of Democratic Left SMO: Social Movement Organisation SPO: Serbian Renewal Movement SPR–RSČ: Coalition for Republic – Republican Party for Czechoslovakia SPS: Serbian Party of Socialists SRJ: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia SSRN: Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Serbia STAN: Mayors and Independents (Czech Republic) SYRIZA: Coalition of the Radical Left (Greece) SZ: The Green Party (Czech Republic) TOP 09: Tradition, Responsibility, Prosperity (Czech Republic) TSO: Third-Sector Organisations UCR: Radical Civic Union (Argentina) UDMR: Hungarian Democratic Union (Romania) UFD: Union of Right-Wing Forces (Romania) UNPR: National Union for Romania’s Progress US: Freedom Union (Czech Republic)

xii

USD: USL: ÚSVIT: VV:

Abbreviations

Social Democratic Union (Romania) Social Liberal Union (Romania) Dawn – National Coalition (Czech Republic) Public Affairs Party (Czech Republic)

Tables

3.1 4.1 4.2

Analytical Framework for Selection of New Parties 27 Phases of Party Development 46 Election Results of the VV and ANO (Votes %) (Czech Republic)48 6.1 Power Structure as Defined by SPS Statutes (1990–2000) (Serbia)100 6.2 The Winning Results (in % and Million Votes), 1990 Serbian General Elections 101 6.3 The Winning Results (in % and Million Votes), 1992 Serbian General Elections 102 6.4 SPS’s Electoral Performances after the Regime Change in Serbia 106 7.1 Factional Policy Positions in Japan’s LDP 123 7.2 Binary Logistic Regression Analysis with No Factional Affiliation as the Dependent Variable: Japan’s LDP 125 7.3a Binary Logistic Regression Analysis with Support for the Leader of Japan’s LDP as Dependent Variable 127 7.3b Regression Analysis with Emotional Temperature towards the Leader of Japan’s LDP as Dependent Variable 127 8.1 Reasons for Considering Leaving the Greens 136 9.1 Number of Votes (%) for the Pirate Party in Swedish Elections157 10.1 Party Leader Selection in the HDZ, 1990–2016 (Croatia) 174 10.2 Parliamentary (PA) and Presidential (PR) Election Results of the HDZ, 1990–2016 (Croatia) 175 10.3 Stability of the Party Vote Measured at the Individual 185 Level (%), 1992–2016 (Croatia) xiii

xiv

1 1.1 12.1 12.2 12.3

Tables

Coalition Cabinets and Agreements in Romania (1990–2016) 197 Indicators of Internal Institutionalisation (Czech Republic) 219 Indicators of External Institutionalisation (Czech Republic) 223 Transfer of Electoral Support between Elections (%) (Czech Republic)224 12.4 Objective Durability (Czech Republic) 228

Figures

5.1 PRO’s Number of Seats and Votes at the National Chamber of Deputies Elections (2003–2015) (Argentina) 75 7.1 Relationship between Party Institutionalisation and Party System Competitiveness 113 7.2 Factional Structure of Japan’s LDP (House of Representatives Members Only)117 8.1 Changes in the Political Views of the Greens: Sociocultural Dimension (Poland) 138 8.2 Changes in the Political Views of the Greens: Economic Dimension (Poland) 139 8.3 The Formal Structure of the Green Party (Poland) 142 10.1 Ideological Fit on the Left-Right Scale between Parties and Their Voters, 1990–2011 (Croatia) 181 10.2 Reasons to Vote for the HDZ, 1990–2016 (Croatia) 182 10.3 Party Membership in Croatia, 1990–2016 183 10.4 Party Membership according to Parties, 1995–2013 (in Thousands) (Croatia) 184 10.5 Party Identification in Croatia, 1995–2016 186 10.6 Dynamic Explanation of Different Aspects of Party Institutionalisation190 11.1 Romanian Parties in Government (1990–2016) 194 12.1 Indicators of Internal Institutionalisation (Czech Republic) 221 12.2 Indicators of External Institutionalisation (Czech Republic) 227 12.3 Survivability according to Dimensions of Institutionalisation (1996–2010) (Czech Republic) 228

xv

Appendices

7.1 Policy Dimensions of Japanese House of Representatives Members: 2003, 2005, 2009 and 2012 129 11.1 Romanian Cabinets, Composition and Coalition Agreements209 11.2 Romanian Party Abbreviations and Names 211 12.1 The Probability of Voting for Political Party over ČSSD (Reference Category) 232

xvii

Preface and Acknowledgements

Since the 1960s, hundreds of new political parties have been added to wellestablished democracies, primarily in western European and Anglo-American countries. And since the ‘fall of the wall’, lots of new parties have been developed to participate in democratic processes in new democracies in multiple regions of the world. Many of these new parties have since fallen by the wayside, but many others have survived to this day, and many of those have reached institutionhood.1 These developments have often had marked consequences for the functioning and long-term stability of their political systems. Within this book, we bring together the stories of many attempts towards party institutionalisation, covering a range of party types, contexts and levels of success. The contributors are accomplished students of political parties, most of whom presented earlier versions of their work at one or both of two workshops that were held on this topic in 2016 and 2017.2 As the idea of the book took shape, the group made two important decisions. First, all chapters should adopt the same conceptual framework, so as to assure continuity in the use of terminology from beginning to end. And, second, every chapter should make an important contribution to developing and/or testing of theory, though no single theoretical framework should be imposed on all. The result is a coherent collection of works that make a variety of important contributions to the development of theory on a topic for which theory development is still at a relatively nascent stage. We cannot wrap up this collective enterprise without acknowledging a number of debts. First, we need to thank the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) for accommodating, respectively, our workshop in Pisa and our conference-within-a-conference in New Orleans. We are very grateful to the editorial team of the ECPR Press (especially Alexandra Segerberg and Laura xix

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Preface and Acknowledgements

Sudulich) and the production team at Rowman & Littlefield for many kindnesses and professionalism throughout. And, finally, the two of us thank our other contributors for their remarkable cooperation and patience with the editors. For us, this entire experience has been both educational and enjoyable. Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand NOTES 1. Indeed, some of the new parties have institutionalised and then gone through a process of de-institutionalisation. Though our main focus in this book is on institutionalisation, a few of the cases discussed here have experienced de-institutionalisation on at least some components, as noted where appropriate. And in Harmel et al. (2018), we fully explore the concept of de-institutionalisation and detail the process of de-institutionalisation in Denmark’s Progress Party. 2. With the exception of chapter 4, earlier versions of all chapters from 2 through 13 were prepared for presentation at the Workshop on Institutionalization and De-Institutionalization of Political Organizations, directed by Robert Harmel and Lars Svåsand, at the 44th ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and University of Pisa, 24–28 April 2016, Pisa, Italy. Several of them were presented in revised form at a conference-within-a-conference on the same subject, again organised by Harmel and Svåsand, at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, 12–14 January 2017, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Chapter 1

Introduction Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand

Over recent decades, hundreds of new political parties took their places among the party systems of democracies worldwide. Some barely outlasted their introduction to the public before exiting the stage, leaving behind no performance worth recording. Others came on the scene with a dramatic first election success, which then would not be repeated, establishing the largely unenviable record of a ‘flash’ or ‘fly-by-night’ party. But some – a minority for sure, but a sizable number – behaved in ways and performed well and long enough to give the impression that they could be around for some time to come. Not permanent, perhaps, but justifying the designation of ‘institutions!’ This book is primarily about that status – ‘party institution’ – and the process by which parties may acquire it.1 What takes a new party from infancy to institutionhood within its political system? Why do some reach that status, while so many fail, often well short of the prize? Those are the primary questions that have driven research reported in this volume. While this book certainly does not stand alone in its efforts to address those questions, it has few peers in the range of cases that it covers in some detail. And while the contributions of previous individual efforts have been significant, their cumulative effect has been somewhat muted by ‘talking past one another’ with different definitions of key concepts. In acknowledgement of that fact, the many authors of this book reached agreement early on to adopt a single, multidimensional approach to the central concept of institutionalisation. In this chapter, our purpose is to introduce the rest of the book. We begin by briefly summarising the common conceptual framework. We then turn to discussions of what is considered to be a key obstacle to institutionalisation of many parties (personalisation), what are the variant beginning and ending 1

2

Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand

points of the institutionalisation process (from what, to what) and some of the theoretical implications and findings that may be gleaned from the studies reported here. Collectively, the authors of the rest of the chapters have taken responsibility for placing their works within the relevant extant literatures. For that reason, and to avoid excessive redundancy, we will here avoid voluminous citations to external literature. Instead, our literature review is limited almost exclusively to the works that reside within this book. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK In chapter 2, we present the multidimensional approach to conceptualising institutionalisation which has been adopted for this book and all of its chapters. Based on the three dominant and distinguishable uses to which the concept has been put in the extant literature, this conceptual framework involves three distinct dimensions: internal institutionalisation, external institutionalisation and objective durability. Taken together, we define institutionalisation as ‘the process of acquiring the properties of a durable organisation which is valued in its own right and gaining the perceptions of others that it is such’ (Harmel et al. 2018: 6). Internal institutionalisation refers to a party being valued in its own right apart from its momentary leaders and their initial goals (value infusion) and behaving according to regularised procedures rather than the whims of a leader (routinisation). External institutionalisation is found in the perceptions of external actors – such as the electorate or leaders of other parties – that the party of focus is considered an established party with lasting power. And objective durability covers persistence and a record of ability to survive through shocks (survivability). While this framework is applied throughout the book, individual authors have been creative in developing empirical indicators appropriate to the variety of party types and contexts, as referenced in chapter 2.2 A KEY OBSTACLE TO INSTITUTIONALISATION: PERSONALISATION Among the obstacles to party institutionalisation that have been identified in the extant literature, pre-eminent among them is ‘personalisation’ of decision making. A stumbling block for party institutionalisation generally, personalisation is the tendency to put tremendous decision-making authority in the hands of a single, largely unrestrained party leader. While personalisation can



Introduction 3

be an obstacle to routinising decision making in other parties as well, depersonalisation is a major challenge of institutionalisation for any ‘charismatic party’, which by definition is a creation and a creature of its leader (who may or not be personally charismatic in the classical sense) (see Harmel et al. 2018: 77–78; Panebianco 1988: 145–147). At the other extreme, movementbased parties are virtually immune from deep personalisation, given their preference for ‘flat’ organisation with bottom-up decision making. The party that began its life personalised and then successfully depersonalises can reap significant rewards potentially encompassing all three dimensions of institutionalisation. Internally, depersonalisation involves routinisation of decision making apart from the original, dominant force. But it also means much-enhanced potential for infusing value for the party itself, aside from its original leadership and original leader-centric purpose. Externally, as argued and shown in Anghel’s study of coalition behaviour in Romania (chapter 11), personalisation can stand in the way of other parties’ perceptions of a party as an organisational partner rather than just a personal vehicle for the leader. In that vein, depersonalisation can effectively reshape the party’s external image into something less ‘personal’ and potentially more lasting. INSTITUTIONALISATION FROM WHAT? On the road to institutionalisation, not all new parties start at the same place. Some may well have a head start over others, depending on their type of organisation, their ideological/issue profile and the nature of their ‘roots’. All of these points are illustrated in this book, given the range of cases covered in its various chapters. Organisationally, Argentina’s PRO (Altavilla, chapter 5), the Czech Republic’s VV and ANO (Hloušek and Kopeček, chapter 4; Stauber, chapter 12), Greece’s To Potami (Lefkofridi and Weissenbach, chapter 2) and Romania’s PUNR and PUR (Anghel) are examples that began as ‘charismatic parties’.3 Such parties are alleged to be particularly difficult to institutionalise, given their traits of dominant leadership and personalised decision making (Panebianco 1988; Harmel et al. 2018). Serbia’s SPS (Vuković and Milačić, chapter 6) and Romania’s PSD, PDL, and UNPR (Anghel) also began as highly personalised parties, with similar obstacles. But on the other end of the continuum, Poland’s Green Party (Kwiatkowska, chapter 8), Greece’s ANEL (Lefkofridi and Weissenbach), and Sweden’s Pirate Party (Svåsand, chapter 9) began life as ‘movement’ parties, clearly lacking in strong, charismatic leadership. Though such parties would not face the special challenges posed by extreme personalisation, and particularly would tend to begin with an abundance of value infusion, they could face their own brand of serious

4

Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand

challenges affecting external institutionalisation. Still others – including the likes of Greece’s SYRIZA (Lefkofridi and Weissenbach) and the four ‘more institutionalised’ parties identified in Romania by Anghel – began with more traditional party organisation.4 New parties also vary as to their original ideological/issue profile, as demonstrated across the cases covered here. Some began as ideological parties of either the left or right, such as Greece’s SYRIZA and Norway’s Progress Party (Harmel et al. 2018), respectively. Others began as single-issue or narrow-issue parties, including Sweden’s Pirate Party and Poland’s Greens. Still others could best be described as centrist, non-ideological, and/or ‘pragmatic’ in orientation (e.g. VV and ANO in the Czech Republic); such parties may succeed in building short-term electoral success but may have more difficulty than ideological or issue-centric parties in infusing value. As to their roots, some new parties – including Serbia’s SPS and Romania’s PSD and PDL – are not really all that new, instead serving as ‘successors’ to parties that have been rendered inoperable and in some cases even illegal, often as a consequence of regime change. Even among parties that are more truly ‘new’, there are still some whose roots were planted earlier, as in the cases of parties formed from mergers (e.g. Greece’s SYRIZA) or splits (e.g. Greece’s ANEL) of existing parties. All such parties may begin with organisational and/or human resources, which need to be built ‘from scratch’ for parties without prior roots of any kind. Parties with organisational roots in a social movement (e.g. Sweden’s Pirate Party) or collection of movements (e.g., Poland’s Greens) also begin with ‘a history’, but routinisation of movement character may prove more hindrance than help.5 The parties covered in this book also display variant roots vis-à-vis governmental status. While some began with a neutral stance towards government and a relatively respectful stance towards the parties in government, others began as oppositional parties from the start, effecting a clear antiestablishment orientation (e.g. both VV and ANO in the Czech Republic and To Potami in Greece). But a few of the new parties actually began their lives as dominant parties; such was the case for HDZ in Croatia and LDP in Japan. Dominance need not necessarily mean a clear and quick path to institutionalisation, though, as clearly demonstrated in the latter case. The LDP did not institutionalise as a party, per se, until its dominance was seriously challenged (see Uekami and Tsutsumi, chapter 7). INSTITUTIONALISATION TO WHAT? While some students of institutionalisation have incorporated ‘democratic procedures’ into their treatment of the concept, the reality is that not all



Introduction 5

institutionalised parties have routinised the same types of decision-making processes or power distributions. Even among parties which have arguably ‘instititutionalised’, there is still considerable variety in what has been institutionalised. Parties may institutionalise practices of decision making where all important decisions ‘bubble up’ from participation of members or supporters, but others may institutionalise centralised decision making in the hands of one or a few leaders. The determining factor is not the number involved in making decisions, but whether the decisions are made according to rules/ procedures that have been routinised. A few of the cases covered here – Poland’s Greens and Sweden’s Pirate Party – began with what might be considered ‘extremely democratic’ d­ ecisionmaking procedures and have struggled to routinise effective internal behaviour. Several of our cases have institutionalised strong central leadership, with considerable decision-making authority passed on from one leader to another. In those beginning as charismatic parties, such as Tuđman’s HDZ in Croatia and Babiš’s ANO in the Czech Republic,6 this has often involved what is labelled the ‘routinisation of charisma’. In the case of the HDZ, even the ‘informality’ associated with charismatic decision making has been routinised in what is now a depersonalised institution. Japan’s LDP has also institutionalised strong central leadership, but in this case, after a long period of faction-level dominance. THEORY AND FINDINGS In adopting the three-dimensional framework for institutionalisation, we left open the empirical question of inter-dimensional co-relationship and the theoretical question of inter-dimensional dependency. Does a high (or low) level of institutionalisation in one of its forms also imply a high (or low) level on all three dimensions? Is a high level on one required in order to accomplish a high level on one or both of the other dimensions? In another place (Harmel et al. 2018: 44–45), we speculated on such questions: While the three dimensions or ‘types’ of institutionalisation are conceptually and theoretically distinct, they are nonetheless conceptually related – through their obvious association with the more general concept of ‘­institutionalisation’ – and they are highly likely to be theoretically related as well. And yet those anticipated theoretical relationships are not so robust as to suggest that the conceptual distinctions are unnecessary. An objective record of durability is likely to contribute to the perception that a party is an ‘institution’ to be reckoned with, for instance, though some parties are able to reach external institutionalisation even before establishing a record of objective durability. Routinisation and value infusion may be necessary for some parties to be seen by others as predictable

6

Robert Harmel and Lars G. Svåsand

and trustworthy, though some highly routinised and value-infused parties may still find it very difficult to achieve external institutionalisation. Internal institutionalisation – especially for parties that were formerly personalistic vehicles – may be necessary for persisting and surviving to a record of objective durability, though party reification by itself may not be sufficient to assure reaching that status. And so on!

Some of this book’s chapters have addressed these and similar matters and provide relevant evidence as to the merits of such arguments. First, are the three dimensions of institutionalisation – including especially the internal and external varieties – indeed distinguishable empirically? The evidence from chapters of this book suggests that the answer is a definite ‘yes’. Stauber’s comparative analysis of Czech parties and Svåsand’s and Kwiatkowska’s case studies all conclude that it is indeed possible to accomplish one of internal or external institutionalisation without achieving the other. And Kwiatkowska even finds evidence of separation between routinisation and value infusion, both of which are aspects of internal institutionalisation. If nothing else, this evidence would seem to suggest that within institutionalisation as a process, it is apparent that one component may indeed lag behind others. Are the dimensions causally related such that one or more is/are dependent on the rest? Again, evidence exists within these pages to support an answer in the affirmative, at least as regards the dependency of objective durability on the others. Stauber’s, Anghel’s, and Čular and Nikić Čakar’s (chapter 10) analyses collectively lead to the conclusion that the combination of internal and external institutionalisation maximises the ability to persist. On the other hand, Kwiatkowska’s study of Poland’s Greens leads her to conclude that an extremely high level of internal value infusion may actually impede institutionalisation on other dimensions, while compensating for them nonetheless. Beyond the relationships among the three dimensions, the analyses presented in this book speak collectively to other theoretical issues as well. For instance, among the plausible explanations for varying degrees of institutionalisation are other distinguishing characteristics of the parties themselves. As hinted earlier in the ‘from what’ section, these include their original organisational type, ideological/issue profile and the nature of their ‘roots’. Though the project was not designed to systematically address all of the relevant hypotheses, there is ample evidence throughout the book to least glean preliminary judgements on some of them. One other ‘internal’ factor in institutionalisation, especially for parties that were highly personalised in their early years, is whether the dominant leader purposefully impedes internal institutionalisation – which might be seen as ‘normal’ for such a party – or, alternatively, actually encourages it. Elsewhere (Harmel et al. 2018), we noted that the original leaders of



Introduction 7

Denmark’s and Norway’s Progress Parties saw no virtue in institutionalisation, but timely replacements (one for reason of death and the other by prison sentence) brought second-generation leaders who actively pursued routinisation. In this book, Hloušek and Kopeček present the case of Andrej Babiš, the first-generation leader of Czech Republic’s ANO, who himself oversaw the routinisation of charisma into an organisation modelled after a business firm. (Only the fact that, as of this writing, the party has not yet had a replacement of its effective leader keeps it from being considered fully institutionalised.) Some of the chapters speak directly to the possible impacts of certain ‘environmental factors’ upon institutionalisation or some of its aspects and are at least suggestive of hypotheses that can and should be tested more broadly and systematically elsewhere. For instance, three of the chapters highlight the party system as a source of explanation. With special attention to internal institutionalisation, Uekami and Tsutsumi conclude that increasing inter-party competition brought both decline in the importance of factions and increased focus on the party per se. In his study of Argentina’s PRO, Altavilla argues that stability of the party system is a factor in the institutionalisation of its individual parties. And Svåsand suggests that de-alignment of the Swedish party system may have helped the Pirate Party to survive, in spite of almost no evidence of institutionalisation on the external dimension. Flipping the causal arrow, a couple of our chapters directly address possible consequences of party institutionalisation. Lefkofridi and Weissenbach suggest how different dimensions of institutionalisation might affect a party’s success in gaining parliamentary representation. And Anghel argues that internal institutionalisation affects the ultimate success or failure of coalition agreements.7 CONCLUSION Chapters 3 through 12 clearly demonstrate the applicability of the conceptual framework of chapter 2 to a range of party and system types. Though originally developed for analysing entrepreneurial parties (Harmel et al. 2018), the three-dimensional framework now has proven utility for comparing across virtually all types of political parties. And in chapter 13, Heylen applies the same framework to other types of intermediary organisations as well as parties. One of the lessons of this collective project is that while not all new political parties start at the same place on the path to institutionalisation, and while each party type presents its own challenges, it is possible for parties of any type to ultimately reach a high degree of institutionalisation on at least some of its dimensions. Another lesson is that the process is hardly ever easy, and

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the formula for successful institutionalisation normally includes not only the right combination of internal characteristics and contextual factors, but also the desire to do so in the first place. NOTES 1. Another option, of course, is for a party to institutionalise and then go through a process of de-institutionalisation. Though our main focus in this book is on institutionalisation, a few of the cases discussed here have experienced de-institutionalisation on at least some components, as noted where appropriate. The Socialist Party of Serbia may be considered a special case of de-institutionalisation, since what was further personalised and hence de-institutionalised from the very start of the ‘new’ successor party replaced the institutionalised, but already strongly personalised, character that it inherited from its predecessor party (see Vuković and Milačić, chapter 6). And in Harmel et al. (2018), we fully explore the concept of de-institutionalisation and detail the process of de-institutionalisation in Denmark’s Progress Party. 2. And in chapter 13, Heylen demonstrates that the framework can be fruitfully applied not only to political parties, but also to other types of political organisations. 3. In fact, since the original leaders of these parties did not have any experience in governmental offices, these parties qualify also as ‘entrepreneurial’ parties (Harmel et al. 2018: 5). 4. In chapter  10, Čular and Nikić Čakar consider the case of Croatia’s HDZ, which actually combines characteristics of both charismatic and movement parties. 5. In chapter 13, Heylen discusses some conditions under which social movements or other types of political organisations could transform into institutionalised parties. 6. Though Hloušek and Kopeček (chapter 4) report evidence of routinisation of Babiš’s charisma, the fact that – as of this writing – Babiš remains leader of the party means that the crucial test for internal institutionalisation is yet to happen in this case. 7. In chapter 13, Heylen highlights some of the possible consequences of institutionalisation discussed in the sub-disciplines studying other types of intermediary organisations. In general, these consequences are perceived as potentially more severe as compared to the institutionalisation of parties.

Chapter 2

Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators1 Robert Harmel, Lars G. Svåsand and Hilmar Mjelde

APPROACHES TO INSTITUTIONALISATION IN PREVIOUS LITERATURE A number of approaches to ‘institutionalisation’ have been applied in the past to the study of political parties. We begin here with four ‘classical approaches’ (Huntington 1968; Panebianco 1988; Rose and Mackie 1988; and Janda 1980) that are commonly cited or used by others, then consider a number of more recent treatments and finally offer our own. The definition of ‘institutionalisation’ that is most used throughout political science is that of Samuel Huntington, who sees it as ‘the process by which organisations and procedures acquire value and stability’ (p. 12). From that definition, he argues that institutionalisation may be measured ‘by its adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence’ (p. 12). Huntington’s approach has been used primarily in the study of political change, and especially the modernisation of societies, but it has also been applied to the study of political parties (see Polsby 1968; Wellhofer 1972; Formisano 1974). The central component of this approach is time, that is, the ability of a structure to survive and to achieve stability so that its existence is not totally dependent upon its original members and leaders. Panebianco (1988) further developed the concept, specifically for use in the study of parties. Defining institutionalisation as ‘the way the organisation “solidifies” ’ (p. 49), Panebianco argues for measuring along two scales: ‘(1) that of the organisation’s degree of autonomy vis-a-vis its environment, and (2) that of its degree of systemness, i.e. the degree of interdependence of its different internal sectors’ (p. 55). The latter scale is further defined as ‘the internal structural coherence of the organisation’ (p. 56), maintained by ‘centralised control of organisational resources and exchange processes 9

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with the environment’. More specifically, five indicators of degree of party institutionalisation are suggested and considered: (1) ‘degree of development of the central extra-parliamentary organisation . . .’, (2) degree of homogeneity of organisational structures at the same hierarchical level . . ., (3) how the organisation is financed . . ., (4) relations with the external collateral organisations . . ., [and] (5) degree of correspondence between a party’s statutory norms and its ‘actual power structure’, (pp. 58–59). In effect, then, for Panebianco, institutionalisation includes organisational complexity, autonomy, internal cohesiveness and a centralised authority pattern (on the last, see pp. 56–57). In their treatment of institutionalisation, both Huntington and Panebianco emphasise organisational attributes, and both include within their indicators several attributes which might be thought of as conceptually distinct from, though perhaps causally related to, the authors’ narrower initial definitions of institutionalisation. Janda (1980), for instance, explicitly treats concepts like autonomy as related to, but not part of, institutionalisation.2 He notes that ‘a party can be highly institutionalised and yet lack independence of other groups (Huntington’s ‘autonomy’) – as the Labour Party in Great Britain’ (p. 19). The same argumentation would seem to hold, in the main, for organisational complexity, centralisation of power and internal coherence, all of which Janda treats as separate concepts throughout his own cross-national parties’ project. Janda himself defines an institutionalised party as ‘one that is reified in the public mind so that “the party” exists as a social organisation apart from its momentary leaders, and this organisation demonstrates recurring patterns of behaviour valued by those who identify with it’ (p. 19). He then operationalises institutionalisation with six variables: the year of origin, name changes, organisational discontinuity (i.e. splits and mergers), leadership competition, legislative instability and electoral instability. Thus, Janda’s approach seemingly recognises not just an internal, organisational component of institutionalisation, but what might be considered an ‘external’ component as well. While ‘leadership competition’ clearly indicates internal routinisation of leadership selection, legislative and electoral instability tap a different, external dimension: treatment of the party as an ‘institution’ by the electorate.3 (More later on the relationship of the other indicators to the broader concept!) Richard Rose and Thomas Mackie (1988) take a ‘minimalist’ approach to both conceptualising and measuring institutionalisation of parties. To become institutionalised is, for them, ‘to merit recognition as an established party’. While doing so requires three things, ‘(1) create cross-local organisation to contest elections nationwide; (2) nominate candidates to fight national elections; and (3) continue to nominate candidates at successive elections’, only one indicator is employed in Rose and Mackie’s own analysis:



Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators 11

An institutionalised party must continue from election to election; operationally a party is judged to have become institutionalised if it fights more than three national elections. A group that fails to do this is not an established political party, but an ephemeral party. (p. 536)

The Huntington and Panebianco approaches emphasise internal, organisational aspects of institutionalisation to the exclusion of ‘external’ perceptions of the party as institution; Rose and Mackie emphasise the latter to the exclusion of the former; Janda includes some of both. More recent approaches to party institutionalisation continue to incorporate some of the ‘classical’ elements while introducing some new ones. Veugelers (1995: 4), as referenced in Pedahzur and Brichta (2002: 35), defines institutionalisation as a combination of systemic, temporal, spatial criteria of party success: (a) a party has systemic importance if it has governing or blackmail potential; (b) a party has temporal importance if it persists without interruption – a stable party fields candidates in successive national elections; (c) a party has spatial importance if it pervades the polity – a national party fields candidates across the country.

Thus, Veugelers adds national scope and perceived importance by other parties (as presumably would be required for governing or blackmail potential) to the more traditional element of persistence over time.4 Levitsky (1998) emphasises two dimensions: ‘value infusion’ and ‘behavioural routinisation’, arguing that the two should be treated separately rather than combined. For Levitsky, value infusion occurs when a party, in Janda’s terms, ‘is reified in the public mind’ or, in Huntington’s terms, is ‘valued for itself’ rather than its original purposes or goals. As an example, he offers evidence of the Peronist leaders and members remaining committed ‘through periods of severe diversity and despite important changes in the organisation’s goals and strategies’ (p. 82), including Peron’s death. As for routinisation, he argues that prior literature recognising only routinisation into formal rules had been mistaken; routinisation of informal patterns of behaviour should count as well. Defining the process of institutionalisation of a new party as ‘the transformation of the party from a mere instrument of founders for the pursuit of a set of goals in its formative phase into “an end in itself” for the majority of supporters later on’, and following on Levitsky (1998) and Randall and Svåsand (2002), Bolleyer (2013: 55–56) also adopts the dual internal party life dimensions of value infusion and routinisation. Pedahzur and Brichta (2002) also employ a two-pronged approach, starting with Rose and Mackie’s operationalisation as persistence, but broadening it beyond just the more-than-three-elections rule: ‘Even though [their] definition

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does not allow us to judge whether one party is more institutionalised than the other, we may assume that the more elections the party contests the more institutionalised it becomes’. They go on to add the elements of electoral and legislative stability, as had been included in Janda’s approach. Finally, Arter and Kestilä-Kekkonen (2014) adopt a multidimensional approach with the dimensions defined by different venues: ‘an institutionalised party will have a stable electoral base – that is, a body of “core supporters” (societal rootedness); the electoral party will be served by an organisational structure having a core membership, an effective candidate supply and a de facto dispersal of roles and authority (autonomy and systemness); and its body of elected representatives will function as a coherent legislative actor (cohesion) and, if and when necessary, sustain the party in government’ (p. 937). They also include ‘adaptability’. Thus, their approach incorporates stable support base, persistent electoral participation, internal routinisation, legislative cohesion and adaptability. For them, institutionalisation does not necessarily occur simultaneously in the electoral, organisational and legislative arenas. It is obvious from this inventory of others’ approaches that institutionalisation means many different things to different folks. While our own approach – adopted from a recently published book by Harmel, Svåsand and Mjelde (2018) – incorporates many of the elements just discussed, it stops far short of including all of them. While it joins other approaches in being multidimensional, the dimensions are not exactly the same as for any of them. OUR APPROACH Our own conceptual framework is based in the contention that the building of theory on institutionalisation of political parties5 (and political organisations more generally) can be substantially enhanced by recognising that ‘institutionalisation’ is a multidimensional concept whose individual components are theoretically related but not conceptually redundant. Recognising that institutionalisation has more than one dimension should not only help theorybuilding by clarifying the meaning(s) of the concept itself but also may serve to expand the search for explanatory variables, since the different dimensions may indeed be best explained by different types or levels of factors.6 Our approach is rooted in consideration of the major roles that the concept of ‘institutionalisation’ has played in the development of theory concerning political parties. In our understanding of the literature, there are three such roles: (1) as internally institutionalised organisation, valued in its own right and with the organisation and its personnel behaving accordingly;



Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators 13

(2) as perceptions by other actors – external to the party itself – that the party is an ‘institution’ to be counted upon, taken into account, and/or reckoned with for the foreseeable future; and (3) as an objectively durable organisation, which has long persisted in spite of difficulties and ‘shocks’. Our conceptual approach, then, recognises three separate dimensions (or ‘types’) of party institutionalisation, distinguished by ‘role’ more so than venue: (1) as internal behaviour indicative of reification of the party aside from its founding leaders and their initial goals (‘internal’ or ‘organisational’ institutionalisation), as demonstrated in routinised organisational behaviour and non-personalisation of internal party loyalty (i.e. value infusion); (2) as the perception, and consequent behaviour, by other actors that the party has ‘lasting power’ (‘external’ or ‘perceptual’ institutionalisation);7 and (3) as an objectively established survival record, that is, objective durability (‘objective’ institutionalisation). And our approach to operationalisation must also reflect all three dimensions: (1) evidence of ability to adjust to changing goals and purposes for the party as well as routinisation of decision making processes, including but not limited to leadership selection, in ways which suggest that the party can have a ‘life of its own’ beyond the political lives and goals of its current leader(s); (2) evidence that the party has become part of the ‘routines’ of other relevant actors in ways which suggest that they consider it to be an ‘established party’, to borrow Rose and Mackie’s terminology; and (3) a record of durability that includes both persistence and ability to survive shocks. While all three dimensions are necessary for achieving what we label ‘­institutionhood’ – the state of being fully institutionalised – each of the separate dimensions also has value in its own right for measuring and theorising about institutionalisation, as will be argued more fully later. Having established what is included in our conceptualisation of institutionalisation, we should make clear what it does not include. While the approaches of Huntington, Panebianco and Arter and Kestilä-Kekkonen all include at least some of external autonomy, organisational complexity, centralisation of power and internal cohesion, we join with Janda in treating those concepts as separate from institutionalisation. Institutionalised parties

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can come in many forms, including externally autonomous or dependent,8 organisationally complex or simple, centralised or decentralised and cohesive or factionalised.9 And while Veugelers requires national scope, we see no reason for assuming the non-institutionalisability of regional or local parties. Institutionalisation and each of these other concepts may be related theoretically, but they are – and should be kept – conceptually distinct. Though we agree with Janda’s exclusions in his conceptual approach to institutionalisation, we disagree with two of his specific indicators. Among his six indicators, he includes ‘name changes’ and ‘organisational discontinuity’. Janda sees name changes as an indicator of lack of institutionalisation of the party, since they may be ‘assumed to result in at least momentary confusion about the party’s identity within the citizenry at large’. But some name changes could in fact increase the institutionalisation of the party, indicating its maturity rather than its instability (as we feel is the case of the Norwegian Progress Party, formerly known as Anders Lange’s Party for a Drastic Reduction in Taxes, Rates and Public Intervention). This is even more clearly the case when parties that have existed for a long time nevertheless see fit to change their name, as did the Agrarian parties in Sweden (1957) and in Norway (1959). These parties’ changes to the ‘Centre Party’ label are best seen as organisational adaptation to changing environments, that is, with declining numbers in the agricultural sector (Christensen 1994). Likewise, organisational discontinuities in the forms of splits or mergers may (as Janda argues) alter the ‘interaction patterns’ by narrowing/broadening the party’s focus, or even bring about the end of the party. If the party can endure such discontinuities, however, the end result may in fact be a stronger party internally which is perceived as a more viable institution externally, and which has given a clear indication of its durability.10 The fact that Janda’s own factor analysis showed name changes and organisational discontinuities to have low inter-correlations with his other four indicators is not surprising in this light. Hence, we think it more reasonable to treat name changes and organisational discontinuities as factors in institutionalisation than as indicators of its opposite. We turn now to a detailed examination of each of the three dimensions that are included in institutionalisation. INTERNAL INSTITUTIONALISATION Internal institutionalisation refers to behaviour and attitudes within the organisation that are indicative of reification – ‘in the party’s own mind’ – of the party aside from the founder or any particular leaders or purposes of the moment. As such, internal institutionalisation itself is two-dimensional,



Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators 15

encompassing both (1) the routinisation (e.g. depersonalisation) of decisionmaking procedures and (2) behaviour of internal party actors – including members and public office-holders – indicative of attaching value to the party rather than just to temporary leaders or ambitions of the moment (i.e. ‘internal value infusion’). Routinisation ‘Routinisation’ of parties’ internal behaviour has been considered a key organisational element for distinguishing ‘charismatic’ parties, reliant on one person, from parties with more ‘normal’ organisational structures reliant on rules and procedures rather than a single, omniscient and omnipotent personality. Panebianco, for instance, distinguishes between the party organisation ‘founded exclusively on personal ties’ (the ‘charismatic’ party) from those based on ‘rules’, internal ‘career patterns’ and ‘a clear division of labour’ (pp. 143–144). More generally speaking, routinisation is the dimension of institutionalisation most clearly and directly linked to Huntington’s definition as ‘stable, valued, recurring patterns of behaviour’ and Janda’s criterion that ‘this organisation demonstrates recurring patterns of behaviour valued by those who identify with it’ (both in Janda 1980: 19). Levitsky (1998) also treats routinisation as a key component of institutionalisation, arguing explicitly for incorporating ‘informally routinized behaviour patterns’ as well as routinisation in conformity with formal rules. Seen in this way, routinisation can be demonstrated by two kinds of evidence: (1) written rules that are perceived as legitimate by party leaders as well as the membership; there is expectation that they will be followed, and (2) actual behaviour suggestive of regularised behaviour, whether rules are written or not; this amounts to depersonalisation of the party. Though written rules would not be sufficient evidence of routinisation in the absence of the actual behaviour for older parties, of course, the first criterion (including the expectation of compliance) is all that could reasonably be expected for some parties too new to have demonstrated ‘recurring patterns of behaviour’ in practice.11 On the other hand, some more mature parties may have developed recurring patterns of behaviour and expectations even in the absence of a written and formally adopted set of rules (e.g. the Peronists, as analysed by Levitsky 1998). The British Conservative Party, for instance, did not have any formal rules for leadership selection prior to 1965 (Punnett 1992). When there was a leadership change, it was referred to as ‘the emergence of the party leader’.12 But it would not be correct to infer from a missing formal rule on leadership

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election that the British Conservative Party was not following routinised behaviour patterns before 1965. So while it is possible – and our conceptualisation allows – for routinisation to take place in the absence of formalisation of rules, it is certainly easier to detect when rules are indeed both formalised and followed. Even when a party does have what constitute formalised party statutes covering such things as leadership selection, candidate nomination and party finances, it is still possible of course for those rules to be altered over time. The key feature of change in such cases, though, is whether the party change itself is made following procedures outlined in the statutes and known to the participants in the party. In other words, in an institutionalised party, change does not occur at the whim of a party leader. With this in mind, an important indicator of routinisation in a party with formalised rules is that when those rules are changed, the changes are made following steps specified in the party’s statutes. For parties whose routinisation of behaviour patterns is of the less formal variety, a similar criterion should apply. That is, the routinised patterns should not be changed willy-nilly, by means that themselves are not included in the routinised, albeit informal, patterns of behaviour. And they should certainly not be made at the whim of a party leader. Whether routinisation is by formal or informal means, it is a truism that there is no party with a perfect match between the rules/patterns and how the party operates in practice. But in the routinised party, those rules/patterns are more, rather than less, accepted and followed in practice. And when a practice deviates from the norms, there should nevertheless be a sense of legitimacy, that is, general acceptance that the deviating practices serve to supplement, but not replace, the rules/patterns which the party has adopted (Helmke and Levitsky 2004). In the chapters of this book, a number of indicators are employed to tap the routinisation/depersonalisation of parties’ internal behaviour, in addition to direct evidence of rule presence and enforcement. For instance, as a semidirect indicator of depersonalisation (or in the case of parties that were never personalised, lack of personalisation) Stauber (chapter 12) uses the absolute number of changes of party leader as indication that rules for leader replacement exist and have been employed as more than a rubber stamp for continuation of the original founder/leader. As another indicator of independence from the leader, Lefkofridi and Weissenbach (chapter 3) look for evidence of ‘what happens when the actions of the leadership are seriously questioned’. ‘Crucially, when this occurs’, they ask, ‘who navigates?’ And Vuković and Milačić (chapter 6) suggest ‘frequency and scope of changes in the personnel composition of party leadership and central bodies’ below the level of the party head as an indirect indicator of (de)personalisation, arguing that ‘party heads will seek to ensure obedience to their individual authority through constant and significant modifications of these organs’ makeup’.



Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators 17

Internal Value Infusion As indicated earlier, the concept of ‘value infusion’ has elsewhere been equated with a party becoming ‘valued for itself’ rather than just its momentary leaders, and becoming ‘an end in itself’ beyond its original goals and purposes (Levitsky 1998; Bolleyer 2013). As put by Selznick (1957: 17), value infusion occurs when an organisation becomes ‘infused with value beyond the technical requirement of the task at hand, or when actors’ goals shift from the pursuit of particular objectives through the organisation to the goal of perpetuating the organisation per se. (Selznick 1957: 17, cited in Levitsky 1998: 79)

When sometimes treated as akin to ‘reification in the public mind’, the concept could take on an ‘external’ aspect, with the ‘valuing’ being done by the electorate (and indeed resulting in a stable party electorate over the long haul).13 For our purposes here, though, ‘internal value infusion’ refers explicitly to reification in the ‘party’s own mind’, that is, in the collective and individual minds of its members, elected officials and other party personnel. To the extent that internal party actors demonstrate allegiance to the party itself, separately from any particular leader(s) or special ambitions of the moment, this indicates that the party is being valued for itself, in its own right. Development of a stable membership base and minimal defections of party representatives could be taken as specific indicators of internal value infusion. Rampant resignations and/or party switching by elected representatives or party members – particularly after the departure of a particular leader – would presumably indicate the opposite.14 Though we consider routinisation and value infusion to be different and separable dimensions of the more general concept of ‘internal institutionalisation’ (as do Levitsky 1998 and Bolleyer 2013), we nonetheless recognise that in some instances successful routinisation may in fact serve as indicator of internal value infusion. In those cases where development of ‘normal’, routinised party organisation was not an objective of the party’s founders – who in fact may have seen normal organisation and even institutionalisation more generally as faults to be avoided—, successful routinisation could well be taken as evidence of the party having moved on from those founders and their original purposes and ambitions for the party. EXTERNAL INSTITUTIONALISATION ‘External institutionalisation’ consists of perceptions by others that the party is indeed an ‘institution’ and is to be thought of and treated as such. These external perceptions have at least two major components: the party’s

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perceived ‘lasting power’ and its perceived ‘relevance’. For the relevant external actor (whether a potential voter or another party’s leader), a reasonable question would be ‘Is this a party whose presence should cause me to rethink my own behaviour?’ or, in other words, ‘Is it relevant to me, and is it likely to be around long enough that I should care?’ If the answers are ‘yes’, then, for that external actor, the party is perceived to be an institution (and may affect that actor’s behaviour accordingly), regardless of the new party’s levels of persistence or internal routinisation. The most relevant actors asking such a question, from the standpoint of the new party, would normally be (1) the electorate and (2) the other parties.15 Indicators of these actors’ perceptions of the new party may come in two forms: (1) direct evidence of the attitudes of voters (or leaders of the other parties) and (2) evidence of their altered behaviour as a consequence of the new party’s presence in the system. On the part of the electorate, external institutionalisation could be seen in the development of a stable core electorate for the new party (also part of Arter and KestiläKekkonen’s [2014] ‘societal rootedness’),16 especially when it consists of voters whose reasons for supporting the party indicate the likelihood of continued support.17 In this book (chapter 3), Lefkofridi and Weissenbach extend the argument to ‘potential electorate’ in suggesting ‘whether popularity trends of leaders and parties are developing in parallel to each other’ as a related indicator.18 Leaders of other parties might demonstrate their perceptions of the new party directly in statements to the media, or indirectly by altering their own programmes or in other ways indicating enhanced blackmail or coalition potential of the new party (see also Veugelers’s [1995] ‘systemic performance’).19 In chapter 11 of this book, Anghel suggests that in some cases, a party’s treatment in written coalition agreements may be a sound indicator of its perceived relevance by other parties. Because it is unreasonable to expect that all other parties will perceive the lasting power and/or relevance of the new party in the same way, the perceptions must be weighed by the number and importance of the parties holding them. (At a minimum, only the perceptions of parties which themselves hold at least minimal relevance in the system should be considered.) OBJECTIVE DURABILITY Whereas routinisation refers to organisational matters, value infusion taps an internal attitudinal dimension, and external institutionalisation refers to perceptions by outside actors, ‘objective durability’ may be thought of as an objective estimate of the probability of continued survival of a party, based on



Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators 19

its past history of endurance. Existing literature has already established that simply the current age, or what we will call ‘persistence’, of a party is itself closely related to the likelihood of surviving longer. Janda and Gillies (1980), for instance, studied the survival patterns of 208 parties, and concluded: Obviously, there is some analogy to infant mortality in the case of parties as well as humans. Once parties are allowed to mature, their chances of survival increase dramatically . . . For parties between 5 and 15 years of age, more than sixty percent died before 1979. If a party survives until age 15, its chances of continuing nearly double. After parties reach 25, the probability of continuing jumps to 80 percent . . . It is clear that party longevity, unlike human longevity, is associated with increased likelihood of survival. (pp. 166–167)20

Clearly, though, persistence alone is not sufficient as a predictor of further survival (particularly in the lower age range), nor as a complete measure of objective durability. The concept of ‘durability’ includes not just persistence but also a record of being able to survive ‘shocks’21 (i.e. important changes within the party or in its environment). We have adapted our own two-pronged approach from Gurr’s study of the durability of political systems (1974). For Gurr (and for us), persistence ‘is defined simply as longevity’, while adaptability refers ‘to the extent of . . . demonstrated capacity for undergoing incremental change’ (p. 1484). Both aspects would be required for durability. While we agree with Gurr’s general approach, we differ by replacing adaptability with survivability as the second prong. The word ‘adaptability’ implies that the party (or, in Gurr’s case, polity) plays an active role in its own survival; that is, the party changes something about itself in order to better fit its changed circumstances and/or environment. Webster’s Dictionary,22 for instance, says adaptability means to ‘adjust oneself to new or changed circumstances’, and Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines adaptable as ‘able to change or be changed in order to fit or work better in some situation or for some purpose’. We prefer the more general concept of ‘survivability’, implying ability to withstand shocks, whether due to intentional adaptation or some other factor(s). BusinessDictionary.com defines survivability as ‘capability of a system or organisation to withstand a disaster or hostile environment, without significant impairment of its normal operations’, and that is how we use the term here.23 As an empirical matter, then, evidence of durability is sought on two dimensions: (1) persistence of a party over a period of time and (2) survivability as shown in ability to withstand (i.e. ‘survive’) shocks. A party which is relatively young, but which has already survived many shocks, has thereby provided evidence of durability (i.e. in the aspect of survivability) in spite of its relative youth (i.e. lack of persistence, so far). An old party

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which has never experienced a shock, on the other hand, has never had the opportunity to demonstrate that it can successfully ‘survive’. Hence, a party with both persistence and a record of survivability would attain the highest level of durability. A party with one but not both of the criteria would attain a lower level, though higher than a party with neither age nor a record of survivability. While the measurement of persistence (i.e. simply the age of the party) is straightforward and poses no problem for our analysis of change in the parties,24 survivability requires historical analysis of shocks experienced by the parties during their lifetimes. Such shocks might include leadership changes, name changes, ‘organisational discontinuities’ (i.e. splits, resignations, etc.), and ‘environmental changes’ such as adjustments in the other parties’ programmes to neutralise the target party’s message. To the extent that even a new party has had such experiences and survived them, it will have demonstrated significant objective durability.25 THE ARGUMENT FOR A MULTIDIMENSIONAL APPROACH If all parties at a particular level on one dimension of institutionalisation were at similar levels on the others, then this effort at separating the dimensions, conceptually, would be pointless, empirically. But such is not the case. In Norway alone, the Norwegian Communist Party had durability, value infusion and routinisation, but after the 1970s, few voters and no other parties paid much attention to it (i.e. it lacked external institutionalisation on the dimension of ‘relevance’); the Pensioners’ Party has had durability but no routinisation (disputes over who is actually the party’s leader are common) or external institutionalisation. Elsewhere, some of the new environmental parties lack routinisation and a record of durability (being very new), but circumstances could still warrant high expectations that they will last and gain relevance, thus already affecting the behaviour of others. And according to Panebianco’s study of charismatic parties, some parties of that type have established records of durability and external perceptions of relevance, but little or no routinisation or value infusion. These examples demonstrate why it is necessary, for a thorough treatment of party institutionalisation, to consider all three dimensions: durability plus internal and external institutionalisation. It would be incorrect to assume that evidence of a high (or low) level of institutionalisation on one dimension means the same level of institutionalisation across the board, with consequences for both theory building and predictive ability.26



Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators 21

NOTES 1. Most of this chapter appeared earlier as much of chapter 3 in Harmel et al. (2018). This version does include references to novel indicators used in the chapters in this volume. 2. Other authors who do include at least some version of autonomy in their conceptualisation of institutionalisation include Randall and Svåsand (2002) and Basedau and Stroh (2008). 3. While recognising both of what we have called the internal and external components of institutionalisation, however, Janda proceeds to otherwise treat the two dimensions as though they were one. Beyond the statement of the definition, there is no further mention of the two aspects of the concept, though the set of indicators does include measures of both. 4. Lupu (2009) also includes nationalisation as an element of institutionalisation: ‘Parties that are more institutionalized should have coherent organizations that are able to penetrate politics broadly’ (4). To Lupu, nationalisation is a proxy for organisational institutionalisation (2). 5. Note that this chapter and this book are about party institutionalisation, not the institutionalisation of party systems. While these two concepts may overlap and may certainly be theoretically linked, they are not the same thing. Thus, in our references to extant literature, we will be focusing upon those pieces which relate directly to party institutionalisation and will effectively exclude references to the equally interesting and important literature on institutionalisation of party systems. 6. For a thorough treatment of the concept of ‘de-institutionalisation’, see Harmel et al. (2018: chapter 8). 7. This is essentially the same concept as what Randall and Svåsand (2002) call ‘reification’. 8. Pedahzur and Brichta (2002: 33, 35) have also gone on record as preferring to treat autonomy as a separate concept rather than as a component of institutionalisation. 9. That there are attributes of the internal workings of the party which do indicate internal institutionalisation cannot be denied, however. Some minimal levels of organisational complexity and coherence must be present in order to establish ‘routine patterns of behaviour’, the essential ingredient for institutions (internally speaking, of course). 10. And in the case of splits, the type of split that occurred is likely to be more important than the fact that a split did occur. For instance, if the splitting group is a relatively small component of the parent party and/or if it is on the party’s ideological extreme, any negative impact may be negligible. 11. It is important to recognise also that not all departures from formal rules are of the same type, and not all will have the same impact on institutionalisation. There are times, for instance, when parties deviate from the rules in order to avoid a worse outcome, such as a split or a threat to the party’s existence. In 1989, for instance, the Norwegian Labour Party changed its statutes to allow for electing two deputy leaders rather than just one. The change was made at the national convention, in spite

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of a similar proposal which had been rejected at a meeting of the party’s national council one year earlier. The change also violated the party’s statutes that such changes must be proposed weeks ahead of the convention. The motivation for the change was to avoid a serious division in the party, which could indeed triggered ­de-institutionalisation (see Skjeie 1999: 61). 12. Punnett (1992) cites characterisations of the selection ‘method’ as ‘a procedure of a confidential and mysterious character’, ‘a magic circle of people close to the Prime Minister’, and ‘the informal alchemy of a charmed circle of elders’ (1992: 32–33). 13. As such, ‘external value infusion’ is reflected in our treatment of ‘external institutionalisation’ below. 14. In chapter 3 of this book, Lefkofridi and Weissenbach employ presence and content of a party manifesto as an indirect indicator of internal value infusion. They argue that ‘valuing a party in its own right requires that its members can subscribe to some common policy goals which may be different than the founders’ initial goals. In the absence of clear policy objectives (in the form of a manifesto) party organisations are essentially parties of persons, not of principles’. 15. In this book, Lefkofridi and Weissenbach (chapter 3) suggest another ‘target audience’ for party relevance in the person of ‘civil society organisations’. 16. Note that the emphasis here is upon electoral stability rather than electoral strength. A party with a small but stable support base is just as institutionalised as one with a stable and large support base. An example is the Norwegian Communist Party. This party, formed in 1921, continues to exist. It holds regular meetings according to its statutes, elects party leaders and nominates candidates for elections, but it has failed to win a single seat in parliament since 1957 (http://nkp.no). Its failure to win seats since 1957 does not mean that it is no longer institutionalised. As a reverse example, the Danish Progress Party became the second largest party in its debut election in Denmark in 1973, just a few months after it had been formally established. The electoral success did not, at that time, match any criterion for party institutionalisation. 17. In chapter 11, Anghel suggests that for some parties a ‘considerably high number of alternations of party leaders (followed by no immediate remarkable losses or gains in electoral support) is another indicator of the parties’ having gained value in their own right’. 18. Similarly, Stauber (chapter 12) uses percentage of survey respondents who identify strongly with a particular party as an indicator of external institutionalisation. 19. The emphasis on a stable core electorate disqualifies ‘flash’ parties from being considered institutionalised on this dimension. 20. Bolleyer (2014: 2) found that 65 of 140 parties formed since 1968 had ceased to persist by the end of 2011. According to Lowery et al. of a total of 161 different parties competing in Dutch elections between 1946 and 2006, 117 (72.67 per cent) competed in only one election (Lowery et al. 2013: 388). 21. We should note we are using the word ‘shock’ somewhat more liberally here than Harmel and Janda do in their ‘Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party Change’ (1994), where a shock is an external stimulus impacting directly upon the party’s primary goal. Here we are including both internal and external shocks, and



Party Institutionalisation: Concepts and Indicators 23

external variety need not impact upon the ‘primary’ goal of the party (though ‘issues’ were the Progress Party’s primary goals throughout the period of our study, with ‘votes’ being secondary goals, and all of the external stimuli mentioned here would have impacted upon one or the other of those goals). 22. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th edition, Cleveland, OH: Wiley Publishing, 2010. 23. ‘Resilience’ (Arter 2016) is another option that was considered. Unlike adaptability, resilience does not imply that a party has changed in order to survive. To the contrary, resilience would assume that the party after the shock was essentially the same as before the shock. Merriam-Webster’s (www.merriam-webster.com), for instance, defines ‘resilience’ as ‘the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress’, and The Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com) defines it as ‘the property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position’. Because parties may or may not change in response to shocks, the change-neutral concept of ‘survivability’ is to be preferred over either adaptability or resilience. 24. While we measure persistence simply as number of years of existence as a party, others would use the number of elections in which the party has participated. Rose and Mackie (1968), for instance, operationalise an institutionalised party as one that has participated in more than three consecutive national elections. Pedahzur and Brichta (2002) use number of elections as a continuous indicator of degree of institutionalisation. Arter and Kestilä-Kekkonen (2014) use a different elections-based indicator: a regular supply of candidates. Our approach explicitly allows for parties which only nominally participate in elections, for example, many institutionalised minor parties in the United States. 25. It might be argued that persistence and especially survivability also indirectly indicate that a party ‘is reified in the public mind’ (Janda 1980) and is ‘valued for itself’ (Huntington 1968); that is, they are also indirect indicators of ‘value infusion’ (Levitsky 1998). 26. Levitsky (1998: 78, 82) clearly agrees. In arguing for treating separately his two dimensions of value infusion and behavioural routinisation, he suggests, ‘failure to make these conceptual distinctions may pose serious problems for causal analysis’.

Chapter 3

The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece: (How) Does it Matter for Success?1 Zoe Lefkofridi and Kristina Weissenbach

INTRODUCTION Recent years have been busy years for representative democracy in the European Union (EU): in 2015, 2016 and 2017, thirty-three national elections (presidential and parliamentary elections) were held in as many as twenty-three EU member states. During these elections, thirty-one new political parties (or, up to this time, minor and insignificant parties) successfully entered national parliaments (Weissenbach 2018), such as To Potami, Anexartiti Ellines (ANEL) or the left-wing Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás (SYRIZA) in Greece. These parties differ regarding their genetic model (Panebianco 1988); some are entirely new (naturally formed), while others were splits or mergers of previously established parties. They also differ in their levels of institutionalisation at the moment they gained parliamentary representation. The variation in these new parties’ electoral fates raises the question: to what extent does a party’s institutionalisation matter for its success or decline? Moreover, if we understand success as a party’s ability to secure parliamentary representation in the follow-up election and institutionalisation as a multidimensional phenomenon, do all dimensions matter equally for party success/decline, or do some matter more than others? While there is a rich debate about the conceptualisation and measurement of party institutionalisation (Bukow and Weissenbach 2019a,b), much less attention has been paid to institutionalisation as an independent variable and its potential effects on party success or decline. In pursuit of these questions, this chapter begins by briefly reviewing research in the field and discussing the challenges that surround the concepts party newness and party institutionalisation. Based on an understanding of party institutionalisation as a process, we discuss how ‘internal’, ‘external’ and ‘objective’ dimensions (Harmel et al.: chapter 2) are likely to impact 25

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26

party success, understood here as parliamentary representation. We then explore our arguments through an empirical examination of the Greek case. Despite the fact that the case study method – almost by definition – offers a weak basis for causal generalisation, it allows the investigator to gain intensive knowledge of a case and its history (Ragin 2000: 90). Also, by restricting ourselves to the parties of one country, we keep the electoral system, a key factor affecting party institutionalisation (Harmel et al. 2018: 45), constant. Greece is ideal due to its within case variation: the spectrum of new parties in Greece embraces merger, splits and newly born parties; their electoral success varies, and they have been formed in different ways, either by individual entrepreneurs or by party formations promoted by existing societal organisations or political movements (see Harmel and Svåsand 1993; Bolleyer 2013; Bolleyer and Bytzek 2016; Arter 2016). Having painted the empirical picture of several dimensions of institutionalisation in the cases of three Greek new parties, we conclude by assessing the extent to which our empirical evidence (dis-)confirms our expectations and provide tentative answers to the question of why some newcomer parties thrive, while others decline. PARTY NEWNESS AND PARTY INSTITUTIONALISATION In most circumstances, parties are free to organise in ways that help them attain their goals (Strøm 1990), which vary across cases and within cases over time. There is no guarantee for a particular ‘lifetime’ of a party: in democratic political systems parties emerge but also disappear (Pedersen 1982, 1991) – sometimes all of a sudden. As changing circumstances push parties to change, renew or reinvent themselves, a key to party survival is precisely their ability to adapt to ever-changing social, political and electoral realities (Mair 1997; Barnea and Rahat 2011). To adapt to these realities, often parties undergo change, including institutional reforms; yet, parties are conservative organisations that resist change, and their level of institutionalisation matters for their adaptation in that it impedes change. As a result, not only the extent (levels) but also the nature (aspects) of change, novelty and ‘newness’ may vary (Barnea and Rahat 2011) across parties with different degrees of institutionalisation. In this chapter, we are particularly interested in the institutionalisation of new parties. Next we briefly review existing research on newness and institutionalisation. Party Newness At the core of party institutional analysis lies the conceptualisation of party newness (what constitutes new?). The way we conceive newness matters for how parties are empirically analysed, and in particular how their originality is



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assessed. According to Janda (1980) a new party label and party representatives are considered sufficient for a new party. The ‘set of persons comprising the party organization’ (Janda 1980: 20) is the crucial factor for a party to be classified as old or new. In this view, for instance, splits may constitute new parties if there are major changes in party activists between t and t + 1 (see also Mainwaring and Scully 1995). However, other scholars are more restrictive and see mergers and splits not as new parties but as continuations of old parties (Bartolini and Mair 1990). This is also what research of party mergers and splits in new democracies attests (Bakke and Sitter 2005). For others, mergers are considered a sequel only to the large party that participates in the merger (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007).2 Based on an organic understanding of democracies and of party systems as dynamic, for studying institutionalisation, we consider parties that are newly born but also those originating from splits or mergers of established party organisations (Harmel 1985; Harmel and Robertson 1985; Mair 1999). This is because parties’ different origins may matter for different aspects of institutionalisation (Bolleyer 2013: 88). With regard to their way of formation new parties may rely on ties to already organised societal groups or movements (‘rooted newcomers’) or parties, that are new formations around a strong party leader but cannot build on strong roots in societal groups (‘entrepreneurial parties’) (see Bolleyer 2013; Bolleyer and Bytzek 2016). Nevertheless, there are entrepreneurial parties that can build on some roots in society, which is why we call them rooted entrepreneurial parties (compare Arter 2016). In this chapter, we follow Barnea and Rahat (2011: 306), who define a party as new according to three party ‘faces’, which are visualised in table 3.1: the party in Table 3.1.  Analytical Framework for Selection of New Parties Party Face

Criterion

Party in the electorate

Party label Ideology Voters

Party as organisation

Formal/legal status Institutions Activists

Party in government

Representatives Policies

Source: Barnea and Rahat (2011).

Operational Definition Is the name genuinely new or does it contain an old party name? How different is the new party platform from the old party’s/parties’ platform(s)? How different is the new party electoral base from the old one? Is the party registered as new? Are the party institutions separated and differentiated from those of old party/parties? Does the ‘new’ party have new activists or did they immigrate to it from old party/parties? Are the top candidates new (non-incumbents)? Did most or of them come from a single party? How different all are the new party’s policies from the old party’s/parties’ policies?

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the electorate, the party as organisation and the party in government. In each of these three faces, there are different main actors: the voters, the activists and the representatives respectively; the main characteristics of each face are party label and ideology; legal status and institutional aspects; and policy input of the party in government respectively (see table 3.1). Party Institutionalisation3 There is no scholarly consensus about what exactly constitutes a highly institutionalised party or what marks a final stage of the institutionalisation process. Some researchers adopt a minimal and static definition that comprises only external institutionalisation: parties are considered institutionalised when outside observers (e.g. voters or other parties) perceive them as such (Rose and Mackie 1988). Rose and Mackie (1988) classify a party as institutionalised if it continues to exist for longer than three national-level elections. Other scholars understand institutionalisation as a multidimensional process through which a party becomes established as an institution (Panebianco 1988; Harmel and Svåsand 1998; Levitsky 2001a; Randall and Svåsand 2002; Poguntke 2002; Köllner, Basedau and Erdmann 2006; Basedau and Stroh 2008; Weissenbach 2010a,b, 2016; Bolleyer 2013; Bukow and Weissenbach 2019b).4 This approach allows for variation in speed, stagnation or setbacks. We side with the latter group of scholars that conceptualises institutionalisation as a process that entails different dimensions. In this chapter, we draw on Harmel et al. (chapter 2) whose comprehensive review distinguishes between internal and external and objective aspects of institutionalisation. Objective durability has to do with the party’s ability to survive; internal institutionalisation relates to the internal value infusion and routinised organisational behaviour of a party’s personnel; and external institutionalisation concerns the perceptions of society and other actors in the party system of which it makes part. Parties’ performance across these three dimensions varies. To date, the question of whether and how performance on each of these aspects matters for new parties’ success (understood as national-level parliamentary representation after their breakthrough election) has received little scholarly attention. In the following, we reflect on how each of these three aspects is likely to impact party success/decline. The Role of Internal, External and Objective Institutionalisation in Party Success First, the internal or organisational dimension of institutionalisation concerns ‘internal behaviour indicative of reification of the party aside from its founding leaders and their initial goals as demonstrated in routinised



The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece 29

organisational behaviour and non-personalisation of internal party loyalty (i.e. value infusion)’ (Harmel et al.: chapter 2). This aspect is about the extent to which internal party actors demonstrate allegiance to the party organisation itself, rather than a specific leader. According to Harmel et al. (2018: 39–41) routinisation is manifested in formalised rules (in the party’s statutes), and a stable membership base and a small number of defections of party representatives indicate internal value infusion. Though the discussion of internal institutionalisation by Harmel, Svåsand and Mjelde (chapter 2) does not specifically address the existence of a party manifesto, we consider this part of internal institutionalisation. While the general ideological direction that the party is supposed to serve is typically mentioned in some statutory article, by issuing a manifesto a party concretises its policy goals and its underlying norms. Valuing a party in its own right requires that its members can subscribe to some common policy goals which may be different than the founders’ initial goals. In the absence of clear policy objectives (in the form of a manifesto), party organisations are essentially parties of persons, not of principles; if the leader is the only reason that keeps the organisation together, leadership change can lead to defections and resignations (Harmel et al. 2018: 41). We would expect parties that are not reliant on one person (the charismatic leader) but on firm organisational structures, common values, policy goals and shared rules to be more successful compared to parties that are strongly dependent on their founder-leaders. In the short term, personalised, non-­routinised parties whose ideology is leader-dependent may be successful in gaining seats even after their original breakthrough; however, their parliamentary representation is likely to suffer in the long run because they lack internal party loyalty and routinised behaviour that provide the ‘glue’ holding members together – and this should be especially the case after leadership change. Second, the external institutionalisation concerns the perceptions (and consequent behaviour) of other actors (be they voters, other parties or the media) regarding the party’s perceived ‘lasting power’ and its perceived ‘relevance’ (Harmel et al. 2018: 41–42). Within this external dimension, the answer to the question of whether party X is an institution or not is to be found in how (leaders of ) other parties and the electorate see party X, and whether the existence of party X matters for these actors’ behaviour. New parties who are acknowledged as ‘players in the political game’ by voters and other parties are likely to be successful in gaining parliamentary representation after the original breakthrough. On the contrary, parties that fail to develop a stable core electorate and parties that lack potential to coalesce with or blackmail other parties are less likely to be successful in this regard. Third, the objective dimension concerns the party’s established survival record, that is, durability (Harmel et al. 2018: 42–44), which entails persistence

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and survivability. While the most straightforward indicator of persistence is party age, it does not guarantee ability to survive shocks. Irrespective of age, young organisations may vary in their ability to deal with change (e.g. leadership change, environmental change); this is what Harmel et al. (2018: 43) call survivability. Since new parties have been formed in different ways and have different types of origin, here we focus on the role played by persistence (understood as party age) in party success. We are specifically interested in whether a new party’s success – in terms of national parliamentary survival after the following election – depends on its type of formation and its origin before entering parliament. Since new parties may also result from mergers or splits of older, existing parties, some among new parties are older than others. More specifically, we expect that parties that have been born out of existing societal organisations or former political movements will be more successful than parties formed by individual entrepreneurs. THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF NEW PARTIES: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM GREECE Similar to most western European countries, in Greece a social-democratic/ socialist party and a conservative/Christian democratic party dominated for long the political scene: in the case of the Third Hellenic Republic that was established after the Colonels’ Junta (1968–1974): these were the Pan-­ Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and New Democracy (ND). The reason why these two parties had, until 2012, monopolised executive power is a complex and disproportionate electoral system,5 which became the strongest determinant of the Third Hellenic Republic’s party system. Not only did it hamper the emergence of hundreds of small parties – as was the case for post-Francoist Spain – but also, by setting high thresholds for participation in the distribution of seats6 and by producing ‘manufactured majorities’ (Nikolakopoulos 1989), it promoted two-party competition. While a few small parties (e.g. Communist Party of Greece) managed to gain representation in parliament, the big parties were not dependent upon them to form a coalition. Instead, autonomous, single-party cabinets were possible. Despite its name, the Greek electoral system of reinforced PR used for the national elections has had significant reductive effects: life for small, new parties is quite difficult under this electoral system. The (ongoing) financial and economic crisis that began in 2009 opened up new possibilities for innovation because the position of the two major players (PASOK and ND) in the system was severely undermined. When the Greek Indignants’ (Aganaktismenoi) movement occupied the Syntagma Square opposite the Hellenic Parliament in 2011, citizens with party flags (or any



The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece 31

kind of party-related accessories) were – politely or not – pushed away from the occupied square, which was to be party-free. The broader mobilisation and disenchantment with traditional party politics inspired political, academic and business elites to form new organisations that would express these grievances and transform Greek politics. Hence, in recent years, the Greek party system witnessed completely new actors and the transformation of formerly insignificant actors. In search for evidence regarding the impact of different aspects of institutionalisation on party decline or success, we used the criteria of Barnea and Rahat (2011, table 1) to choose three very different Greek parties that were born during the crisis: ANEL (Independent Greeks), SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and To Potami (The River). SYRIZA, a former coalition of tiny radical left parties (together just about reaching the 3 per cent threshold in 2004), was established as a unified party in 2012 (26.89 per cent) to become a key player in Greek politics and get governmental power in 2015 (36.3 per cent). The patriotic right party ANEL was created when nine deputies broke away from ND, and it contested its first election in 2012 with success (10.60 per cent of the popular vote), which declined in subsequent contests (4.75 per cent of the popular vote in 2015). As the party system was increasingly polarised and radical left and radical right parties gained ground, To Potami, an entirely new party, emerged at the centre. Founded in 2014, it began its electoral path with the European election (June 2014), where it gained 6 per cent of the popular vote – a percentage that was preserved at the subsequent national election (2015). The case of Greece thus presents us with a merger, a split and an entirely new party, which survived more than one electoral contest after entering parliament: while SYRIZA and ANEL contested four legislative electoral contests (May and June 2012 and January and September 2015), To Potami contested only two (the two aforementioned elections conducted in 2015). Next we attempt to sketch out these parties’ institutionalisation comparatively. Internal Institutionalisation Among the three parties under study, the only one exhibiting a high degree of internal institutionalisation is SYRIZA. It should be noted that before being established as a separate party, SYRIZA was an alliance mainly at the leadership level, which had not yet evolved into a political unit with political cohesion (Tsakatika and Eleftheriou 2013). In the year of its foundation as a unified party (2012), SYRIZA had around 16,000 members, while its youth organisation counted around 1,500 members (Tsakatika and Eleftheriou 2013). While these numbers might have increased leading up to the 2015 election, we speculate that they decreased after the incumbent SYRIZA

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(faced with the possibility of Greece’s exit from the EU) compromised its key policy goal: the end of austerity policy; this is when its radical left-wing faction (and a majority of the youth) broke away. SYRIZA is following one of its founding member’s tradition as the most democratic party of the Greek party system: SYRIZA has constitutionalised procedures of members’ participation in decision making that are applied in practice (Tsakatika and Eleftheriou 2013). It has its own newspaper (AVGI) and a nationwide presence and activities beyond electoral campaigns, thanks also to its links to social movements. The newly founded SYRIZA claimed to have a class base (workers) and to draw on the ideas of radical ecology and feminism, whereby it mobilised historical and contemporary currents of the communist, radical, reformist, anti-capitalist and liberal left (SYRIZA 2013). As such, the political programme of SYRIZA as party did not differ much from that of SYRIZA as a pluralist electoral alliance, which had been carefully crafted around what united its components without being a direct ‘copy’ of any its factions. However, a major point of disagreement within the SYRIZA alliance was Greece’s EU membership: for some factions it was considered to be a necessary level of political action, while for others it was detrimental to radical left goals. SYRIZA’s political programme, as represented in the political decisions following its founding congress in 2013 (SYRIZA 2013), thus adopted a pro-European, yet Eurosceptic, tone. On the one hand, the party is supportive of European integration, but on the other hand, it advocates the EU’s radical reform. Besides vague references to the EU and the related challenges to the newly founded party’s ideology, when stating its specific programmatic goals, the party makes only a few specific references to EU policies: first, it proposes to radically revise the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (SYRIZA 2013: 7), and second, it ‘tries with all available means to revert the current form of European integration, the contemporary architecture of the Eurozone and the neoliberal logic underlying the common currency so that Europe can re-establish itself in the direction of democracy, social justice and socialism’ (SYRIZA 2013: 9). Yet, there is no explanation of how SYRIZA would be able to implement its first programmatic goal, which was to cancel the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by previous governments and whether this will impact on Greece’s membership in the Eurozone and the EU. The reason for this imprecision is the internal conflict that could be spurred by any concrete statements regarding the desirability and necessity of Greece’s membership in the Eurozone and the EU. As long as SYRIZA was in opposition, this internal division – prudently silenced yet important – would not cause a big problem. But once the party got executive power and had to compromise on all of its economic and



The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece 33

MoU-related goals, the party’s ambivalent stance towards EU membership came to the fore, with consequences for its internal stability. A personal assistant of Tsipras in the Prime Minister’s Office stated that the time for detailed discussions inside the party has been over. ‘There was external pressure to come to a solution and so the prime minister decided not to discuss the topic in the regular party congress but through early parliamentary elections. . . . That was a problem for SYRIZA as a party’ (interview, 23 March 2017). The party’s stability was severely tested during its virgin term in government after it signed a MoU and brought it for ratification to parliament. The leftwing faction within the party refused to accept these measures and positively embraced the idea of Grexit as the means to get rid of the MoU. In fact, the left-wing faction and the so-called presidentials (several factions) disagreed on the interpretation of the referendum held in July 2015.7 Compared to SYRIZA, ANEL and To Potami display lower levels of internal institutionalisation. They lack advanced organisations and rulebased behaviour; also, intra-party democracy is still at the infant stage. For instance, according to ANEL’s statute (ANEL 2012a), the congress is the supreme organ; yet, its founding congress was conducted approximately one year after its founding on 27–28 April 2013. It counted around 2,000 participants, including representatives of the European Conservatives. During the congress, the president was elected unanimously (but there was no challenger); the statute of ANEL as well as its programme was defined and voted upon. ANEL established itself as a right-wing patriotic party that emphasises national sovereignty and Orthodox Christianity. To Potami is a completely new party, which relied a lot on the popularity of its leader and his (many) media networks. Popular TV presenter/journalist Stavros Theodorakis founded To Potami in February 2014 as a political movement that refused to confine itself within a rigid ideological frame (like traditional parties do), and instead combines elements of economic liberalism with social democracy. This implied, however, that To Potami lacked a clear policy programme. To Potami in Greek means the river, and the party label was chosen in the hope ‘that many will be able to join it, add their creative waters to its flow and that, like a river, it will stir up – but also bring clarity and vitality to – what [Theodorakis] sees as the stagnant pool of established party politics’ (Andreou 2014). To Potami claimed to fight traditional parties’ corruption and cronyism (i.e. PASOK and ND) while also defending the future of Greece inside the Eurozone against SYRIZA’s and ANEL’s ‘isolationist calls by strong forces of nationalism and populism’ (Eleftheriadis 2015). Some years later, however, it engaged in close dialogue and cooperation with PASOK (whose support shrunk after it signed the first MoU) and other small moderate leftist and social-democratic formations. PASOK, To Potami and seven smaller centrist political formations pursued the creation of

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Greece’s united centre-left political force (EFSYN 2017), which resulted in the alliance Kinima Allagis (Movement of Change). As it rejected traditional party politics and claimed to be different – and especially clean (as opposed to corrupt party politicians) – To Potami refused to imitate existing parties’ organisational structures. ‘He [Theodorakis] had the publicity, he was charismatic and he seized the momentum to create something new I think in the centre left, but without using the rhetoric of the centre left’ (Vlachos 2017). To Potami tried capitalising on the Internet to run its electoral campaign because, as it did not have representation, it had no state funding. Thus, To Potami was dependent upon citizens’ sponsoring; to this aim, the new party asked for very small contributions (one to ten euros), which resulted in securing the financial support of thousands of ordinary citizens (Ta Nea 2014). It thus started out with members-volunteers and sponsors of the party, for which it searched on the web. In this respect, To Potami was innovative. The party’s problem, however, is not that it failed to develop alternative or novel organisational structure, but that it did not develop organisationally at all. After the electoral loss in the election of September 2015 and as it was heading towards a post-election congress, many of its members considered its organisational underdevelopment crucial for failing to process policy proposals and to penetrate society. One member even referred to the ‘nonexistence of To Potami’s organisation’ (Koukouvitakis 2015). Panagiotis Vlachos (2017), member of To Potami’s political council, stated, ‘Theodorakis doesn’t believe in having local . . . let’s say agents or local people. . . . He wants this vague organisational structure that allows the leader to take the final decision’. The question whether To Potami would be able to develop into a proper party organisation that could inspire and mobilise citizens was acknowledged to be key for its future survival (Kapetanyannis 2015). It was only after the February 2016 congress, which took place two years after its founding, that the party acquired new organs. It remains to be seen whether and how successful To Potami will manage to organise itself as a proper party. Given that To Potami is only a few years old, and its organisation is underdeveloped, we cannot evaluate with certainty whether the statutes constitute a dead or living constitution. When we look at its statutes, To Potami appears to be a party that values intra-party democracy, yet one that has not further specified its implementation. More specifically, the statutes suggest that the party’s procedures are based on the principles of intra-party democracy and transparency at all levels of the organisation (Article 2.2; To Potami 2014). Decisions in various organs are to be taken based on simple majority, while no member shall remain in any post for longer than eight years, including the president, who is elected by the congress. According to Article 4.2, ‘either



The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece 35

the members or representatives of the movement participate in the congress after a primary election, with a representation whose proportionality is to be defined by the Central Committee of Congress’ Organization’. It is still very unclear who participates in the congress and what the exact procedure is. Furthermore, Article 6.2, which concerns the selection of candidates for national and European election, postulates that ‘members and organizations of to Potami can submit candidacy proposals to the “Council of Evaluation Utilization of Members” through a procedure that will be announced in due time’. A close reading of the statutes thus shows, for instance, that many procedures that concern the party’s intra-party democracy remain underspecified. Hence, we cannot make any claims about the extent to which the principle of intra-party democracy that is included in the statute is implemented in reality. An important aspect of internal institutionalisation concerns the degree of independence of these organisations from their personalities that led them at the moment of their founding. As none of the parties under study has experienced leadership change since its foundation,8 we cannot evaluate with accuracy its degree of independence from personality by looking at changes at the leadership level. However, to some extent a party’s dependence on a leader relates to what happens when the actions of the leadership are seriously questioned. Crucially, when this occurs, who navigates? Does the party steer the leader towards one direction, or the other way around? A case in point is when PM Alexis Tsipras signed the third MoU with Greece’s creditors in July 2015. This made SYRIZA very vulnerable because in this way the party entirely betrayed its electoral mandate. So the question for SYRIZA deputies was whether to support the government at the crucial parliamentary vote that would ratify the government’s deal with the creditors. Arguing that SYRIZA’s leader should have first consulted with the party before proceeding to such a radical policy U-turn, twenty-five parliamentarians (including some of SYRIZA’s ministers) refused to grant their support. Contesting Tsipras’s leadership, they became independent. This group constituted the third (after SYRIZA and ND) biggest parliamentary group in the Vouli ton Ellinon produced by the January 2015 election. Tsipras passed the MoU based on the votes of the pro-EU opposition (To Potami, PASOK and ND). Facing this internal revolt, Tsipras opted for postponing a party congress (which would try to resolve the conflict through deliberation) and announced a snap election. This took the form of a popular vote of confidence in his government. The defected faction quickly organised to found Popular Unity (LAE) and contested this election in September 2015. SYRIZA’s campaign capitalised on his personal popularity and his premiership – not the party. Yet, as LAE gathered 2.86 per cent (just a bit under the threshold), all rebellious parliamentarians stayed out of parliament. On the contrary, SYRIZA did

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win this election and with an electoral loss of less than one percentage unit! SYRIZA’s leader had taken a great risk and had skilfully gotten rid of the rebellions not just from within the party, but also from the parliament – thus eliminating competition on SYRIZA’s left. In essence, what this leader did was to solve an intra-party conflict at the national level, that is, via a national election instead of a party congress. These developments enhanced leadership authority inside the party and rendered it more ‘presidential’. The September 2015 election proved to be consequential also for To Potami. For a political party that had just begun, the electoral loss of 2 per cent sounded detrimental. Theodorakis’s leadership was thus contested and Professor Pavlos Eleftheriadis from the University of Oxford ran as a challenger. At the congress, Eleftheriadis gained 96 votes, while the existing leader got 715, and 20 cast a blank ballot. Theodorakis confirmed his authority in the party despite severe electoral losses. In spite of successive losses (in total 7 percentage points since the party’s first contest) Kammenos’s leadership of ANEL has not yet been challenged. In December 2012 at a meeting between the party in central and public office, it was highlighted9 that decisions that shape the party’s political profile are being taken in the absence of party organs.10 At the founding congress (27–28 April 2013), ANEL’s leader Kammenos was ‘elected’ president via a noncompetitive election (no challenger). External Institutionalisation All three parties under study were perceived as players in the political game by other parties in the system (ND, PASOK and the Communist Party of Greece) and by the electorate (although their appreciation by the masses varies over time). Since SYRIZA is the product of mergers, it benefitted from the fact that one of its main components, SYN, already enjoyed external institutionalisation. When faced with electoral decline, SYN’s organisational response was the creation of SYRIZA, which had two principal aims: first and foremost, to appeal to younger cohorts and, second, to appease the grievances of its existing members (Tsakatika and Eleftheriou 2013). At the same time, SYN was trying to re-establish links to trade unions and new social movements (Tsakiris 2010). In subsequent legislative elections, the alliance gained 3.27 per cent (2004), 5.04 per cent (2007) and 4.13 per cent (2009).11 The SYRIZA alliance’s connection with society was particularly strengthened through its involvement in the European Social Forum and its involvement in the mass mobilisations after a policeman shot in cold blood an innocent adolescent (Alexis Grigoropoulos) in December 2008. In this way, SYRIZA became very popular, especially among the youngsters who



The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece 37

demonstrated (and did not have yet the right to vote in 2008–2009). The connection to civil society and participation in its activities was clearly a central goal of the alliance during that time (Tarpagos 2009), when the polls started showing signs of high popular appreciation and the discussion about creating a unified party organisation began. This was not easy to achieve, given that the creation of a single party implied the dissolution of all its components. As Greece was sinking into the economic crisis, SYRIZA was present at the demonstrations against the PASOK’s (2009–2012) and ND’s (2012–2015) austerity policies included in the MoUs. Crucially, SYRIZA was supportive of the ‘Won’t Pay!’ movement, and some of SYN’s cadres participated actively in the Indignants’ movement (Tsakiris and Aranitou 2012; Tsakatika and Eleftheriou 2013). In an effort to appear as the expression of society, when the alliance reinvented itself as a unified SYRIZA party, it even included the links to social movements and civil society in its statutes (Article 24): ‘SYRIZA is in constant dialogue with social movements and incorporates elements of their problématique’, while one of its key principles is its refusal to ‘substitute’ civil society (Article 24.1). Furthermore, it participates in and supports international, European and regional movements and thematic fora on issues that lie within the context of its political proposal (Article 24.4). Now that SYRIZA is in government and has accepted to sign and implement the very policies it was condemning while in opposition, its relationship to civil society is under strain. Interestingly, the Section on Labor Policy still tries to mobilise citizens in demonstrations against the government. ANEL’s leader, Panos Kammenos, as well as the rest of its top candidates belonged to professional political elites with experience in government and existing electoral clienteles. They tried to draw supporters from the so-called movement of the Squares and in particular from patriotic groups among protesters against the first MoU. In its founding declaration and in its statutes, ANEL characterises itself a ‘movement’ (ANEL 2012a,b). ANEL claims strong links to society for two reasons. First, it cooperated with eleven political groups that demonstrated across Greek cities.12 Second, 196,400 citizens contributed via social media to the discussion about the electoral programme for its virgin contest. Though his personal pages in the social media were indeed catalytic in helping Kamenos both found ANEL and run a campaign with very few resources, the party’s roots in society may be feebler than originally assumed. Though the newly founded party contested its first election in May 2012 with great success (10.60 per cent of the popular vote), its electoral performance in subsequent elections exhibited a markedly declining pattern: 7.51 per cent in June 2012,13 4.75 per cent in January 2015 and 3.69 per cent in September 2015. Moreover, the polls conducted by private companies during the period between the 2012 and 2015 elections about parties’ popularity

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and voters’ propensity to vote showed a consistently declining popular appreciation of ANEL – even scoring under the 3 per cent threshold. To Potami’s links to civil society were from the beginning very weak; its emergence was not officially supported by any among existing non-­ governmental organisations or social movements. That said, To Potami has been successful in attracting some of Greece’s brightest minds, including artists and academics with successful careers at home and abroad. Perhaps, however, its elitist approach may be its Achilles’ heel. In September 2014, the estimated electoral influence of To Potami was about 9.5 per cent (Public Issue 2014) – an impressive percentage for a party that was founded half a year earlier. Around the same time, SYRIZA’s and ANEL’s influence were estimated around 36 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively (Public Issue 2014). To Potami has thus far contested three elections: the 2014 EP election (6.6 per cent) and the January 2015 (6.1 per cent) and the September 2015 (4.1 per cent) Greek legislative elections. Although its electoral decline is not as dramatic as is the case with ANEL, To Potami did lose one-third of its voters within approximately half a year. According to a poll conducted by the University of Macedonia in 2016: 16.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent would vote for SYRIZA and ANEL, respectively, while 2.5 per cent would support To Potami (Free Sunday 2016).14 In July 2017, mass attitudes towards SYRIZA and ANEL were similar but To Potami seemed relatively unpopular: available poll data from a study by KAPA Research show that 16.2 per cent would support SYRIZA in an eventual election; 3.5 per cent would support ANEL, while only 0.8 per cent would support To Potami (Athina984 2017). Based on these trends, To Potami would not gain parliamentary representation in the legislative election scheduled for 2019. In the meantime, however, To Potami joined forces with PASOK and seven smaller parties under the alliance Kinima Allagis. At the time of this writing, a recent poll reveals that 18.6 per cent of respondents would support SYRIZA, 8 per cent would support Kinima Allagis (which includes To Potami), while only 1.7 per cent would support ANEL (Newspost 2018). However, to what extent is these new parties’ external institutionalisation related to mass popularity of their leadership? We can get some hints about how leaders matter for external actors’ perceptions of the party by looking at whether popularity trends of leaders and parties are developing in parallel to each other during the period between the 2012 and 2015 elections. According to polls conducted in 2013, the percentage of respondents who assessed SYRIZA’s leader positively increased by 8 percentage points from April to May but then decreased again from 44 per cent to 36 per cent in September (Public Issue 2013a,b); similarly, the party’s popularity which had increased by 8 percentage points between April and May 2013, dropped from 44 per cent to 39 per cent in September (Public Issue 2013a,b). At the time of this



The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece 39

writing, the popularity of PM Tsipras is estimated around 22.5 per cent, while the percentage of Greek voters who would support SYRIZA in an eventual election is 16.2 per cent (Athina984 2017). In sum, the party organisation is currently behind its leader in terms of appreciation by the Greek electorate. In the case of ANEL, we observe a pattern similar to SYRIZA, where the leader’s popularity (which gained 6 percentage points between April and May 2013) dropped from 33 per cent in May to 31 per cent in September. ANEL’s percentages had also increased by 8 percentage points between April and May to reach 36 per cent. But then the percentage of respondents who viewed the party positively also declined, even if only slightly (35 per cent in September 2012; Public Issue 2013a,b). In sum, the popular appreciation of both parties currently in government seems – to a certain extent – related to the popularity of their leaders. A poll by the same company conducted in September the following year (Public Issue 2014), when To Potami had also emerged on the political scene, shows that its leader started out as a figure who was quite positively viewed compared to the other two parties’ leaders (Tsipras 47 per cent, Kammenos 30 per cent and Theodorakis 39 per cent). This comes as no great surprise given that the leader was an already popular figure (journalist–TV show presenter); moreover, many people got to know Theodorakis in a non-political context, which was an asset in an era when citizens questioned Greek party politics and the political figures they already knew. In February 2015, after SYRIZA came first and created a coalition government with ANEL, the popularity of both party leaders skyrocketed (Tsipras 87 per cent, Kammenos 57 per cent), whereas the popularity of To Potami’s leader increased only slightly (42 per cent) in comparison (Public Issue 2015). Interestingly, neither Theodorakis nor To Potami would manage to gain much from all the faux pas committed by the SYRIZANEL government. Persistence (Party Age) All three parties under study are very young since they were created more than three decades after the establishment of democracy in 1974. On the right pole of Greek party politics, ANEL was founded in February 2012 as an anti-MoU party when nine deputies broke away from conservative/ Christian democratic ND due to the austerity policies it pursued. At the centre, To Potami was founded in 2014, thus constituting Greece’s youngest party with parliamentary representation. On the left, SYRIZA was created by an alliance of small left parties in 2004 and became a unified party in 2012. Among the three new parties under study here, the oldest is SYRIZA, which first emerged in 2004 as an electoral alliance of small radical left parties and extra-parliamentary political groups. The discussion about unifying

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the very fragmented Greek left started in 2001, and it was motivated by SYN (Coalition of the Left, Ecology and Social Movements), SYRIZA’s biggest faction. SYN had been founded in 1992 as a pluralist party of the left – neither communist nor social democratic – that tried to distinguish itself by focusing on rights (gender, environment, democracy). By 2009, the alliance was composed of eleven factions: SYN, AKOA (Reformist Communist Ecologist Left), DIKKI (Democratic Social Movement), DEA (International Workers’ Left), KEDA (Movement for the Unity of the Left), Kokkino (Red), KOE (Communist Organization of Greece), Xekinima (Beginning), Ecosocialists of Greece, Active Citizens and Rosa. Office-seeking led to the alliance’s transformation and the foundation of SYRIZA as a single party. A key incentive for merging the many small factions of the alliance and creating a new, unified party was the fact that the aforementioned electoral rule that grants a 50-seat bonus to the party that comes first does not apply to alliances. Hence, if SYRIZA had come first in the form of an alliance, it would not be entitled to this bonus. Watching its percentages rising at the polls, SYRIZA officially submitted to the Hellenic Highest Court its foundation as a unified party in May 2012 and contested as such the June 2012 election (when it came second) (SYRIZA 2012a,b). SYRIZA attracted 16.78 per cent in May 2012 and 26.89 per cent in June 201215 and rose to executive power with 36.4 per cent in January 2015 and 35.46 per cent in September 2015. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In this chapter, we adopted a multidimensional approach to party institutionalisation and attempted an evaluation of how different dimensions (internal, external, objective) matter for new parties’ success/decline in terms of parliamentary representation. With regard to internal institutionalisation, we expected parties with organisational structures, common values, policy goals and shared rules to be more successful compared to parties that are strongly dependent on their founder-leaders. Regarding external institutionalisation, we expected that new parties that are acknowledged as ‘players in the political game’ by voters and other parties are likely to be successful in gaining parliamentary representation after the original breakthrough. When it comes to party persistence (age), we expected that parties that have been born out of existing societal organisations or former political movements will be more successful than parties formed by individual entrepreneurs. Among the three parties under study, the most successful party in terms of parliamentary representation, SYRIZA, is the party that displays the highest level of internal and external institutionalisation, and it is also the oldest



The Institutionalisation of New Parties in Greece 41

party. The youngest among the parties under study here, To Potami, started with impressive percentages of mass appreciation, and its prospects of evolving into a successful party with strong parliamentary presence were very good. However, it failed to achieve internal institutionalisation and remained very leader-dependent. In summer 2017, its popularity among the Greek electorate was very low. Although To Potami initially sought to combine centre-right with centre-left policy elements, when its first traits of external de-institutionalisation became apparent, it was quick to ally with PASOK and smaller social democratic and moderate leftist parties under the alliance Kinima Allagis. ANEL, a party composed of experienced politicians who broke from ND, was quick in achieving external institutionalisation though slower in terms of internal institutionalisation. Recent polls show ANEL (the minor member in the two successive cabinets since 2015) scoring lower than the Greek threshold for parliamentary representation (3 per cent). Given that we only looked at new parties in only one country, we cannot generalise about the impact of the different aspects of institutionalisation on party success. However, we hope that this empirical exploration will inspire future research that will engage in small or large-N comparisons. NOTES 1. We thank Almut Zimmer for her research assistance in the New Parties in Europe Project at the NRW School of Governance, University Duisburg-Essen. 2. For a typology of different mergers, see Ware (2009). 3. Contrary to scholarship that does not make this distinction, we understand the institutionalisation of individual parties as a phenomenon that is a related to, but distinct from party system institutionalisation. Here, the focus is on individual party institutionalisation. 4. These concepts are mostly used in studies on the role of parties in consolidation processes in young democracies (van Biezen 2005; Basedau and Stroh 2008; Diamond 1989; Dix 1992; Lewis 1994; Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Randall and Svåsand 2002; Weissenbach 2010a,b, 2016) or regarding the development of Europarties (Bressanelli 2014). However, it is important to distinguish between the concepts of party institutionalisation and party development in organisational terms (Basedau and Stroh 2008; Panebianco 1988; Randall and Svåsand 2002). 5. Nikolakopoulos (1989: 77) calls the Greek PR a ‘mixed system’, as it is neither plurality nor proportional representation and adds that the proper name for it would be (not reinforced but) ‘distorted PR’. In all its versions – excluding the one used in 1989 and 1990 – it is a greatly impure type of list PR. The label reinforced is deceptive as it does not reinforce proportionality but the large parties (Lijphart 1999: 163; Nikolakopoulos 1989: 106). 6. The laws 1974/65, 1977/626 and 1981/895 set the legal threshold for participation in the second distribution of seats at 17 per cent for one party, 25 per cent for a

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coalition of 2 parties and 30 per cent for a coalition of more parties. Law 1985/1516 lacked such threshold but the distribution of seats has many elements of the plurality formula. The laws 1989 and 1990/1847 reintroduced the threshold; the parties gathering 1 to 2 per cent of the national vote had a legitimate claim to seats, whereas the third distribution was abolished. In the elections of 1993, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2007, the electoral laws fixed the threshold at 3 per cent. 7. The result was a resounding NO, which the left wing faction took as a confirmation of the Greek public’s readiness to leave the Euro, but this is not accurate. A majority of polls conducted during that time showed clearly that the public was supportive of both the Euro and EU memberships. The lack of stability was not just a problem for the party, but also for the government’s survival. Moreover, Tsipras as a prime minister had no mandate for Grexit, which led to the September 2015 election. 8. Note that the SYRIZA alliance was led initially by Alekos Alavanos (2004– 2008) and then by Alexis Tsipras (2008–2010 and 2010–2012); at its founding congress in July 2013, the latter was elected its president of the unified SYRIZA. 9. The issue was raised by the General Secretary of the Central Committee Kostas Markopoulos, supported by the press representative Christos Zois (TVXS 2012). 10. For those ANEL members coming from right-wing ND the president’s flirt with SYRIZA was unacceptable. ‘I am leaving’ was President Kammenos’s reaction (TVXS 2012); he left accusing his colleagues of creating intra-party conflict. They responded that the issues of party functions should be discussed and soon afterwards Kammenos called a meeting of the central committee of the party, which was attended also by most party deputies. There Kammenos explained that the party has not yet conducted a congress because of financial difficulties and accused the government of sabotaging ANEL by not allowing the party to get its share of state funding (TVXS 2012), thus attributing the blame to exogenous, rather than endogenous, factors. 11. At EP elections SYRIZA performed similarly, gathering 4.16 per cent in 2004 and 4.71 per cent in 2009. Note that among its members, only SYN ran the 2004 EP election. 12. On its official website, ANEL announces a cooperation with the representatives of 11 protest groups that had been active during the demonstrations at the Syntagma Square as well as other main squares of the country (ANEL 2012c). 13. At the 2014 EP election, its percentage was 3.46 per cent. 14. At the time of writing SYRIZA and ANEL are in government and responsible for the implementation of unpopular measures that are prescribed by the country’s creditors. To Potami is in opposition but it has, since its inception, been supportive of reforms, including those dictated by the country’s bailout agreements. 15. At the EP election that occurred between two national contests, SYRIZA attracted 26.6 per cent of the vote (June 2014).

Chapter 4

The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation of Entrepreneurial Parties: Czech ANO and the Public Affairs Party Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopecˇek INTRODUCTION In recent years, party politics in east-central Europe has provided the backdrop for the rise of many new parties, creating a rich seam of empirical material for analysis. Among the most interesting phenomena are parties formed by their founding fathers, who created them as political vehicles to further their own ideas or interests. Examples include Igor Matovič’s Ordinary People and Independent Personalities in Slovakia, Ryszard Petru’s Modern in Poland and Andrej Babiš’s ANO in the Czech Republic. Typically, in addition to the leader who was crucial for their emergence, these parties have lacked prior backing in parliament and social rootedness, employing antiestablishment and anti-party appeals. Their emergence has been linked with a number of circumstances conducive to their success. These include the economic troubles that affected the countries of the region at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the considerable vulnerability of the ‘old’ parties as revealed by insufficient organisational capacity and rootedness, and the weakness of social cleavages (Hanley 2012; Tavits 2013; Casal Bertóa 2014; Haughton and Krause 2015). When classifying new parties in western Europe, scholars have tended to describe this group of newcomers as entrepreneurial parties (Harmel and Svåsand 1993; Krouwel 2012; Bolleyer and Bytzek 2013; Arter 2016; also see Lucardie 2000 and Sikk 2005 for categorisations of new parties generally). The private initiative of a political entrepreneur was an important initial factor in establishing the party profile (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999; Krouwel 2006). Indeed, the study of the variable durability of these parties is as interesting as that of their emergence. After their initial electoral success, the majority collapsed quickly, although some managed to establish themselves 43

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over the longer term. The classic article by Robert Harmel and Lars Svåsand (1993) provides a three-phase development model of institutionalisation, one that is often used to analyse the fluctuating durability of these parties. This development model has been augmented and tested on cases such as the Pim Fortuyn List and the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands (Lange and Art 2011), the National Front in France, Jörg Haider’s FPÖ in Austria (Pedahzur and Brichta 2002) and True Finns (Arter 2016; Arter and Kestilä-Kekkonen 2014). Using the Harmel-Svåsand model introduced in the next section, this chapter analyses and compares two Czech entrepreneurial parties, Public Affairs (VV) and ANO (meaning ‘yes’ in Czech).1 The two parties exhibited contrasting developments. Common to both was the fact that a successful entrepreneur had decided to enter politics to create them. In the case of the former, it was Vít Bárta, the owner of a large security agency; in the latter case, it was Andrej Babiš, a billionaire and owner of the large holding company Agrofert. Both parties achieved great success in the first parliamentary elections they contested: in 2010, VV polled almost 11 per cent of the vote, and three years later, ANO received more than 18 per cent. Both came into government shortly after the elections. However, whereas VV quickly collapsed and did not stand in the next parliamentary elections, the success of ANO proved to be sustainable, and the party managed to maintain stable electoral support after coming to power. In 2017, ANO won the parliamentary elections polling almost 30 per cent. The purpose of the chapter is to answer the following question: Why did one party collapse quickly, whereas the other has a high probability of political survival? The answer is of interest not only for the study of Czech party politics; it may be of wider interest in the arena of research into entrepreneurial parties. We propose that the distinctions between Bárta’s and Babiš’s leadership and their differing organisational strategies were of fundamental importance and that they illustrate how Babiš learned from Bárta’s mistakes. PARTY INSTITUTIONALISATION AND THREE PHASES OF DEVELOPMENT Classical scholars defined party institutionalisation as ‘the process by which organisations and procedures acquire value and stability’ (Huntington 1968: 13) or as ‘a process by which followers develop an interest in the survival of a party independent of its current leadership’ (Panebianco 1988: 53). Based on the model defined below, we understand institutionalisation in its three dimensions (internal/organisational institutionalisation; perception



The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation 45

by other actors; and survival record of durability), respectively, as a party’s ability (1) to adjust to changing goals and purposes and to routinise decisionmaking processes beyond the political lives and goals of its current leaders, (2) to become part of the routines of other relevant actors and (3) to have a record of persistence and ability to survive shocks (Harmel et al.: chapter 2 in this book). When studying the institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties, the emphasis has traditionally been on the ‘founding father’, his leadership and organisational skills, which are important for transforming the party into an efficient electoral machine. The leader must show both strong external leadership, which makes the party attractive to voters, and an internal leadership quality, which is fundamental to the functional organisation of the new party (Arter 2016; Lange and Art 2011). In terms of making the new party attractive to voters, the features of external leadership are evidently crucial. However, for a party to survive in the long term, its leader must be able to consolidate it internally and gradually institutionalise it within the party system. The Harmel-Svåsand (1993) three-phase development model was conceived precisely in order to analyse the process by which parties institutionalise themselves. The first phase, identification, begins at the moment the creation of the new party is announced. The second phase, organisation, is connected with establishing routine procedures and mechanisms for control and coordination, something that was almost unnecessary in the first phase, characterised by one-person representation. The third, stabilisation phase of party development occurs when the party gains importance in terms of its acceptability; that is, it is considered a potential coalition partner. Harmel and Svåsand understand the party’s coalition potential in the spirit of Giovanni Sartori (1976). According to them, it is not necessary for a party to enter government; it suffices rather that other parties change their stance and are willing to cooperate with the entrepreneurial party. The phases may overlap, as indeed the examples from both Czech parties show. They are summarised in table 4.1, and the remainder of the article is structured according to these phases. After briefly introducing each party, we will then analyse the strategy and behaviour of the leader in every phase. THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS PARTY: DESTRUCTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF CONCEALING THE REAL LEADER Vít Bárta entered politics as a successful businessman: he co-owned the security firm Agentura bílého lva (White Lion Agency, ABL) with his brother. Unlike the billionaire Andrej Babiš, Bárta was not one of the country’s richest entrepreneurs. At the time when Bárta’s political project, that

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Table 4.1.  Phases of Party Development Phase

Primary Objective

1.

Identification

2.

Organisation

3.

Stabilisation

Specific Tasks

Leadership Needs

Develop message Communicate message Draw attention to party Adopt (non)organisational style Develop and routinise procedures Delegate and coordinate Build and maintain consensus among competing factors Develop reputations for credibility and dependability Fine-tune and implement message and procedures Develop ongoing relations with other parties (perhaps eventually within coalition government)

CREATOR and PREACHER Originality and creativity, communication skills, charisma, authoritativeness ORGANISER Organisational orientation and skills, consensus building skills, strategic skills STABILISER Personal reputation for credibility and dependability, administrative skills (for organisational maintenance and fine-tuning), complex human relation skills (to lead complex party organisation while dealing with other parties)

Source: Adopted from Harmel and Svåsand (1993: 75).

is, to take over and develop the VV, was set in motion, ABL’s turnover was about CZK 900 million per year (about $40 million), and the company employed fewer than 2,000 staff, mainly in the capital, Prague (ABL 2009). By entering politics, Bárta sought to enlarge the scope of his company’s activities, in particular to improve his position to win public tenders. The means for his political and economic expansion was to be VV, which was originally founded in 2001 as a local Prague party with a handful of members who had no national ambitions and no links to Bárta’s agency. An interesting trait of VV among entrepreneurial parties was that Bárta did not found the party; rather, with the assistance of people linked with ABL, he took control of it around the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century (Hloušek 2012). The purpose of VV was to serve as a base for ABL’s expansion, as was outlined in a document entitled ‘Strategy 2009–2014’, which Bárta presented to a narrow circle of his top agency managers in October 2008. The strategy was extremely ambitious, assuming that ABL would become the largest private security agency in the country. This would be achieved by winning new customers, and hence contracts in the public sector from various state offices, self-governing bodies, hospitals, schools and so on. The document



The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation 47

stated explicitly that it was not possible ‘to separate economic and political power’ (Strategie 2008; cf. Kmenta 2011: 263–264; Bureš 2014). The notion of interconnecting political and economic power was elaborated in detail in the so-called Ethical Code of VV, dated January 2009 (Kodex 2009). The code outlined a management structure for VV that minimised the influence of officially elected bodies (i.e. those visible outside of the party) and maximised the importance of unofficial mechanisms, in particular the central role of Vít Bárta and his innermost circle, the so-called Conceptual Council of VV. Identification: ‘Down with the Dinosaurs!’ The code was also the key document outlining a strategy for attracting voters. The fundamental message was that the party offered ‘simple solutions to complex issues’ and ‘a definite and immediate benefit for the citizen’; it was ‘not to disparage the superficiality of the voter’ but to be ‘vibrant’, ‘entertaining’ and ‘non-traditional’ (Kodex 2009). The face of this strategy was the popular journalist Radek John, who in mid-2009 replaced Bárta’s colleague Jaroslav Škárka as VV’s chair. This proved to be a shrewd move. John communicated the party’s election message convincingly and, ahead of the elections, was even named the country’s most popular politician in some opinion polls (CVVM 2010a). Among the candidates of the parliamentary parties, John won the second highest number of preferential votes in the elections (Kneblová 2010). Bárta, publicly virtually unknown, appeared merely as VV’s electoral manager, although he was placed in an electable position on the party’s candidate list. Formally, he was not even a member of the party at this time. In the process of creating the VV party’s identity, its management deftly harnessed the atmosphere of the time, which was marked by misgivings about the beginnings of economic recession and, more importantly, the growing dissatisfaction with governance and the political classes. Added to this were concerns over political instability and numerous scandals, many involving corruption accusations (Hloušek and Kopeček 2014).2 VV was assisted by the fact that the early election which had been called was annulled by the Constitutional Court (Balík 2010). In their first nationwide electoral test, that is, the European Parliament elections in spring 2009, VV polled just 2.4 per cent of the vote, and the postponement of the national parliamentary elections until spring 2010 allowed the party sufficient time to adjust its political offer to match the social environment. Its main election slogan was ‘The end of the political dinosaurs’. According to John, a dinosaur was ‘someone who has been in politics for more than ten years, can’t do anything other than politics, understands it as his trade and starts to make

Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček

48

deals’ (Rovenský 2009). The party was particularly critical of the two largest parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats (ČSSD), whom it accused of being guilty of corruption. John repeatedly described them not only as dinosaurs but also as thieves, criticising their incompetence in governing the country (Havlík 2015). Analyses show that political corruption was a key topic in the party’s election campaign. The VV dedicated more space in its party manifesto to the topic of fighting corruption than any other party receiving seats in the Chamber of Deputies (Eibl 2010; Havlík, Hloušek 2014). Strangely enough, John (and Bárta) joined those voices criticising the interference of private economic interests in politics; at the time this was plausible, as the public did not know that VV was connected with ABL. The party’s election manifesto was eclectic and could not be situated on the left-to-right axis, something that VV presented as a virtue, and as evidence that the party was distinct from the ‘dinosaurs’. Radek John said at the time: ‘We don’t want to move left or right, we want to move forward’ (quoted in Havlík 2015). The party proposed direct democracy as the primary cure for political ailments. In its format, the party manifesto corresponded fully to the spirit of VV’s Ethical Code mentioned earlier. Its short format, and its design as a cartoon, promised to the average voter Pavel (Paul) and his family the resolution of all problems. A cartoon character resembling Radek John was dressed in a Superman-like costume to reinforce the message. This mood was supported by other elements of the campaign. For instance, before the cancelled early election of 2009, the party deployed a large number of billboards featuring several of the party’s young female candidates dressed only in swimsuits; this was later followed by a ‘sexy calendar’ in a similar vein. In the elections held in late May 2010, this political message secured fourth place for VV, with almost 11 per cent of votes and 24 seats in the 200-head Chamber of Deputies (table 4.2).

Table 4.2.  Election Results of the VV and ANO (Votes %) (Czech Republic) Chamber of Deputies 2010 VV ANO

2013

2017

18.70

29.64

10.88

Local Elections* 2010

2014

2.93

Regional Elections 2012

2016

0.25 14.59

European Elections 2009 2.40

21.05

* All councils (total valid votes include city district councils), excluding coalition candidate lists. Source: Czech Statistical Office.

2014 16.13



The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation 49

Organisation: Concealed Decision-Making behind the Façade of Direct Democracy When Radek John, freshly elected leader of VV, was asked about Bárta for the first time he said: ‘It’s very simple – Vít Bárta, ABL owner, lives with Kateřina Klasnová, deputy chair of VV. He founded the Club of Engaged Entrepreneurs, from which we obtained CZK 12 million (approx. $0.5 million), and he decided he wanted VV to win seats in Parliament’ (Rovenský 2009). Members of the Club of Engaged Entrepreneurs included not only Bárta, but also additional future representatives of VV. The conditions for membership were arranged in such a way that the potential members had to donate at least CZK 1 million to a specified party (in reality the only eligible party was VV). Prior to the party’s success in the parliamentary elections, the club was its main official donor (Stauber 2015a: 140). Even more importantly, John’s words, as quoted, did not correspond to the much more interesting internal organisational reality of VV. In addition to its formal top-level bodies, which at first sight did not significantly deviate from what was the norm among Czech parties, the party also had an informal, yet crucial, body, unmentioned in its statutes: the so-called Conceptual Council. Created in 2009 and described by the party’s secret Ethical Code as the ‘real governing body of the party’ (Kodex 2009), it comprised a circle of people that changed slightly over time. They usually also held positions in official party bodies; examples include Škárka and Klasnová, as mentioned earlier, and Josef Dobeš, head of human resources in ABL and VV deputy chair, who became education minister after the 2010 elections. Remarkably, the main face of the party and its official chair, John, was not a member of the Conceptual Council, apparently because he originated from outside ABL. The head of the council was Bárta, in whose flat the body held its meetings. Testifying to the spirit of the council is the fact that Bárta called its members, who each supervised a field of the party’s activities, ‘gurus’, and described himself as the ‘superguru’ (Kmenta 2011: 325). This clandestine management of VV was hidden behind an entirely different façade than was presented to the public. According to statutes, it was the party members and registered supporters, the so-called véčkaři (the ‘Vs’) who voted for the party chair and deputy chairs in a direct electronic election. Only subsequently, at the national conference of the party – its supreme body – were these party officials confirmed in their posts (Stanovy VV 2009). The intra-party referendums, the VV leadership claimed, were intended to determine virtually all the important personal and political decisions of the party, including those concerned with its programme. However, the scope of

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the issues put to the vote was not specified in the statutes, and nor was it clear whether the votes were binding for the leadership. It was difficult to obtain VV membership (see below), but easy to become a registered supporter. Hence, the number of supporters was many times that of members, reaching almost 20,000 during the 2010 elections. The problem, however, was that only a small section of these registered supporters participated in intra-party referendums and soon after the 2010 elections suspicions started to emerge that the VV leadership had rigged their results. In spring 2011, defecting party representatives confirmed these suspicions (ČT 24 2011). For the party leadership, the supporters’ votes were useful in two respects: they served as a façade covering the reality of decision making in the party and were something of a litmus test to establish the fickle opinions of its supporters. In order to uphold the image of a countrywide party with a physical presence, VV created local members’ clubs, chiefly between autumn 2009 and spring 2010. Although initiated by the centre in Prague, the process was largely spontaneous (Jarmara 2011). In many regions, only a handful of clubs were created because the membership was small; this posed no serious obstacles given the fact that the party’s election campaign was centralised and professionalised. Beyond these local clubs, until 2011, VV lacked the regional- and district-level organisations common to other Czech parties.3 The non-existent regional bodies were substituted with regional party forums, comprised of chairs of local clubs and regional managers, the latter chosen and paid for by the leadership in Prague, which thereby informally secured a strong say for itself. Regional forums were given a key role in compiling candidate lists for elections to the Chamber of Deputies in the individual regions. The candidate selection process was seemingly very open, with regional election leaders chosen in direct elections by the supporters and members in the region (as were the chair and deputy chairs of the whole party nationally). In practice, however, candidates for regional party leader were preselected by forums that consulted with the party centre about their choices. The regional forums were also key to ordering candidates who followed the regional election leaders on the lists (Spáč 2013a, Spáč 2013b). However, the quick disintegration of VV’s parliamentary party group after the elections showed that even this highly controlled method of assembling candidate lists could not secure their full loyalty towards party leadership. One very specific instrument deployed by the leadership, namely contracts concluded between the party and its candidates ahead of the 2010 elections, also proved insufficiently effective. If elected as a member of parliament (MP), these contracts would bind the candidates to remain in the parliamentary party and to vote in accordance with the party line, under penalty of an enormous fine. These contracts corresponded to Bárta’s logic. He considered



The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation 51

the monies expended on building up VV and its election campaign an investment on which he wanted a return (Strategie 2008 and Kodex 2009). Thus, the contracts were intended to protect his investment. However, they contravened the constitutional order, and their ability to dampen VV MPs’ dissatisfaction was short-lived; in contrast, they escalated the debate about the party’s character and the strange way in which it was run. Also noteworthy was VV’s attitude towards accepting new members, which completes the picture of the party’s organisation strategy. The party was much less welcoming of potential members than of registered supporters. When in late 2009 the number of applicants for membership rose sharply due to the party’s improved rating in the opinion polls, a waiting period of one year was introduced, evidently to keep the membership under control. John presented this step to the media as a measure against careerists (ČRo 7 2009). Thus, while in early 2010, the party had fewer than 1,000 members but 1,400 people on the waiting list (Janiš 2010), by the end of 2010, the number of members had risen to a mere 1,700 (Válková 2011). Furthermore, it was the council,4 the broader official leadership of VV, which decided upon the admission and expulsion of each individual member (Stanovy 2009). In the demands placed on prospective members and the centralisation of the admission procedure, VV was unique among Czech parties. Yet even self-protection mechanisms intended to protect it against potentially unreliable members failed to prevent internal dissent, which was greatly intensified by the public discussion about Bárta’s intentions and his hidden directorship of the party. For instance, in April 2011, the VV club in Plzeň, one of the largest cities, called for Bárta to be expelled from VV. The party centre responded in summer 2011 by further tightening its demands on members, which had already been comparatively severe. Now prospective members had to produce a declaration that they were free from debt, a statement from the state-maintained criminal record repository and a curriculum vitae. Furthermore, the party’s Board (grémium), the inner official leadership, was given the right to demand further documents that had been unspecified in the statutes (Stanovy 2011). The purpose of this tightening was to gain greater control over the membership; yet it was put into practice only when the party faced a serious wave of defections and was practically falling apart. A Failed Stabilisation Phase After the 2010 election, the coalition potential of VV proved surprisingly high, as the centre-right parties ODS and TOP 09 needed VV to form a majority government. VV was close to the centre-right parties on many economic issues, and although this was not much in evidence during the electoral campaign, it was made apparent after the election by the VV leadership as a kind

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Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček

of bridge into government.5 This flexibility secured four ministries for VV in the new government, led by Petr Nečas (ODS), including those of the interior (for John) and transport (for Bárta). This unambiguous foregrounding of an office-seeking strategy contradicted the party’s anti-establishment message, however. Indeed, such a message could hardly be deployed in a situation when VV ministers sat in government with a number of people whom they had previously described as ‘political dinosaurs’. Hence, the appeal had to be transformed, although the original message was still used on occasion by party representatives (Havlík and Hloušek 2014; Havlík 2015). Furthermore, the credibility of VV, including its main face, John, began to be undermined by the party’s obvious unpreparedness for a role in government. John, now the minister of the interior, spoke about a ‘suicide mission’ in the media, describing himself as unprepared to lead the ministry (Viktora 2010). His ratings and those of the party plummeted, as was confirmed by the party’s debacle in the October 2010 local elections, where its average across all local assemblies was fewer than 3 per cent of the vote (compare table 4.2).6 The organisational strategy of the party, particularly its wary approach to new members, contributed to the fiasco. Its sparse network of clubs resulted in many small and medium-size towns and cities being unable to put together candidate lists for the party. Similarly, the lack of ordinary district and regional structures had negative effects, as under normal circumstances, such bodies would have coordinated the campaign. The party sought to deal with the evident problem of a lost electorate by offering a new message: to this end it used blackmail to oppose the Nečas government from the inside, in particular by seeking to correct its economic and social agenda (Hloušek 2012). This was made more colourful by the party’s dramatic press conferences, threatening relatively openly from late 2010 onwards that the party would leave the government coalition. Such a step would facilitate retention of VV’s protest character. This message was accompanied by a ‘new’ face for the party: its de facto leader and minister for transport Bárta, who was becoming more visible and popular (CVVM 2011). The chances of the new party message succeeding, however, were overturned by a public discussion that raised the discrepancies between the formal and actual mechanisms of the party’s operations. First, in early March 2011, information was leaked to the media regarding a letter written by VV deputy chair Klasnová to other people in the party’s leadership. In it, she said that there was ‘a totalitarianism’ in the party, which she connected with Bárta, who was now her husband (Šťastný 2011). Shortly after this statement, the deputy chair of the party and one of its MPs, Jaroslav Škárka, defected. He described VV to the media as a party run dictatorially by Bárta, alleging he was buying the loyalty of some MPs. Even more destructive was



The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation 53

the publication in an influential daily newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes of a well-documented story identifying VV’s genesis as an economic project, the purpose of which was to obtain political power. Among other things, the paper’s exposé contained explosive information about ABL’s surveillance of politicians from competing parties. Bárta responded by resigning as minister, and Prime Minister Nečas decided in early April 2011 to push VV representatives connected with ABL out of the government, as he believed they represented a security risk. The coalition survived the crisis at the cost of a compromise: VV remained in government but its position was weakened, as the party lost the politically sensitive ministry of the interior, to which a non-partisan head had been appointed. This crisis fundamentally damaged the party’s credibility and its internal cohesion. Three MPs, including Škárka, left the party. The police started an investigation, addressing the allegation that Bárta had paid Škárka and some other MPs for their loyalty to the party. The party leadership also sought to salvage its tattered image by continuing the strategy of ‘internal opposition’ within the coalition, although this only accelerated the party’s disintegration. When in spring 2012 Bárta was brought to trial for bribing MPs, VV sought to avoid the media storm that devastated the party by creating another crisis in government and by announcing that VV ministers might leave the government. Tired of the endless disputes, ODS and TOP 09 politicians proposed calling an early election, which would spell VV’s demise, given that its popular support at the time was minimal. Furthermore, VV ministers were out of control, announcing that they would not resign after all; the party leadership then abandoned the idea of resigning from government, losing the last remnants of their authority. A final blow for VV came in April 2012, when Bárta received an eighteen-month suspended sentence for bribery.7 VV’s ministers left the party, joined by some of the party’s MPs, allowing Nečas’s government to maintain a fragile majority in the Chamber. What remained of VV was pushed into opposition; by that time, most of the members had already left the party, leaving its membership at about 700 in spring 2012 (Válková 2012). In early 2013, an attempt was made to revitalise VV’s ethos by finally making Bárta the official chair of the party; yet by that time, he was a compromised figure, and this measure could not have a positive effect. The party did not stand in the early elections in 2013 and concluded its activities two years later. ANDREJ BABIŠ’S ANO The billionaire Andrej Babiš was surprised by the rise of VV in the 2010 elections and noted that ‘a successful party can be built up fairly rapidly in

54

Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček

Czechia’ (Pergler 2014: 131). Like Bárta, Babiš was a successful businessman, although his economic potency was much greater. The Agrofert holding company owned by Babiš was a large economic empire, consisting of more than 200 firms with almost 30,000 employees, mainly in the chemicals industry and agriculture. The holding company operated throughout the country and also abroad, and its value was estimated at $1–2 billion (cf. Agrofert 2011). As Babiš built up his empire after 1989, he came into intimate contact with the political world, maintaining good relations with both Social Democrats and the Civic Democrats; yet towards the end of the twenty-first century’s first decade, these relations cooled considerably. Babiš’s steps leading towards the foundation of ANO were probably motivated much like Bárta’s; by directly entering politics, he sought to secure growth for his holding company. However, another likely motivation for Babiš was his frustration with politicians, on whose decisions he often depended. When entering politics, Babiš vented these frustrations openly (Pergler 2014), adding a strong mark of personal authenticity to his political message. Identification: ‘Yes, Things Will Get Better!’ In 2011, Babiš reinvented himself as a political leader. The billionaire, who until then had rarely appeared in public, started to communicate intensively, issuing statements such as ‘Our politicians do everything to prevent us from doing business’ or ‘People who have proved that they know how to do business and direct large companies would also be better in governing our cities and state’ (Tintl 2011; Mařík 2011). Thus, the core of his anti-establishment and, at the same time, managerial message came into being, without, however, promoting direct democracy as VV did. Most attractive to the media were Babiš’s anti-corruption appeals, such as those made when comparing the Czech Republic with Palermo in Sicily. At the heart of Babiš’s message was his own personal and business story. In the founding appeal of his initiative, entitled ‘Action of Dissatisfied Citizens’ (Akce nespokojených občanů, from which the acronym ANO was later derived), he published in several large dailies in November 2011, writing: I employ thousands of people in my firms in Czechia, pay hundreds of millions in taxes and am every bit as annoyed as you are. I am annoyed because since the revolution [of 1989] not only have our politicians proved unable to manage our country, but they watch as theft continues. I am infuriated that we live in a dysfunctional state. (ANO 2011)

From the outset of his ‘politicisation’, Babiš had to deal with frequent comparisons in the media between him and the secret leader of VV, whose



The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation 55

role was hotly debated at that time. Babiš strongly objected to such comparisons and claimed that he did not intend to get involved ‘in the manner of Mr Bárta, whose ‘secret’ get-rich projects are now known by the whole Czech Republic’ (Pšenička and Mařík 2011). The very visible way in which Babiš announced the birth of his own political project in a live TV broadcast on a popular late night show at the end of September 2011, to which he had been invited, was evidently motivated by attempts not only to garner the greatest public attention possible but also to present himself as ‘non-Bárta’. Symptomatically, Babiš also sought to pre-empt speculation about the lack of transparency in the funding of the new political project, declaring openly that he was ‘the one who pays for it all’ (Dolejší 2012). Indeed, in the early days, ANO obtained an overwhelming share of its funding from Babiš and his companies (ANO 2012). Remarkable verbal acrobatics were integral to Babiš’s message: he criticised all politicians; openly constructed a new party, which he nevertheless described as a ‘movement’; and consistently rejected the idea that he himself was becoming a politician. In his founding appeal, he claimed that he only wanted to manage the new entity, and indeed, for some time, he unsuccessfully sought to find a publicly known personality who could head his project. Officially, Babiš claimed that he did not want to be leader because he was unsuited for the job – given the ongoing public discussions about how he had become rich and other issues. He himself said at the time: ‘I am one of those opportunists who during the ancien régime crawled into the [communist] party in order to be able to travel abroad; I am probably not a historical moral ideal’ (Kubátová 2011). Other problematic facets of Babiš’s profile were that he had probably collaborated with State Security – that is, the secret police of the communist regime (an allegation he denied) – and that, being of Slovak origin, he did not speak Czech well. Babiš did, however, learn from Bárta’s mistake, and at the founding congress of ANO in August 2012, he had himself elected by delegates as chair of the party, a fact he commented on, stating that there was ‘no point in searching for some sort of trained puppet’ (Válková and Dolejší 2012). He could not have distanced himself from the pairing of Bárta–John more clearly. Nevertheless, until summer 2013, Babiš refused to stand for election to parliament and to serve as the leader for parliamentary elections. Evidently, he later changed his mind. He decided to keep ANO firmly under his control and not to split the power with any person who would lead the campaign. This was due to the experience he had gained building up his party. He also sought to repudiate the label of ‘Public Affairs Mark II’, which the media attached to his party, by keeping openly both the position of the party leader and the leader of the electoral campaign. Similar to Bárta in 2010, Babiš could also profit from the serious crisis affecting existing politics, which culminated in

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Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček

an enormous scandal that swept away Nečas’s government in June 2013. The police raided the Office of the Government, arresting Nečas’s chief of staff (and lover), as well as several former MPs of the ODS and heads of military intelligence. This weakened not only the governmental parties ODS and TOP 09 but, due to intra-party wrangling and disputes with President Zeman, ČSSD as well. As a consequence of the political crisis, popular trust in the political classes plummeted again, while the support for Babiš’s ANO increased sharply by contrast. Babiš himself was actively involved in soliciting support for his political venture, not only by undertaking intensive media training and preparation for televised debates. He was able to deploy Agrofert’s serious resources, sometimes in ways that were only borderline legal. Thus, shortly before the elections, Babiš, as owner of Agrofert, appeared as a chicken seller in a TV advertisement, launched on a massive scale, for one of the poultry firms owned by his holding company. In the Czech Republic, political publicity on private TV and radio stations is forbidden; however, the media regulator accepted the argument that Babiš was not a politician. Crucial to Babiš’s success was his critique of the political establishment, as embodied in the effective slogan ‘We are not like politicians, we knuckle down!’ used during the campaign for the 2013 election. Another slogan used while campaigning was already contained in Babiš’s founding appeal of November 2011, according to which ‘the state was to be managed like a prosperous firm’ (ANO 2011). This promise to transfer private sector efficiency into the public sector relied on Babiš’s personal abilities and experience managing a large corporation (Havlík 2015). Just prior to the election, ANO’s original election manifesto regarding the state’s being managed as a firm was reformulated into an endeavour to transform the Czech Republic to an ‘inexpensive and lean state’. This was because the surveys the party had commissioned revealed some voters had perceived the original slogan as a threat to democracy. Babiš subsequently modified his rhetoric and spoke more carefully of his intention to ‘manage the state with due care’ (Rovenský 2013). To this, campaign-makers added the emotionally loaded slogan about doing things, ‘So that our children would want to live here’. The hope Babiš’s party sought to embody was projected via another widely used catchphrase that utilised the party’s name: ‘Yes, things will get better’ (ANO, bude líp). Supported by a professional campaign, ANO’s message secured the party second place in the 2013 election. Organisation: Business-Firm-Style Management and Centralisation In its early days in particular, ANO, similar to VV, sought to attract registered supporters and, at the time of its founding congress in August 2012, indicated



The Role of Leader in the Process of Institutionalisation 57

that it had about 20,000 of them, about the same number as VV had boasted at its zenith (Kreč 2012). The position of these supporters was not anchored in the statutes in any way, however, and their main purpose seems to have been to present ANO as a broad social movement. From late 2011 onwards, the building of ANO was overseen by a small group of people clustered around Babiš in the Prague headquarters of Agrofert. The business environment of Agrofert affected the manner in which the cadres were chosen, in particular who would create ANO’s territorial structures. Unlike VV, these structures were created at all levels from local to regional. The method adopted was to prevent a show of disloyalty, and in this ANO was probably influenced by the recent experience of VV. The most remarkable aspects of this process were human-resources-style checks, including psychological testing, which the founders of these structures, the so-called coordinators, had to undertake at Agrofert headquarters. The process of enrolment of ANO’s first cadres was thus very similar to corporate employee recruitment. These coordinators were also the first members of the party. The same procedure was used to recruit those ANO candidates standing for election to the upper chamber of Parliament in 2012, the first elections in which the party contested (Kopeček 2016). However, even this course of action failed to secure absolute loyalty. The representatives of the regional organisations elected in early 2013 were often not connected with Agrofert and showed independent political ambitions. The second congress of ANO in March 2013 smoothly confirmed Babiš in his role as the party’s chair, although in electing other party representatives the delegates only partially respected Babiš’s will, and unexpectedly from his perspective, most of the deputy chairs were taken by representatives from the regional organisations. After the congress, a conflict flared up between Babiš and most of his new deputy chairs, the essence of which was that the latter sought to obtain actual influence over the decision-making processes at ANO (Koděra 2013; Dostál 2014). The conflict was soon over, as the dissatisfied deputy chairs resigned their party offices and quit the party. Not only could the founding father use the strong argument that it was he himself who fully funded the party, but the statutes concentrated most of the power in ANO in his hands, since they allowed him, in his capacity as party chair, to act independently in all matters (Stanovy ANO 2013). Thus, at what was a critical moment, the leader’s domination was reinforced by formal rules. The strictly centralist conception of the statutes also allowed Babiš to monitor the selection of the new chairs of regional organisations who were to replace those who resigned. According to ANO statutes, the power to confirm regional heads in office lay with the party presidium, which was staffed with people loyal to Babiš. The conflict that preceded the early parliamentary election in 2013 did not jeopardise ANO. The party opted for a centralised and professionalised

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Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček

campaign in which hired election experts and the U.S. agency PSB, which provided polling, played fundamental roles.8 In terms of funding, the campaign could draw on the leader’s almost unlimited resources, and indeed ANO’s campaign was the most expensive of all the parties standing for election (Králiková 2014). Key decisions ahead of the 2013 election were made in a semi-informal narrow circle around the leader. The composition of this circle varied, depending on the issue under discussion, although generally it was comprised of hired electoral experts and members of the presidium (Matušková 2015; Kopeček 2016). This semi-informal circle was also crucial for staffing the top places on ANO’s candidate lists. It largely sought to nominate public figures (e.g. a popular actor, a well-known political commentator and several successful businessmen and managers), hoping that they would provide the greatest contribution to the party’s electoral success. However, the regional organisations did manage to push through their preferred candidates in some cases, not least because the personal resources of the centre were limited. From the second half of 2013 onwards, the party’s improving opinion poll ratings significantly enhanced popular interest in standing for election on ANO’s ticket or in becoming a member. Babiš’s party, however, screened both election candidates and prospective members, arguing, like VV, that it needed to protect itself from careerists. Prospective members of ANO had to attach a curriculum vitae to their application, as well as a statutory declaration that they were free from debt, had no criminal record and agreed with the party’s moral code. The candidates for membership then had to wait for a period of six months. The admission of every member had to be approved by the presidium of the party, and this body could also expel members, for rather vague reasons. The presidium therefore acted as a gatekeeper. The conditions set by ANO were largely similar to the admission procedure in VV, which, however, adopted strict measures only when it was already falling into disrepute. The effect of this in ANO was that of the 7,000 candidates who sought membership at the time of the 2013 election, only a small proportion were accepted. The membership of Babiš’s party rose from 800 in June 2013 to 2,700 in April 2015 (Smlsal 2013; Válková 2015). Routinisation and Successful Crisis Management The results of the 2013 elections provided ANO with a much better political position than that obtained by VV in the 2010 elections. Not only did ANO poll a greater share of the vote; more importantly, it was only narrowly behind the formal winner of the elections, the Social Democrats (ČSSD). That party’s result was the worst since the early 1990s; its pre-election assumption that it would be in a position to form a single-party minority



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government, supported in parliament by the communists in order to achieve a majority, had proved unrealistic. The combination of ČSSD’s poor showing in the election, its internal disputes and the unwillingness of the centre-right parties (which were decimated in the election) to engage in government all led to an unexpected solution. The new government consisted of ČSSD, ANO and the Christian Democrats as a junior partner. ANO obtained a third of the government portfolios, including very importantly the ministry of finance position for Babiš. Unlike VV in 2010, ANO received a serious bonus at the point it joined the government: the economic recession ended and boom returned. This improved the mood in society and positively affected the perception of ANO and its leader. During 2014, Babiš became the most trusted politician (CVVM 2016), and ANO the strongest party, according to the opinion polls. These developments were supported by a partial transformation of the party’s existing profile, a necessary consequence of its move from opposition to government. ANO did not follow the strategy adopted by VV; it did not wish to position itself by blackmailing the government from inside, and it avoided Bárta’s approach of constantly causing conflicts within the government. Given that ANO’s position was almost equal to that of the prime minister’s party, and that the economic situation was favourable, such a strategy would have made little sense. Still the ANO leader’s conflict of interests that resulted from combining the office of finance minister with his ownership of one of the country’s largest economic empires provided impetus for attacks made by Social and Christian democratic politicians as well as opposition parties. Nevertheless, the desire of both Social and Christian Democrats to keep the government working in the long term prevailed, and they sought not to escalate the dispute over Babiš’s conflict of interests. The caution expressed by Babiš’s coalition partners was most conspicuous in March 2016, when a scandal connected with Babiš erupted, concerning the potential misuse of a large subsidy awarded to the recreational facilities at Stork Nest Farm. However, the other government parties did not push for Babiš’s resignation. There was a turn in affairs towards the end of the government’s term, when Babiš’s business importantly affected relationships in the government. The first big conflict was not directly linked with his business. In mid-2016, relations within the government were disrupted when a controversial decision was taken, backed by the Social Democratic interior minister, to reorganise special police units. ANO protested in strong terms. Babiš took advantage of this case to revive his party’s anti-corruption appeal, interpreting the reorganisation (in accordance with the opinion of some senior police officers) as the end of the anti-corruption drive. Shortly thereafter, relations in the coalition deteriorated further when the Social and Christian Democrats decided to support

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in parliament an amendment to the Conflict of Interests Act, which limited the conduct of business activities by individuals holding government office; and which symptomatically was dubbed ‘Lex Babiš’. Parliament passed the amendment, despite fierce resistance mounted by ANO, and forced Babiš formally to relinquish his ownership of the Agrofert holding company, which he transferred into a trust funds but nevertheless continued to control indirectly. This was followed by a debate about alleged tax fraud by the minister of finance. Babiš had bought bonds from Agrofert worth $70 million in 2013 and 2014, apparently avoiding taxes, because the interest payments on bonds were exempt from tax. In March 2017, the deputies of the Social and Christian Democrats and most of the opposition deputies voted for a resolution requesting Babiš to dispel the suspicion of tax avoidance. As his defence, Babiš styled himself ‘the only just person’, who was being pushed out of politics on trumped-up charges. The conflict within the government coalition climaxed two months later when, having undertaken some serious and not entirely politically adroit manoeuvring, Prime Minister Sobotka succeeded in having Babiš removed from his government. In consequence, in the eyes of ANO voters, this merely confirmed Babiš as a victim of attacks by the ‘old’ parties. Formally, the government coalition continued in office, but in reality it was merely a caretaker cabinet serving until parliamentary elections were held in October 2017. Immediately before these elections, intra-coalition relations deteriorated further still. In connection with the case of Stork Nest Farm noted earlier, the police requested that Andrej Babiš’s immunity be lifted by the Chamber of Deputies, to allow him to be prosecuted for his alleged fraud involving EU subsidies. The prosecution of Babiš and Jaroslav Faltýnek, his first deputy in ANO who was likewise involved in the case, became a crucial theme of electoral campaigning, and MPs of all other parties supported the lifting of Babiš’s immunity. By contrast, ANO MPs were all against, and ANO ministers as well as local and regional representatives supported their leader. Neither was the loyalty of the party elite towards their leader significantly disrupted by other controversies surrounding Babiš. Similarly, local organisations failed to register their dissatisfaction with his leadership. The ANO elite and the party on the ground rallied tightly around Babiš. The party not only survived the shock; it went on to win the 2017 parliamentary elections by a substantial margin. This contrasts sharply with the quick collapse of the VV, which had found itself in a similar situation five years earlier. Loyalty and discipline in ANO during the crucial year 2017 was based on its long-term strategy of protecting the internal organisational stability of the party. After 2013, carefully devised ‘protection mechanisms’ were gradually introduced in the party, routinising party life. In the preceding section on party organisation, we noted the strict conditions that applied to prospective



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members. In practice, these conditions were adhered to, including the sixmonth waiting period, which was waived only exceptionally for particularly welcome members  – typically, local notables (Dvořák 2017; Pustějovský 2018). At the February 2015 party congress, the conditions of membership were made stricter still. For example, instead of making a statutory declaration that they had no criminal record, prospective members were required to produce a statement from the state criminal record repository. Furthermore, a new requirement appeared in the statutes according to which members had to notify the central party office if they were subject to ‘any proceedings, especially criminal or offence proceedings’ (Stanovy ANO 2015, Article 5). The party also responded to the fact that the vetting of candidate MPs before the 2013 elections had failed to prevent scandals9 and tightened the vetting procedure before the 2014 local elections, which ANO won (see table 4.2). Several thousand people standing for election on ANO’s candidate lists (of which only a minority were party members) were subjected to screenings. The vetting was supervised by the general manager of the party, whose team first collected all that it could about the candidates’ past from publicly available sources (such as previous memberships of other parties and debts). They then interviewed the candidates individually. In terms of their scope and aim, these screenings had no parallel among post-1989 Czech parties; however, analogies to them can be found in the former communist era. Having vetted its candidates, ANO reordered some of its candidate lists substantially, struck off a number of candidates entirely and even completely scrapped some lists (Stuchlíková 2014; Matušková 2015). Despite these measures, internal conflicts flared up in local party organisations in a number of municipalities throughout 2015. These were usually connected with the fact that varying opinions and interests of the party representatives became manifest in municipal bodies. The approach ordinarily taken by the ANO presidium in such situations was harsh (although supported by the statutes); it often expelled members and sometimes even shut down entire local organisations, even in the bigger cities. Efforts to maximise control over the party’s functioning necessitated further changes to its statutes. For instance, after the 2015 party congress, the presidium newly obtained the power to nominate candidates for elections of all types. This supplemented the existing party leadership’s power to freely amend the candidate lists. At the 2017 party congress, the party leader was granted the final say: now, even after the candidate lists for elections are approved, the leader can freely amend them, reorder the candidates or strike them off (Stanovy ANO 2017, Article 11). In practice, this granted an extremely strong position to the party elite and its leader. Combined with strict control of the party on the ground, it proved a tremendously powerful instrument, preventing any insubordination within

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the party. This became clear as early as the 2016 regional elections, which the party won. In contrast to earlier local elections, disputes that disrupted the party’s regional representation were rare. Similarly, regional organisations were timid when putting together candidate lists for the 2017 parliamentary elections, as they were acutely aware that the leadership could easily amend these lists. In practice, the leadership felt compelled to make substantial amendments to the lists in a few regions only. The intra-party ‘protection mechanisms’, however, would have been inefficient without a particular mentality pervading ANO, which displayed a similar mind-set and allowed values to permeate freely. Crucial for this mentality was the common professional managerial and business background shared by about two-thirds of the party elite (comprising its MPs, ministers, regional city mayors, members of the party presidium and top staffers in party headquarters; Cirhan and Kopecký 2017). In the VV, the professional backgrounds of the party elite were much more varied than this. ANO party cohesion was further reinforced by some carefully thought-out measures. For instance, immediately after the 2013 elections, ANO MPs underwent a teambuilding exercise, the purposes of which were to become mutually acquainted and for the party to deliver an image of cohesion, as prior to the elections some of them did not even know the party leader personally. Paradoxically, the attacks on Babiš over his business ‘sins’ further improved party cohesion, as the parliamentary party rallied behind him (Pustějovský 2018; Kolovratník 2018). An important motivation for the loyalty of both the elite and the party on the ground was the continued strong public support for ANO, securing electoral successes and many attractive offices at all levels of politics. Despite the controversies, Babiš remained one of the most popular politicians, although his ratings decreased during the year 2017 – from 46 per cent in February to 36 per cent in September (CVVM 2017). Media support was crucial to maintain this popularity. In 2013, Babiš took over one of the country’s largest media groups, which publishes two national daily newspapers, Mladá fronta Dnes and Lidové noviny, as well as the news websites associated with these dailies. In practice, this secured ‘accommodating neutrality’ towards ANO on the part of some journalists, which proved important at the time of the 2017 shock. ANO’s extraordinarily effective use of social networks has been even more important for the party. It has allowed ANO to establish a permanent communication channel with voters, strengthening their loyalty. It is noteworthy that a special division for new media was established at ANO headquarters, and Babiš’s Facebook profile had among the most followers and friends of any Czech politician. VV, by contrast, was not as media-savvy, nor so well equipped. That party’s most important medium was a magazine, distributed free of charge and linked to the party, bearing its name (Stauber 2015a: 143).



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ANO brought its political profile closer to the mainstream. It transformed its early anti-political, anti-party and protest appeals, without abandoning them completely. After the 2013 elections, Babiš repeated that he still did not consider himself a politician, despite being a minister. In rhetorical terms, he eventually came up with catchy slogans, attacking ‘traditional politicians’ and ‘traditional parties’. This plausibly distinguished the party from the Social Democrats, with whom it was in coalition, and from the opposition right, which was still encumbered by the legacies of the preceding era. Babiš continued skilfully to exploit the public’s negative perception of the political class, without thereby finding himself in the same category. Politically, ANO placed its bets on the strategy of maintaining the image of a technocratic and competent party, successfully managing state finances and acting to resolve people’s problems effectively. Its most iconic achievement has been the system of electronic sales records launched in late 2016, applicable to all pointof-sale systems. In essence, this mammoth IT project gives the tax authorities the ability to check every business transaction in the country. Babiš presented this (and other achievements in fighting tax evasion) as his personal success. A telling indication of ANO’s technocratic and managerial profile was its key slogan for the local elections in autumn 2014: ‘We’ll simply do it’. Similarly, for the regional elections two years later – which brought an end to the policies of the mostly Social Democratic regional governors hitherto, largely decried by ANO as incompetent – the party used this slogan: ‘To manage the region as a firm’. This was in fact only a minor modification of the party’s slogan for the 2013 parliamentary elections, when it was ‘the state’ that was to be managed as a firm. In the introduction to its manifesto for the 2017 parliamentary elections, ANO described citizens as shareholders in the ‘great family firm, which is called the Czech Republic’. ANO’s joining of European liberal structures (ALDE) did not significantly affect the party. This declaration of liberal allegiances did not create the need for the party to anchor itself more firmly in liberal ideology. Its manifestos and statutes, it is true, featured an espousal of liberty as a key value; however, this was completely overshadowed by the technocratic visions it promoted. A continuous ideological vagueness has paralleled ANO’s high political flexibility. The prosecution of the leader minimised the party’s coalition potential and forced on it even more flexibility. The overconfident winner of the 2017 parliamentary election became bogged down in bargaining for many months, failing to reach his goal of winning parliamentary confidence for his minority government. Among the parties whom Babiš approached, asking them to tolerate his government, were the Communists and the radical right Freedom and Direct Democracy party. Paradoxically, due to its irreplaceable leader, after the 2017 elections, ANO was much less acceptable to other parties than it had been in 2013. Whereas in terms of its organisation, ANO

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successfully withstood a major crisis, its role in Czech politics has become less stable and more ambiguous. ORGANISATION AS A KEY FACTOR IN INSTITUTIONALISATION If we compare the evolution of the two parties, it is immediately apparent that VV and its leader Vít Bárta successfully managed the identification phase, but that their mistakes during the organisation phase caused a failure in terms of stabilisation, which meant that the party collapsed during its institutionalisation. Compared to VV, the ANO project thus far has been much more successful. Like VV, ANO sailed through the phase of identification, but it also navigated the organisation phase well, creating robust, routine internal mechanisms that secured homogeneity. At the same time, there was a very efficient value infusion, affecting both ANO party members and its electorate. As a result, ANO successfully survived its 2017 crisis. Thanks to this, ANO has become very resilient and, in contrast to VV, managed to survive the shock created by extreme external pressures. Both leaders proved to be very efficient managers in the identification phase, and as politicians, they exploited the crisis in traditional political representation and the hunger for new parties and personalities effectively, while successfully developing their anti-establishment, anti-political and anti-party appeals. Evidently, a combination of a promise to fight corruption with a successful representation of new figures not as politicians but as experts (as in ANO), or as tribunes of the people (as in VV), or a pretence to this effect, is a viable strategy. In terms of analysing the factors that contributed to successful voter identification with the party, an important insight is the following: neither Bárta nor Babiš was, strictly speaking, a charismatic leader in the classical sense but primarily ‘political managers’ who were able to put their finger on the pulse of the nation, assemble a sufficiently professional team of collaborators to lead the campaign, secure funding and organise a centralised system for putting together candidate lists featuring figures attractive to the electorate. It is more interesting to compare the diverging paths of both parties during the phase of organisation. Indeed, it is here that the clue to explaining the difference in performance of VV and ANO can be sought. Although understandable with regard to the VV election slogans and the nature and objectives of ABL, Bárta’s strategy of dual leadership (formal and actual) of his party caused problems as early as the 2010 elections. Bárta’s position, which was unclear to the public, instigated intra-party conflicts, defections and undesirable media attention, ultimately unravelling the party. This highlights an



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important element of Babiš’s success. Although he attempted to present himself as a non-politician, his leading role in the new party was entirely public and he never sought to hide the fact that he was the party’s mover and shaker. By doing so, he increased the credibility of his project in the public eye, guaranteeing it with the weight of his personality. He also made it easy for himself to intervene in his party’s operations openly, largely in accordance with its formal rules, and hence also more efficiently. Thus, Babiš has been able to succeed where Bárta had failed. He constructed the party’s internal mechanisms such as to be able to control intra-party dissent and easily eliminate its instigators. In terms of the Harmel-Svåsand theory, Babiš now has only one more thing to do with regard to his party organisation: complement the elements of strategic management with consensual elements, in particular with respect to the party’s territorial organisations. Our analysis shows that the problems that emerged in VV in the organisation phase were also manifest in the stabilisation phase. In a way, Bárta also attempted to deploy a double-dealing strategy towards his coalition partners. The endeavour to act as ‘opposition’ within the government and thereby save the party’s protest appeal, the cornerstone of its strategy for alluring voters, caused two problems. The combination of government engagement with the growing scandals that accompanied the party’s organisation discredited this appeal. It also created unnecessary conflicts with other parties in government, and ultimately within the VV leadership itself, causing a break-up in the party, part of which remained in Petr Nečas’s coalition government. By contrast, Andrej Babiš, partly responding to VV’s experience, deftly sensed the point when tactics and rhetoric had to be modified. ANO was also helped by an economic boom, which the party could present as its own success; its ability to effectively communicate its policy to the electorate; and the ‘accommodating neutrality’ some important media showed towards the party, which proved particularly helpful during the 2017 external pressures. Despite some issues (such as the unwillingness on the part of the Minister of Finance Babiš to ‘waste time’ answering parliamentary questions), the popular perception of ANO as a competent technocratic party becoming an established player in the Czech party system holds. The gradual transformation of ANO from combatant into a capable and credible government party did not, however, mean the party’s complete abandonment of its protest appeal. Involved in coalition governance, Babiš skilfully managed to act the role of a ‘non-traditional politician’, who is being attacked by the negatively portrayed ‘traditional politicians’. However, the stabilisation of ANO’s relationship with other actors in the Czech party system remains unachieved. The rather promising beginnings after the 2013 elections have been called into question by the discussions about Babiš’s controversial business ‘sins’. The final evaluation of ANO’s stabilisation phase will be possible only in the future.

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CONCLUSION In this study, we have applied the Harmel-Svåsand model of party institutionalisation to two Czech entrepreneurial parties, the VV and the ANO. We have confirmed the analytical utility of the Harmel-Svåsand model and shown how crucial the phase of organisation is to entrepreneurial-party institutionalisation. The example of VV demonstrates clearly how attempts to mask the actual decision-making mechanisms in the party or the identity of the real leader can backfire. Experimenting too much with unusual models of membership (such as the idea of registering supporters who are not actual members) is also dangerous. In this sense, ANO chose a more transparent organisation with managerial and centralised governance; in this it was influenced by its business-firm origins, with the founding father playing a central, indeed dominant role. Thus far, this model has allowed the political entrepreneur to exploit ANO as an efficient political and electoral vehicle, and thanks to its professional communications, the party manages to uphold a good public image. From the point of view of Harmel, Svåsand and Mjelde (chapter 2), we can compare the achievements of VV and ANO in terms of the three dimensions of institutionalisation: (1) VV was neither able to survive the political failure of its leadership nor cope well with the routinisation of its decisionmaking processes, which remained till the end, more than anything else, an improvisation driven by the narrow circle of its informal party elite. (2) Other relevant actors recognised the party in the phase of its electoral success in the 2010 elections, but failed to maintain this recognition while facing the rapid disintegration of the party in 2011–2012. (3) The reason for such a quick collapse as well as for the disappearance of the party elite from political life was the inability of VV to manage and survive the first real shock related to the scandals surrounding its internal mechanisms of decision making and intra-party control. From all these three points of view, ANO embodies a much more convincing example than VV of the specific way in which an entrepreneurial party can become institutionalised. Pro tempore, ANO seems to cope well with all three dimensions (internal/organisational institutionalisation; perception by other actors; survival record of durability), as a party learning from its mistakes as well as from external shocks and challenges. Still, it is not possible to conclude that full and final institutionalisation has taken place, given the fact that the hardest test is yet to come: the replacement of the leader of the party in the future, an issue which becomes more important the closer a party gets to the entrepreneurial party model. Our findings also imply that a highly managerial party, organised as a business firm on the inside yet gravitating towards the mainstream in its external activities with other parties in the party system, can be highly effective.



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Evidently, this was the combination that allowed ANO’s organisational success. This insight provides an interesting starting point for further studies of entrepreneurial parties in central and western Europe. Naturally, problematic consequences in terms of the intra-party democracy of such an organisation present a serious topic for further discussion, although this is beyond the scope of the present text. Only time will tell whether ANO’s organisational model is sustainable in the long term in its present form. NOTES 1. This article was supported by the Czech Science Foundation grant The Political Entrepreneurs: The Czech Republic in Comparative Perspective (code GA17– 02226S). This chapter is the updated and modified version of Hloušek and Kopeček (2017). The authors would like to thank Vlastimil Havlík and Grigorij Mesežnikov for their useful comments on this article and Štěpán Kaňa for the translation of the text. 2. Towards the end of the electoral term, two-thirds of voters were dissatisfied with the political situation (CVVM 2010b). To illustrate the scandals of the times, the social-democratic Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies had to relinquish his seat after he had handed a large sum of money to his assistant in a brown paper bag – allegedly he was returning monies, the origin of which was unclear. 3. District-level organisations were never created. 4. This was not the same body as the ‘Conceptual Council’, which was not mentioned in statutes. 5. It is worth quoting here from the already-mentioned VV Ethical Code dated 2009, which espoused a ‘minimal state theory’; such a state was desirable in that the greatest possible scope of public administration activities would be outsourced, and ABL hoped to be awarded some of these public contracts. The code also assumed that the party would obtain a share of political power ‘by an agreement with the elites’ (Kodex 2009). 6. This number does not include election coalitions that the party formed in some places. 7. A few months later, a superior court annulled the verdict, but this did not have any further political impact. 8. In the past, this agency worked for such figures as Michael Bloomberg (the mayor of New York City), Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. 9. The party had to prevail upon one of its MPs (who was also the chair of one of its regional organisations) to resign his seat after the media started to discuss his controversial pre-1989 ‘sins’ as well as the fact that he owed a substantial amount of money in taxes.

Chapter 5

Institutionalisation of New Political Parties in Argentina: The Case of Propuesta Republicana Party1 Cristian Altavilla

PRO (‘PROPUESTA REPUBLICANA’ PARTY): A CASE STUDY Since the return of democracy to Argentina in December 1983, a significant number of new political parties have emerged in the national political arena. MODIN, FREPASO, AR, RECREAR, ARI, Frente Renovador, Pogresistas and Libres del Sur are some of the actors appearing on the scene after the democratisation process began. The emergence of these new political parties began to break the bipartyism in Argentina between the two historical and traditional major parties of the country: Partido Justicialista (PJ) and Unión Cívica Radical (UCR). All those new political parties, however, have failed to succeed in two challenges: in institutionalising and in expanding their party organisation nationwide (Altavilla 2014). Consequently, most of them could not extend their existence in time, being reduced to the very minimum, or else disappearing entirely. This chapter takes as a case study the evolution and performance of the newest political party in Argentina: Propuesta Republicana (PRO). PRO is one of the newest actors in this broad constellation. So far, PRO has shown a performance and a degree of institutionalisation (or lack of it) similar to the most important new political parties created in the past three decades: strong personalisation and an organisational structure limited to a reduced area of performance (broadly, to metropolitan areas). PRO was not a split or a merger from other traditional parties,2 but rather was created from scratch, being a combination of elements from traditional parties3 and new politicians. Even the founding leader, Mauricio Macri himself, was an outsider. But what is even more important is that PRO, unlike any of these other new parties, has won the presidential office (in the election of November 2015). 69

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Despite its similarities to other new parties, PRO managed to do what the other new parties could not, making this case a potentially unique case for the analysis. While on the one hand, PRO managed to advance much more than the rest, on the other hand, it remains the personal vehicle of its leader and founder, Mr Macri. Macri started his political career as an outsider; his image has been closely linked with the business sector, especially through his father, Franco, founder of ‘Grupo Macri’ – one of the most important business clusters in Argentina. Mauricio Macri held several management and executive-level positions in leading companies of the country, but he became famous in 1995 when he was elected president of the world-famous Boca Juniors Football Club. The question arises whether party institutionalisation had anything to do with the party’s electoral victories – and if so, to what degree has PRO actually institutionalised? Taking the concept of institutionalisation as a process (Panebianco 1982; Randall and Svåsand 2002; Basedau and Stroh 2008), I will describe the evolution of this party as an organisation from its creation to today, its transformation from a district party to a national party, the number of elections in which it took part, and its internal organisation. In describing and measuring institutionalisation, the article follows the three dimensions suggested by Harmel, Svåsand and Mjelde (chapter 2 of this book): (1) internal institutionalisation, (2) external institutionalisation and (3) objective durability (‘objective’ institutionalisation). The chapter ends with some preliminary conclusions about the degree of institutionalisation reached by PRO so far on each one of these dimensions. INTERNAL INSTITUTIONALISATION: ROUTINISATION AND VALUE INFUSION Internal institutionalisation focuses on the internal behaviours and attitudes within the organisation. From a negative point of view, it means either no personalisation or depersonalisation of a party. This is, perhaps, the most critical dimension for a party in Argentina, bringing the tension between the organisation and its leader into sharper focus.4 Internal institutionalisation is two-dimensional, encompassing routinisation and internal value infusion. Routinisation Routinisation is understood as ‘stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior’ (Huntington 1968) or ‘recurring patterns of behaviour valued by those who identify with it’ (Janda as cited in Harmel et al.: chapter 2). Harmel and Svåsand characterise routinisation as involving the extent to which ‘the



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party has become part of the “routines” of other relevant actors (Harmel and Svåsand, 1989: 10)’ (quoted by Harmel et al.: chapter 2). More specifically, Levitsky, following Douglas North, Ronald Jepperson and Guillermo O’Donnell’s works, defines routinisation as the process by which the ‘rules of the game’, or patterns of behaviour that shape individual interaction, become entrenched or firmly established (1998). Harmel et al.’s concept of ‘routinisation’ is identical to ‘systemness’ defined by Randall and Svåsand, who define ‘regularity’ as the ‘degree of routinization, and the development of prevalent conventions guiding behaviour’ (2002: 13). Routinisation can be demonstrated by two kinds of evidence: (1) written rules that are perceived as legitimate by party leaders as well as the memberships and (2) actual behaviour, regardless of those written rules. Concerning external written rules, in Argentina, there are some relevant legal dispositions regulating the creation and functioning of political parties. First, political parties have constitutional recognition since the 1994 national constitution reform (Article 38), which provides protection for parties’ existence as well as state support. Second, since the beginning of the twentieth century, different ordinary laws have regulated political parties. One of the most important is the so-called Organic Law on Political Parties (Law No. 23.298/1985, currently in force). Among other dispositions, this law establishes the requisites a party must meet in order to be recognised as such: it must submit a party charter, the name of the party, a manifesto, a declaration of principles, the statutes and an act of appointment of its authorities (see Altavilla 2014). Through the judicial branch, the state exercises ideological and financial control over political parties. In addition, the party has to prove the adherence of a number of electors exceeding four per thousand (0.4 ‰) of the total number of electors registered in the country. Every political party has to enact its own regulations and rules, stating its governing bodies, the selection of party authorities and candidates by means of internal elections and the like. The existence of this legal regulation contributes to some extent to the process of institutionalisation of both the party system and the individual parties (Randall and Svåsand 2002). However, the actual observance of legal rules is not guaranteed in practice. It is a common feature of Argentine political parties to constantly modify, rewrite or amend their own internal rules: ‘Rather than being entrenched or “taken for granted”, the rules laid out by the party charter are constantly circumvented or manipulated to suit the shortterm political needs of the leadership. Provincial party charters, for example, are routinely modified to allow non-party candidates, or candidates residing in other provinces, to participate in gubernatorial and legislative elections’ (Levitsky 1998: 83; see also Carrizo 2012 for more examples of internal institutional reforms produced by PJ and UCR and Abal Medina 2009 for the specific case of the Frente País Solidario – FREPASO – party).

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One issue particularly ignored by parties is the selection of candidates by means of internal elections. Legal dispositions force political parties to hold internal elections.5 But even with the enactment of the ‘Democratization of Political Representation, Transparency and Fairness of Electoral Process’ Law (law no. 26.571) in 2009,6 which mandates political parties hold obligatory, simultaneous and open internal elections before any general election, political parties in Argentina often chose other mechanisms to select their candidates. Mark Jones et al. have identified three major party groups that influence the candidate selection for an elected office: (1) the national party organisation, (2) the district or provincial party organisation and (3) the electorate (2002: 224). These correspond to three distinct methods to nominate candidates: (1) as imposition by party leader (national or local), (2) through agreements between district party leaders, and (3) through the vote of the electorate (open primaries) or the affiliated (closed primaries) (Tula and De Luca 2012: 76; Jones et al. 2002). Primaries are not widely practised by political parties in Argentina; that is, they have not been routinised.7 This is the case especially for minor political parties: ‘the practice of holding primary differentiated notoriously Peronist and Radical from “national third forces”, which in a large majority have resorted to agreements between leaders to draw up the list of candidates’ (Tula and De Luca 2012: 76). PRO has not been an exception, at least regarding the major candidacies (mayors, governors and presidential candidates). Rather, nominations are made by appointment from the leader.8 The first internal election within the party took place in 2015, between two leaders of PRO who wanted to run as candidate for mayor of Buenos Aires (Gabriela Michetti and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta – two of party leader Macri’s closest associates).9 Leaving aside this case, PRO has never elected its candidates by internal election. This inconsistency between written rules and actual behaviour reveals that the party lacks a functioning bureaucratic hierarchy and a stable career path. For instance, the organs established by Party Charter (the Directive Council and the Assemble) are, in practice, irrelevant (i.e. they are in the charge of people with a close linkage to the leader). Albeit PRO is too new to have demonstrated ‘recurring patterns of behavior’ in practice, these examples should be enough evidence to conclude that the party does not differ greatly from the common denominator and consequently the low degree of institutionalisation in this respect. This dissonance between written rules and actual behaviour is related to the personalistic character of the party: decisions that should have been taken according to procedures regulated by (internal or external) rules have been supplemented by the leader’s decisions. The absence of institutionalisation in this regard has allowed the leader to have much greater freedom of manoeuvre (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999: 308).



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Internal Value Infusion A second internal sub-dimension of internal institutionalisation is the valuation of the party in itself, beyond its original goals and leaders. Value infusion occurs when the party is reified in the public mind, when the organisation is valued for itself. This valuation could come from the members of the party, as well as from the rest of society. In the first case, it is referred to as internal value infusion, and it occurs through the development of a stable membership base and when it experiences minimal defections. PRO has had minimal defections during its life. Since the party was founded, it has been able to maintain and recruit a stable group of members (especially technicians and professionals) – an achievement attributed to its leader’s abilities.10 While external value infusion (which will be addressed later) can be measured through the number of votes obtained in elections – or more properly, the stable core electorate – the number of affiliates11 reflects the internal aspect. The number of affiliations is an objective criterion that measures the support and the popular base of any party. In this regard, according to data from 2014, PRO has 107,893 affiliations across the country, which amounts to 1.6 per cent of total affiliations in the country. Though it actually ranks fifth among thirty-two national political parties recognised by the judicial authority,12 the number is still quite small. This reveals that the party could not be defined as a mass party and shows its superficial penetration into civil society (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999: 308). Starting in 2003 with just 4,905 affiliates located only at the federal capital, the party began to quickly expand its organisation to other constituencies, and consequently, increased the number of memberships. The party experienced two significant quantitative leaps: in 2007 it increased up to 27,288 affiliates found in ten of the twenty-four constituencies, becoming a national order party,13 and in 2010 it reached more than one hundred thousand affiliations in twenty-one constituencies. Still, the number is far below those of the country’s two largest parties. In short, while on the one hand the party has shown a considerable degree of institutionalisation from the point of view of internal value infusion, with an incrementally expanding but still relatively small number of affiliations throughout the country, on the other hand as an organisation it is still relying upon its leader’s image and presence. It is the leader who makes the most important decisions rather than the organisation itself. EXTERNAL INSTITUTIONALISATION External institutionalisation involves ‘perceptions by others that the party is indeed an ‘institution’, and is to be thought of and treated as such’ (Harmel

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et al.: chapter 2). It is manifested when the party develops a stable core electorate and by attitudes of other parties, directly (by statements to the media for instance) or indirectly (when other parties alter their own programmes or in other ways indicate enhanced blackmail or coalition potential). As stated earlier, in Argentina there are a number of legal dispositions regarding the constitution and formation of political parties. They establish that any organisation that wants to become a political party has first to obtain judicial recognition, once the organisation fulfils some requisites imposed by law. Consequently, if a political party has obtained recognition by the Judiciary, it could be said that it has achieved, at first glance, an element of external institutionalisation. This formal recognition affects the behaviour of voters and the other political parties – especially when only political parties are able to postulate candidates, since independent candidacies are not allowed in Argentine legislation. From the time PRO was founded until today, it has experienced an interrupted development of a stable core electorate translated into votes and seats in every election. In 2002, Macri, with a broad group of new and old leaders and politicians gathered around the Foundation ‘Crecer y Creer’ (‘Grow and Believe’), created a new political party called Compromiso para el Cambio (Commitment to Change – CPC in its Spanish acronym). The specific purpose was to launch Macri’s political career, first locally and then in the national arena. This is a clear example of a political party created by an actor in pursuit of particular objectives (in terms of Levitsky 1998), a political vehicle to launch his political career (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999). The first electoral contest with Macri running as candidate for chief of government (mayor) of Buenos Aires came in 2003. This was the new party’s ‘baptism by fire’. For this election, CPC formed an alliance named ‘Alianza Frente Compromiso para el Cambio’ (Alliance Commitment to Change Front).14 The new alliance came in first place in the election. However, according to the local constitution, a candidate must reach an absolute majority of votes (section 96). In the second round, Macri lost the mayor election, but CPC still obtained seven of sixty local deputies, and five of twelve national deputies from the district of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. These results were not bad considering that this was the party’s first electoral contest. Losing its chance to get the executive branch presented the first real challenge the party had to face: the possibility that its elected officials (national and local legislators) would abandon the party to integrate into coalitions or parliamentary blocs with other stronger parties – capable of obtaining more benefits and hence to implement policies. However, many of PRO’s supporters saw in the image of Macri the driving force, the fundamental leadership capable of keeping the new organisation united in the following years despite its electoral defeat (Vommaro et al. 2015).



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In 2005, Compromiso para el Cambio (CPC) merged with the party of López Murphy (a former Economic Minister under De la Rúa administration) called RECREAR. The new party changed the name to Propuesta Republicana (PRO). Macri ran as national deputy candidate from the district of Buenos Aires and PRO came in first, obtaining six of thirteen seats in dispute. In 2007, PRO finally won the executive branch of Buenos Aires city, consecrating Macri as the new chief of government. This electoral success constituted a crucial point in PRO’s life, since it allowed the party to expand its organisation to other constituencies (especially the province of Buenos Aires). In terms of organisation and stabilisation, by reaching the executive office of Buenos Aires city, the new party was able to access more resources and funding sources, enjoying important state resources to redistribute among its members and supporters. Governing the city of Buenos Aires also placed its leader in a highly visible position at the national level. Soon after, without having a national party, Macri rose to be the main opponent of the ruling federal government, the Partido Justicialista – Frente para la Victoria (PJ-FpV). Macri was re-elected mayor in 2011 and remained in that post until 2015, when he contested the presidential race for the first time. PRO’s electoral performance has included some ups and downs, as illustrated by figure 5.1. The recovery of the party after electoral declines (such as

Figure 5.1.  PRO’s Number of Seats and Votes at the National Chamber of Deputies Elections (2003–2015) (Argentina). Entries are numbers of seats and numbers of votes obtained by PRO party in every election contested between 2003 and 2015. Source: Author’s own elaboration based on Ministry of Interior, Republic of Argentina, electoral database.

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in 2007 and 2011) reveals its high level of cohesion, resulting from Macri’s undisputed control over the party. It is remarkable that PRO managed to fight in every legislative and executive election since 2003 – though not in all constituencies. In its first ten years, PRO electoral performance was restricted to a few constituencies (up to six in 2011). In 2015, the coalition Cambiemos (slogan meaning ‘change’ or ‘let us change’) obtained forty-six seats, with more than 8 million votes.15 However, from those forty-six, twenty belonged to UCR and twenty-six to PRO (in total, PRO had forty-one deputies in the Chamber and UCR had the other fifty, and together they formed an inter-parliamentarian bloc in the Chamber). Coalition Building and the Presidential Election For the national and sub-national general elections of 2015 (for president, national deputies and senators, governors and local legislators, as well as mayors and municipal councillors), PRO arranged a nationwide coalition with a second major party, Unión Cívica Radical, and with other parties (national and provincial), called ‘Cambiemos’. UCR was its main partner in a broad alliance with several parties; among them was Coalición Cívica – Afirmación para una República Igualitaria (ARI), one of the most important third forces in the past decade. The coalition Cambiemos nominated Mauricio Macri for president. The ticket was composed entirely by members of PRO (Mauricio Macri and Gabriela Michetti). In the primary election, the Macri-Michetti formula easily defeated the UCR formula (Ernesto Sanz-Lucas Llach). In the general election, PRO obtained 8,601,131 votes (34.15 per cent) against the FpV formula (Daniel Scioli-Carlos Zanini), which obtained 9,338,490 votes (37.08 per cent). According to the national constitution, if the presidential formula receives over 45 per cent of the votes – or 40 per cent with a difference of 10 per cent above the formula that follows – its members shall be proclaimed president and vice president (Articles 97 and 98, 1994 Constitution, respectively). If either of these criteria is not reached, there will be a second round between the two leading formulas (Article 96). On 22 November, the second round was carried out, and Macri was consecrated president with 51.40 per cent of votes. The coalition was resisted by a large internal sector of UCR, and the coalition was not formed in several provinces/electoral districts. The electoral alliance hence did not become a governing coalition. So while on the one hand, in the parliamentary arena the national legislators of the two parties formed an inter-block, on the other hand the ministries and other key positions of the executive office were reserved to members of PRO almost exclusively.



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As the electoral results show, the positive performance of PRO was especially focused at the metropolitan areas of the country: 80 per cent of its deputies and four of six senators came from metropolitan provinces, the same region in which Macri obtained the majority of votes to be elected president. Most of PRO’s supporters and affiliates are located in these areas of the country as well: 55.72 per cent of affiliations come from the metropolitan region, 40 per cent from just the Province of Buenos Aires and Capital Federal alone. Its location in this area of the country is connected with the party’s value infusion and its ideology. In previous works (Altavilla 2013, 2014), I classified parties according to their constituencies (i.e. according to the geographical distribution of votes received in the election processes and the number of affiliations in each one of them). This is a functional taxonomy which implies the relevance that the territorial dimension has in shaping the party organisation and its expansion. Parties that act in the metropolitan region must have an appropriate platform to offer to its constituencies, and usually they focus their platforms and policies on urban voters and the upper classes. Most of PRO’s supporters and voters come from the upper classes, located mostly in these metropolitan areas (the wealthiest areas of the country, namely the Pampean region). PRO can be defined as a centre-right-wing party, with most of its leaders linked to neoliberal ideology, and with an orthodox economic programme. However, it has also shown itself so far to have a pragmatic orientation towards its programme. It is noteworthy that the context in which PRO was founded included special characteristics that helped the new party to infuse values to its members and to the society as a whole. This context is the aftermath of the 2001 economic and political crisis, one of the most striking in Argentine history. As a consequence, a high degree of party fragmentation – both internal and external – and a strong crisis of political representation created the ideal scenario for the emergence of new parties. PRO took advantage of this environment, and it quickly installed itself as a new political alternative, especially as an oppositional sector to the national government party, the Justicialist Frente para la Victoria (Front of Victory). Over these years, gradually – it can be said – the party became ‘valued for itself’ (using Huntington’s terms). On the external institutionalisation dimension, we can conclude that PRO has reached a considerable degree of institutionalisation. Indeed, PRO has continuously and increasingly boosted its core electorate, and it has successfully arranged alliances in these ten years; in other words, PRO has reified itself in the public eye. To better understand this reification process, we must pay special attention to the historical context and the symbolic values the party successfully claimed. According to Randall and Svåsand, party reification (i.e. the ability of a party to establish itself in the popular imaginary)

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‘will partly depend on the particular historical place and symbolic values it can successfully claim to represent [and] it will also depend on the party’s organizational strength and especially its access to effective means of communication’ (2002: 23). As a clear value infusion manifestation, the party was quickly perceived in the public mind as a ‘lasting power’ and ‘relevant’. Proof of that was the almost immediate approach to the new party of (old and new) political cadres and a legion of young people (mostly professionals) who joined the party.16 From the beginning, the organisation stressed its newness – something that society had been demanding since the 2001 political crisis, expressed by the negative motto ‘¡Que se vallan todos!’ (‘Throw them all out!’). Furthermore, and as an example of external institutionalisation, it is noteworthy that the logic of conflict sustained by the ruling FpV during its administrations (2003–2015) contributed to the identity of PRO providing an ‘otherness’, another political grouping with which to differentiate and compete (Vommaro et al. 2015: 36). In this way, Macri, with his new party and its right-wing political ideas, easily and quickly became the face of the opposition. Other parties altered their behaviour as a consequence of the presence of PRO in the system, evidence that the party was indeed ‘reified in the public mind’, in Janda’s terms (see Harmel et al.: chapter 2). The party’s political ideas and programmes offered something quite different: an economic blueprint that was pro-market, rejected the project to increase the export duty rates, and opposed change in the Central Bank’s charter. Those were key moments in which PRO differentiated itself from the Front of Victory ruling party (using specific projects proposed by it) and that have contributed to the reification of the new party in the public mind as a distinctive alternative – and, as with the case of Soini in Finland (Arter 2016), Macri personified that potential. At the same time, the party provided shelter to those social sectors disappointed with FpV policies. In 2009, Macri nominated agricultural entrepreneurs as deputy candidates in the legislative election; in the 2015 presidential election, the PRO formula obtained more than 70 per cent of votes in the rural area affected by those tax measures (the Pampean region) and, as a compensation for their loyalty, in his first day as president, Macri repealed the famous Resolution No. 125 of 2008 (which imposed the increase in export duties). OBJECTIVE DURABILITY The objective durability is ‘an objective estimate of the probability of continued survival of a party’ (Harmel et al.: chapter 2), and it can be measured according to two aspects: persistence and survivability. Regarding



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persistence, PRO was founded in 2002, so it is at a young age to be declared an ‘institution’. Survivability implies the ‘ability to withstand shocks’ (Harmel et al.: chapter 2) and the ability to adapt. In this latter aspect, the party successfully adapted to the environment, not only because it reached the presidency, but also due to its changes in speech and political programme. On the one hand, the party is still relying on its founder and principal leader. The strength of an institution can be more properly measured in times of crisis than in normal times. On the other hand, the party has successfully adapted to the political environment, through different alliances and coalitions with national and local parties around the country, and it has altered its speech and its political programme. One clear example of programme change – as an attempt to adapt to the electorate’s perceptions and interest – was the announcement of Mauricio Macri that he would not privatise state-owned enterprises (like Aerolíneas Argentinas) if elected president. Macri made this speech just after the electoral results for the 2015 election of mayor of Buenos Aires city were known, with results that were insufficient to win the election in the first round. This was an important change in the PRO electoral programme (given its preference for a more orthodox economic plan) and even some of the supporters’ whistles were heard during the announcement. This change in the speech and programme was a clear attempt to capture the votes of independents and/or undecided voters. In the second round Macri’s candidate won the election. There is no doubt that PRO was an entirely and genuinely new party,17 created from scratch by an outsider entrepreneur who was not part of (but close to) the political elite. It was not a split or successor of any other party.18 It was and is, in terms of Bolleyer and Bytzek (2013), an ‘entrepreneurial party’ – defined as a new formation that cannot rely on ties to already organised societal groups or any of the existing (or pre-existing) political parties. However, contrary to Bolleyer and Bytzek’s hypothesis, PRO proved to be more likely to sustain support after its national breakthrough. According to the literature, this kind of entrepreneurial party will be short-lived (Arter 2015; Altavilla 2014). Nonetheless, exceptions could be found, and PRO is such a case. However, there was an important strategy that was strictly followed by the organisation before its expansion from its birthplace to the rest of the country. From the organisational point of view, and in terms of Bolleyer and Bytzek (2013), PRO is a new party created by a single entrepreneur (most specifically, by an outsider to politics), and not the product of professional politicians who leave their party to found a new one, nor is it a rooted party formation. As a newly born party, PRO needed to build a viable, selfsufficient infrastructure (Bolleyer and Bytzek 2013) at its beginnings. This process may be very time-consuming, especially when the party is founded

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by an entrepreneur, as is the case here. This is because the founder would be more interested in launching and fostering his individual career than institutionalising the party. The case of PRO, however, shows a rapid and incremental process of institutionalisation externally and in durability. This could partly have been because of the huge amounts of money allocated by its wealthy party entrepreneur and by the close linkages with the most important and influential businessmen of the country. PRO was created in the aftermath of the 2001 political crisis, which deepened the internal crisis of the two major parties (PJ and UCR). Both PJ and UCR lost votes and seats and experienced a growing process of intra-party fragmentation with internal splits. PRO took advantage of this situation, gathering political leaders from those two major parties and even leaders from their different internal branches19 (as in the case of Eduardo Duhalde, leader of the PJ – Province of Buenos Aires district). More importantly, the strategy of PRO was to avoid explicit alliances with national parties (Mauro 2010). In this way, the party avoided two greater dangers for the party development and performance: first, it avoided nationalising local elections and, second, it prevented some leaders who came from one of those parties (or one of its branches) from abandoning the party if PRO would formalise an alliance with one or another. Instead, the party strategy was to favour alliances with local parties; at its beginnings, the party established alliances with minor local parties, such as Partido Federal, Demócrata, Demócrata Progresista and Acción Por la República (Mauro 2015). The decisions to reinforce its presence and power within the district and to avoid national alliances were two key decisions for the party’s persistence and survivability, and this makes for a substantial difference from the rest of new political parties created under the same conditions and context in Argentina, such as RECREAR and ARI. In this sense, PRO fits what is labelled a ‘resilient entrepreneurial party’ (Arter 2016), a combination of party architect and a long-serving leader with charismatic and organisational leadership (see Pedahzur and Brichta 2002 and also Arter and Kestilä-Kekkonen 2014: 2, providing examples of some entrepreneur parties which have combined charismatic leadership and organisational leadership to become relevant actors) – all characteristics leading to persistence and survivability. The lack of an external ‘promoter organisation’ implies that the party was built from scratch; PRO can be also be described as an ‘electoralprofessional party’ (Panebianco 1982), as it shares the basic characteristics: ‘­de-ideologisation, weak electoral links, and centralization of power around the party leadership’ and the professionalisation of party organisation, relying more on an ‘outsider with particular technical expertise’ (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999: 308). PRO has been the personal vehicle of a single-party



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entrepreneur, in that Macri has been heading the whole process and all three phases of a new party development: identification, organisational and stabilisation phases (Harmel and Svåsand, 1993). He has also been in the forefront of ballots as candidate for the main elective positions in every election since the party began electoral activities.20 PRO and Macri became synonymous, merging in the expression ‘macrismo’.21 From the beginning, the party was created and evolved around the political and personal image of Macri. For instance, during the CABA administration, Macri’s cabinet consisted of individuals with a strong personal linkage with him and with technicians linked to Grupo Sophia (Mauro 2015). At the national executive branch, Macri applied the same pattern.22 His image as a leader has been associated with the capability to ‘successfully harmonize and appease very different political and social trends and to bring out the best to each of them aiming at the success of the team . . . this ability of Macri was fundamental to keep the heterogeneous PRO united’ (Vommaro et al. 2015: 36). Therefore, his leadership is a combination between a charismatic leadership and an organisational leadership in the sense that without him, the party would disappear.23 This case fits into Hopkin and Paolucci’s depiction of a ‘business firm model of party behavior’ and the theory of the political entrepreneur which ‘offer a solution to the free-rider problem inherent in public good-producing organizations like political parties . . . the entrepreneur offers to coordinate and lead the latent group in return for an element of private “profit”. . . . The party, instead of being a voluntary organization with essentially social objectives, becomes a kind of “business firm”, in which the public goods produced are incidental to the real objectives of those leading it’ (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999: 311). As direct evidence of the attitudes of voters (external institutionalisation) and the persistence and survivability of PRO (objective durability), it is relevant to cite the 2009 legislative election. The context was a unique opportunity for the new party to grow and expand over the country and especially to install Macri’s image as the main oppositional actor to the current national government. The new party quickly closed alliances with different parties in an important number of electoral districts/provinces (13 of 24). The political situation was a favourable one due to the conflict between the national government and the agricultural sector around the project to raise the export duties. His ability consisted in nominating agricultural entrepreneurs in different provinces as a gesture of rapprochement with this important sector and to reinforce his image as oppositional actor. As shown in figure 5.1, PRO had its best performance since its first election and most of its voters came from those areas affected by the project of the former government in the 2015 presidential election. On the one hand, we can certainly conclude that the image and presence of Macri were fundamental to maintaining the survivability of PRO,

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contributing to increases in degrees of its external institutionalisation and objective durability, and even regarding the internal aspects of this process. His personal and political image contributed to infusing value to the party. On the other hand, however, his strong and dominant presence affects further institutionalisation in the routinisation aspect (the decision-making process). It is still hard to conclude whether people attach value to the party or just to its leader: it can be concluded (yet preliminarily) that people have come to attach value both to the party and its leader, given the current symbiosis of these two elements. Both the party and the leader represent a new way of politics, the ‘non-politics’, a new and non-traditional political space although identified with a more conservative discourse; furthermore, there are no dissenting internal sectors which can claim to represent something different. INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS AS A FACTOR IN INSTITUTIONALISATION There is still another factor related to the three dimensions of institutionalisation: the routinisation as formal or informal rules followed by the organisation, the external and internal behaviour of the party and its survivability. As mentioned earlier, winning the executive branch of Buenos Aires was a crucial point in the party’s life, because it allowed the party to resort to clientelism and patronage linkages to survive and persist over time. This is a relevant issue especially important in new democracies. Linkages between parties and society have dramatically changed in Argentina between the return of democracy in 1983 and today. Linkages relying on a mass-based organisational structure and participatory modes of affiliation have been superseded by those based on marketing and clientelistic exchanges (Scherlis 2009: 239). PRO is the typical product of this transformation. On the one hand, PRO has made use of all clientelistic and patronage means at its disposal since it took office in the autonomous city. On the other hand, PRO was one of the most successful organisations in handling of advanced marketing techniques (see Vommaro et al. 2015). An important contribution of Levitsky’s works is the argument that informal institutions should count as well as formal institutions, providing clear examples of the importance of the first in the routinisation of the Peronist Party in Argentina (1998, 2001b). However, it should be noted that ‘although the dominant position of Peronism in the Argentine political system has led several scholars to associate clientelistic practices with the PJ particularly, clientelism is by no means circumscribed to this party. A good number of studies and [Scherlis’s] own findings show that all parties which attain executive offices at any level – national, sub-national, or local – resort to



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clientelism in building their linkages with the poor strata of society’ (Scherlis 2009: 240). To better understand the process of institutionalisation of PRO, it is necessary to take into consideration informal rules existing in the context of a new democracy. It is within this context that one characteristic of PRO which is relevant to institutionalisation, and which differentiates it from the rest of the new parties, finds its full meaning. Reaching the executive branch of one of the most important sub-national districts allowed PRO to use an informal, non-written rule of party dynamics in the Argentine party system which can be formulated as follows: any political party able to win elective offices (or more specifically, the executive branch) is allowed to use the state’s resources as its own (see Jones and Hwang 2005; Malamud 2008; Scherlis 2009).24 This means the possibility of exploiting the state’s resources to build clientelistic networks with voters and patronage linkages with supporters. As the cartel theory emphasises, political parties colonise the state ‘through extensive processes of patronage and overlapping functional linkages’, occurring as a symbiosis between a state bureaucracy and a professional political class in which ‘political recruitment has to a large extent been narrowed to the state-employed civil servants’ (Krouwel 2006: 259). Those informal practices may fit within the ‘accommodating informal institutions’ concept provided by Helmke and Levitsky (2004).25 Without being strictly illegal, those practices allow parties to improve their organisation and to reach a higher level of institutionalisation (see also Bolleyer and Bytzek 2013). CONCLUDING REMARKS Indubitably, PRO is an entrepreneurial and charismatic party, created under a business firm model (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999) in which the party entrepreneur (Macri) acted without external group support and – combining his personal charismatic leadership and organisational leadership – played a pivotal role in the party-building process. Certainly the party organisation bears the marks of what David Arter described as the ‘charismatic imprint’ (2016: 23). The party still has to face the litmus test: the absence of its founder leader and a leadership succession. The party has proven to be successful in strengthening its organisation, being able to further expand its organisation nationwide and adapting its programme and speech according to the demands of the electorates. And their support translated into the recent electoral successes. The factor of ‘coalition relevance’, as one dimension of external institutionalisation, was also useful in this success.

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In differentiating the components of institutionalisation of individual parties, it is clear first that institutionalisation is a process in which a number of measurable factors interact independently and simultaneously and second that parties may institutionalise not only to different degrees but also in a variety of ways. PRO is a clear example of a new entrepreneurial party in a new democracy. It is poorly institutionalised regarding routinisation, the inadequacy between written rules and actual behaviour, the lack of career pattern, and its charismatic character with no evidence of routinisation of charisma or the establishment of a fixed programme. Its personalistic character and the relatively low number of affiliations are features which liken it to the rest of the new political parties in the constellation. Though PRO has been the most successful of the country’s new parties and has achieved considerable institutionalisation on other dimensions, the party remains under-routinised, given the continued centrality of the founder/ leader. To the extent it has made headway on routinisation, the ‘informal institutions’ of clientelism and patronage are among the aspects that have been routinised. The party has been successful in building a core electorate all around the country, in claiming an image to assimilate itself with its members and to differentiate from other parties and their programmes. It has proven to have the capacity to make successful alliances which ultimately helped it to reach the presidency. It has changed its speech and programmes in order to become more responsive to the electorate’s interests and perceptions. A remarkable aspect of this institutionalisation process is the role played by informality. In particular, the presence of clientelism tends to confirm informal decision making; however, this informality is still a factor in institutionalisation as long as it contributes to maintaining organisations. As was pointed out earlier in this chapter, a crucial factor in the organisational phase of PRO’s life was the moment in which the party won the executive branch of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires, which allowed it to create a network of patronage and clientelism. As other scholars have emphasised, the use of these clientelistic networks is a common feature of governing parties (i.e. those parties in charge of the executive office), though not parliamentary ­parties – which partly explains why some of them have not managed to survive (see Altavilla 2014). This informal rule (the use of state resources as the party’s own) has a double impact on the institutionalisation process, depending on how it is used. In this respect, it is possible to distinguish between clientelistic networks – which implies diversion of state resources towards the electorate – and patronage linkages to compensate or foster a larger number of supporters. The first case will boost the external aspect of the institutionalisation process, while the second case will strengthen the internal one. Within the general context of the Argentine party system, PRO has reached a considerable degree of institutionalisation. As a new democracy in



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a developing world, Argentina is an environment ‘where circumstances . . . may differ from the developed democracies in a number of particular ways’ (Randall and Svåsand 2002: 6). In this respect, it is important to keep in mind the context in which the party evolves. Thus, party system stability appears as an important independent variable in determining and measuring the degree of institutionalisation of individual parties. If the party system is not institutionalised, it will be expected that each of its component parties will face significant obstacles impeding their institutionalisation. Scholars agree that the party system in Argentina has become less institutionalised, a trend which deepened in the past decade (Lupu 2011, 2014; Mainwaring and Torcal 2005; Gervasoni 2018; Sanchez 2008).26 In the same train of thought, Mainwaring and Torcal emphasise that ‘there are significant differences among party systems of the advanced industrial democracies and among party systems of less-developed countries’ (2005: 3), concluding that party systems in underdeveloped countries are less institutionalised than those of the advanced industrial democracies. The study of party-level institutionalisation is not yet fully developed and remains open as a broad field of study for the Argentine case given the vast number of new political parties that have emerged in the past decades and that, in one way or another, have contributed to shaping a new party system in Argentina. The new advances in the theoretical field may be used to approach and study the birth, evolution and eventually, the fall of those new parties in Argentina. Especially interesting for comparative purposes, in analysing how individual parties institutionalise in one, some or the three dimensions of institutionalisation, is how some parties have de-institutionalised over the years. In disaggregating the individual components of this complex phenomenon into more specific and concrete concepts, a first and fundamental step has been taken for theoretical analysis, and it will help us to get a better understanding of the practical effects of such processes. NOTES 1. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 44th ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshop on Institutionalization and De-Institutionalization of Political Organizations, directed by Robert Harmel and Lars Svåsand, Scuola Normale Superiore, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and University of Pisa, 24–28 April 2016, Pisa, Italy, and at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, 12–14 January 2017, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. For their comments and advice, I  thank Robert Harmel, Lars Svåsand and Ivan Vuković, and other participants at the 44th ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops. 2. Such as Frente Grande, Frente Renovador and AR, which have emerged as a split from PJ, and ARI, GEN and Recrear, which emerged from UCR.

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3. Many of the most renowned members of its dominant coalition had belonged to UCR and PJ. For instance, PRO attracted much of the Radical leaders in the Federal Capital, once an electoral stronghold of UCR. 4. As Mainwaring and Torcal have pointed out, the ‘linkages between voters and candidates are more personalistic in most post-1978 competitive regimes than in the advanced industrial democracies’. The higher the level of personalism, the weaker the party roots in society (2006: 204). Although it is arguably this feature was always present in the Argentine party system, it was more notorious since the 2001 crisis of political representation. This situation was a favourable one for those ‘anti-partypoliticians’, such as Macri himself, whose image were created around the idea of non-politics. 5. The ‘Organic Law on Political Parties’ (Law No. 23.298) obliges political parties to incorporate into their party charters the election of candidates by means of internal election, guarantying minorities’ representation. 6. Also known as PASO Law, in the Spanish acronyms for ‘Primarias Abiertas Simultáneas y Obligatorias’. 7. Even within the PJ, several amendments of its Party Charter were made to enable the National Party Council to elect candidates, or to allow extra-partisans to be candidates (Levitsky 1998: 83). 8. For instance, Mauricio Macri himself (for mayor of Buenos Aires in 2003, 2007 and 2011 and for president in 2015), Miguel Del Sel (for governor of Santa Fe in 2011 and 2015), María Eugenia Vidal (for governor of Buenos Aires in 2015). 9. Michetti lost the primary, but she was compensated with the nomination for vice president, accompanying Macri in the presidential formula. 10. Most of the PRO technicians and political cadres came from two foundations: Pensar and Grupo Sophia (founded by Rodriguez Larreta). A crucial moment in the organisational phase was the arrival of Grupo Sophia, a think tank that provided technicians and specialised working groups to the new party. While the new political project had a fairly quick and systematic organisational phase, the identification stage was a little bit problematic – despite the project had a network of multidisciplinary professionals and working teams, they lack of a concrete programme. However, the fundamental image the group wanted to show was clear: a new leadership, a new way of doing politics. In addition, the aim of Macri was clear: launching himself into politics. His primary goal was, even before the party foundation, to become president. 11. ‘Affiliate’ is a term used by domestic legislation and refers to a person who has officially and legally joined a political party and as such has a voice and a vote in some decisions, especially in selecting the party authorities and candidates for general elections. In this work, the terms ‘affiliate’ and ‘member’ are used interchangeably. 12. After Partido Justicialista (3.560.158, 51.8 per cent), Unión Cívica Radical (2.170.956, 31.6 per cent), Partido Frente Grande (152.902, 2.2 per cent) and Partido Socialista (126.300, 1.8 per cent). Data from CNE 2016 (Cámara Nacional Electoral / National Electoral Chamber), ‘Affiliation Statistic (First Semester 2014)’, available at www.electoral.gov.ar/. 13. According to the legislation, when a political party has had legal recognition by the federal judicial branch in at least five electoral constituencies, the district party becomes a national order party.



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14. An alliance formed with Acción Por La Republica (a new party recently created by Domingo Cavallo – a politician with expertise and a well-known trajectory) among many other local parties. 15. Computing the votes obtained in each district in which the Coalition nominee candidates under the ‘Cambiemos’ label. 16. Most of them did it through the various foundations that preceded the creation of the party: foundations like Crecer y Creer, Pensar and Grupo Sophia. 17. The recent literature has struggled with the issue of identifying when a party is new. There are of course different situations that allowed scholars to used different terms according to the founding moment of the party. Based on party’s origins, it may be classified as a ‘genuinely new party’ (Hug, 2001), a ‘pseudo-new’ (Barnea and Rahat, 2011) or a ‘re-designated party’ (Arter 2016: 16), or ‘organizationally new’ (Bolleyer and Bytzek, 2013). 18. Following Barnea and Rahat’s (2011) criteria, another fact that stresses how new is the party is the number of own candidates in ballots. In the 2005 legislative election, for instance, the legislative ballot was composed by candidates who (most of them) came from another political party. However, these political parties were minor parties, which allied with PRO at the beginning, and they did not occupy key positions. Once in office, ‘PRO maintained its refusal to agree on possible partners to key positions within the government of Buenos Aires’ (Mauro 2015: 421), and the same occurred when it reached the presidential office in December 2015. 19. Rodriguez Larreta was a functionary during Menem administration; Jorge Vannosi was a well-known radical leader and former national deputy from this party (although he later would abandon the party); the ex-radical Patricia Bullrich, former minister under De la Rua administration, would later integrate the coalition with her own party, Unión por Todos. 20. In 2003 as candidate for chief of government of Buenos Aires city (losing in the second round); 2005 as leading candidate of national deputies candidates in the district of Buenos Aires city; 2007 as candidate for chief of government of Buenos Aires city (elected); 2011 as incumbent (being re-elected) and 2015 as presidential candidate. 2009 and 2013 were mid-term legislative elections while he was holding the executive branch of the city of Buenos Aires – nevertheless, in both elections, the leading candidate were selected by him within his closest circle (Michetti, Esteban Bullrich, Bertol and Triaca were the first of the list of thirteen candidates in 2009; Bergman, Sturzenegger, Alonso and Triaca in 2013). 21. The ‘ism’ suffix is widely used (and abused) in the domestic political parlance. It ‘denotes action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence’ to some particular leader, regardless of whether they have been relevant figures in the national history (alfonsinismo, menemismo, delarruismo, duhaldismo, kirchnerismo – just to mention the latest presidents who, in which way or another, influenced the political life of the country) or not (even people holding municipal offices have received the additive suffix in this last name to characterised their groups of supporters). 22. The current presidential cabinet comprises twenty ministers (plus a chief of cabinet), from which thirteen have a previous personal or political close-linkage with

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the leader and occupy the key and strategic areas, five come from allied political parties and three have no previous linkage with the party or Macri. 23. In the run-up to the 2011 presidential elections, the party was involved in an internal debate whether Macri should run for president. The party finally decided to not run for fear of losing both the national executive branch and the local executive branch, which would mean the dissolution of the party – in other words, the breakup of a heterogeneous group gathered around Macri’s leadership. Instead, the party chose to run for the re-election at the local level following the same electoral and organisational strategy adopted from the beginning. That fact reveals the charismatic characteristic of Macri’s leadership and the qualification of PRO as a patronage party. 24. ‘Because Argentine public bureaucracies are weak, unstable, and politicized, every new elected leader assumes that gaining control requires massive hiring across the top and middle levels of the state’ (Scherlis 2009: 245). 25. ‘These informal institutions create incentives to behave in ways that alter the substantive effects of formal rules, but without directly violating them; they contradict the spirit, but not the letter, of the formal rules. Accommodating informal institutions are often created by actors who dislike outcomes generated by the formal rules but are unable to change or openly violate those rules’ (2004: 729). 26. The Argentine case shows all the symptoms of a de-institutionalised party system (according to the dimensions proposed by Mainwaring 1999 and Mainwaring and Scully 1995): high volatility (in both, congressional and presidential elections), a short longevity of new parties becoming ephemeral in the political constellation, loss of popular support and weak roots in society, parties becoming more personalistic and with a poor value infusion (parties are not valued on their own), especially for the weakness of their party bodies and bureaucracies in the decision-making process (see Gervosani 2018).

Chapter 6

De-Institutionalising Power of Decision-Making Personalisation: The Paradigmatic Case of the Serbian Communist-Successor Party1 Ivan Vukovic´ and Filip Milacˇic´ INTRODUCTION Following the path of political science classics that recognised the ‘indispensability’ of political parties for democracy (Schattschneider 1942; Lipset 1959; Sartori 1976), numerous students of the third wave of democratisation (Huntington 1991) came to acknowledge the key role played by political parties in the processes of democratic transition and consolidation (Pridham 1990; Dix 1992; McAllister and White 2007). As nicely summarised by Ezrow, parties are important to new democracies for the following reasons: they make government accountable for its actions; prevent the rise of antiparty politicians; habituate the public to democratic norms and practices; articulate and aggregate interests; recruit, nominate and socialise political leaders; and form and sustain governments (2011: 3). At the same time, these authors recognised the significance of parties’ institutionalisation for functioning of the newly established democracies. All of their studies, as ­Yardimci-Geyikci noted, ‘have a common thread in that political parties that form stable relations with the public and have a strong organisational existence, in other words institutionalized parties, are one of the chief requirements for the consolidation process’ (2015: 528). Put simply, to be able to play the role in advancing democracy properly, political parties need to be ‘institutionalised’ (Randall 2006: 1). Accordingly, along with the academic interest for democratisation grew a body of literature on party institutionalisation. Over the past couple of decades, a number of noteworthy attempts at its conceptualisation were made (Janda 1980; Panebianco 1988; Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Levitsky 1998; Randall and Svåsand 2002). Based on their findings, Harmel, Svåsand and 89

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Mjelde (chapter 2 in this book) have put forward a comprehensive, threedimensional conceptual model for the analysis of party institutionalisation. Defined as internal institutionalisation, the first dimension consists of behavioural routinisation (which implies that written rules are generally respected and followed within the party as well as that the resultant behavioural patterns are recurring) and internal value infusion (which refers to the process of reification in the ‘party’s own mind’, that is ‘in the collective and individual minds of its members, elected officials, and other party personnel’) (Harmel et al.: chapter 2). The second dimension of their model, external institutionalisation, refers to the way in which others perceive the party in terms of its ‘lasting power’ and ‘relevance’. As explained by the authors, these actors’ perceptions may be assessed on the basis of either the party’s voters or the attitudes of leaders of other parties or the alteration in their behaviour caused by the given party’s presence in the political system (pp. 14–15). The last dimension of party institutionalisation, objective durability, concerns the ‘probability of continued survival of a party, based on its past history of endurance’ (p. 16). Adjacent to the previously introduced notion of longevity (persistence over a period of time) of the party organisation, the authors propose the aforesaid probability to be measured against its survivability, that is, ‘ability to withstand shocks, whether due to intentional adaptation or some other factor(s)’ (p. 17). In addition, several authors recently presented valuable party institutionalisation measurement models (Basedau and Stroh 2008; Casal Bertoa 2011; Yardımcı-Geyikci 2015). While acknowledging an important contribution they made to a better understanding of the notion of party institutionalisation, we maintain that their general findings are largely inapplicable to the context of recently pluralised political systems. Namely, when assessing the organisational power of political parties – generally considered one of the basic indicators of their institutionalisation – these scholars tend to ignore the structure and take the amount of power as the only analytically relevant category. In this chapter, while adopting the Harmel/Svåsand/Mjelde conceptual framework that is common throughout the book (with special emphasis on aspects of internal and external institutionalisation), we seek to improve the measurement of party institutionalisation in such political systems. Unlike the aforementioned studies, we take the structure rather than the amount of power of the party organisation as the main determinant of its institutionalisation. We posit that in recently established (formally) democratic regimes,2 party institutionalisation primarily relates to the process through which a given party acquires political influence irrespective of its leader’s. We further argue that highly institutionalised parties can even experience de-institutionalisation as a consequence of the concentration of decision-making authority within the hands of a powerful individual. While referring to similar examples of party



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development in post-communist Europe, we present a detailed analysis of the late 1980s/early 1990s transformation of the Serbian League of Communists into the Socialist Party of Serbia so as to demonstrate the detrimental effect on this party organisation’s institutionalisation of the nationalism-driven personalistic leadership of Slobodan Milošević. PARTY INSTITUTIONALISATION IN RECENTLY (FORMALLY) DEMOCRATISED REGIMES Analysing party development in the post-communist Europe, Kopecký noted that the most likely organisational forms to emerge in this particular political context were ‘formations with loose electoral constituencies, in which a relatively unimportant role is played by the party membership, and the dominant role by party leaders’ (1995: 517)’. Similarly, Ishiyama later contended that ‘the depoliticised citizenry in post-communist systems’ was likely to identify with strong personalities rather than with all-encompassing ideologies and party symbols (2002: 273). And indeed, there is an abundance of empirical evidence indicating that, irrespective of their power capacity, parties in these and other newly created (formally) democratic systems regularly serve as ‘little more than the personal mobilisation instruments for ambitious politicians’ (Randall and Svåsand 2002: 19). Labelling them ‘personalistic parties’, Gunther and Diamond explain that the only rationale of such political organisations is to provide vehicles for their leaders to win elections and exercise power (2003: 187). In view of their recent proliferation, Mainwaring and Torcal claim that outside the universe of advanced industrial democracies, ‘personalities more than party organisations dominate the political scene’ (2005: 216). Furthermore, numerous examples of party development in recent time show that when the authority gets concentrated in the hands of a single individual, ‘the politics of personality prevails, making it more difficult for parties to develop coherent programs and identities’ (Ishiyama 2002: 279). In Croatia – to mention the case most similar to the one that we analyse indepth – we find a rather extreme example of power personalisation in the 1990s. The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), the country’s ruling party during this decade, served as a mere transmission belt for the realisation of the political ambitions of its leader, Franjo Tuđman. Other members of the party leadership did not have any independent influence on the decisionmaking processes within HDZ (Kasapović 2001: 20). At the same time, how long HDZ members would keep the positions in the party and the government was entirely dependent on the personal loyalty to the president (Čular 2000).

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To sum up, even though it may initially contribute to party cohesion and survival, such personalistic leadership in the longer run and in the absence of effective routinisation is likely to ‘seriously inhibit institutional development’ (Randall and Svåsand 2002: 19). In other words, party institutionalisation is expected to remain limited ‘as long as a party is the personal instrument of a leader or a small coterie’ (Janda 1980)’. For successful research on political parties in countries without a longer tradition of political pluralism, the knowledge about the structure of their power is therefore absolutely crucial. Nonetheless, party institutionalisation students regularly fail to look inside the internal power structure when assessing the level of party organisation development. Instead of opening the black box, they most of the time seek merely to describe its surface (e.g., see Bertoa 2011; Yarimci-Geyiksi 2015; Levitsky and Way 2010). PARTY INSTITUTIONALISATION RE-OPERATIONALISATION For assessment of internal institutionalisation within parties of newly established multiparty systems, we believe that one needs to look inside of a party’s organisational structure so as to comprehend its given political purpose and from there infer about the course of its political development. As noted by Panebianco, ‘in order to examine a party’s organisational order we must first investigate its power structure: how power within the organisation is distributed, how it is reproduced, how power relations get modified and with what organisational consequences’ (1988: 21). Furthermore, we hold that the composition of power within party ranks, rather than its sheer amount, is the key determinant of party institutionalisation in such regimes. As previously elaborated, decision-making personalisation is likely to hinder the process of institutionalisation of recently founded party organisations, that is, to prevent them from slowly losing the character as tools and becoming valuable in and of themselves (Panebianco 1988: 49). In view of that, we argue that in the context of recently pluralised political systems, party institutionalisation primarily relates to the process through which a given party organisation acquires political influence irrespective of its leader’s. To assess the level of internal institutionalisation of a political party, we therefore need to determine the level of personalisation of the decision-making power within its ranks. To that goal, it is necessary to identify empirical indicators of decisionmaking power personalisation. We propose that one should look at the frequency and scope of changes in the personal composition of party leadership and central bodies residing beneath the primary party leader. The



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argument here is that in the cases of high power personalisation, party heads will seek to ensure obedience to their individual authority through constant and significant modifications of these organs’ makeup. At the same time, in the organisations without such personalised decision-making structure, we expect party representatives to be reshuffled considerably less frequently and strictly in line with the officially adopted procedural rules. Then, as a measure of ‘external institutionalisation’, one should take into account the popular perception of a given party organisation, that is, the strength of its links with the society. Defined as ‘roots in society’, this particular dimension of party institutionalisation is recognised by a number of the above-named scholars. We regard some of the indicators used to measure it, such as party age relative to independence/multiparty period (Basedau and Stroh 2008), as irrelevant in the observed political context. We also find Lewis’s Index of Party Stablilisation (Casal Bertoa 2011) and others’ indicators of electoral volatility, party identification and trust in political parties (Yardımcı-Geyikci 2015) to be inappropriate for our study. Contrary to the well-established democracies where parties ‘became deeply rooted in society before the emergence of the modern mass media’, candidates for political offices in the recently established multiparty systems could use those media ‘without the need to rely on well-developed party organisations’ (Mainwaring and Torcal 2005: 217). This, as previously elaborated, led to the spread of parties looking ‘more like entourages around party leaders than real party organisations with party programs’ (Amundsen 1997: 293). The ensuing ‘pathological fixation on their leaders’ characteristics’ (Ihonvbere 1996: 21) renders these parties’ success at the political market – evaluated by the aforementioned indicators – entirely contingent upon the strength of their leaders’ personal political appeal. In other words, what is generally considered to be the measure of party institutionalisation in this regard is what actually prevents this process in the context of newly pluralised regimes. We therefore believe that the only way to determine the extent to which a party organisation became ‘established in the public imagination as a factor shaping the behaviour of political actors’ (Randall and Svåsand 2002: 23) is to assess its political ‘weight’ against its leader’s. To this goal, in (semi-)presidential political systems where a party leader is expected to run for the presidency, the juxtaposition of his or her and his or her party’s electoral results in an observed time period seems like the most efficient method of analysis. In parliamentary systems of governance in which a party leader is likely to partake in legislative elections, a party’s electoral results should be compared to those of its presidential candidate(s). In both cases, opinion poll data should serve as a complementary source of information on the public perception of a party and its leader.

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THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF SERBIA: POLITICAL IMPOTENCE OF THE ORGANISATIONAL OMNIPOTENCE In order to demonstrate the importance of power structure for the development of political parties in the recently established multiparty regimes, we analyse in the following sections the evolution of the Serbian Party of Socialists (Socijalistička partija Srbije – SPS) under the charismatic rule of Slobodan Milošević. Growing out of the highly institutionalised Serbian League of Communists (Savez komunista Srbije – SKS), the most powerful branch of the Yugoslav Communist League (Savez komunista Jugoslavije – SKJ), the SPS was the ruling party in Serbia’s 1990–2000 hybrid regime. In view of the fact that the SPS inherited well-developed infrastructure, considerable financial assets and an impressive membership from its organisational predecessor, many party politics students took it as an example of high-level party institutionalisation. As noted by Levitsky and Way: The Socialist Party of Serbia was extremely well organized. Created directly out of the Serbian League of Communists in 1990, the SPS inherited the old party’s assets, real estate, media, personnel, physical infrastructure . . . With a membership that reached 500,000 in the mid-1990s, the party built extensive patronage networks and established workplace organisations in major factories. (2010: 105)

At the same time, because of the manner in which its power was internally structured, the influence of SPS as a political organisation on the most important decision-making processes during the observed period was at an exceptionally low level. The Serbian semi-authoritarian political system was organised entirely around the personality of its key figure and the SPS president, Milošević. Accordingly, the ruling party was under the absolute political control of its leader and informal circles around him.3 Moreover, the political authority of Milošević – who was for a long time seen by a vast majority of his countrymen as not only the political leader but the national leader – was never effectively transferred to the party he led. In fact, upon assuming power on the wave of Serbian nationalism in the late 1980s, he embarked on the process of dismantling party structures and procedures in order to cement the position of unquestionable political authority within its ranks. Those party members who dared to voice their disagreement with Milošević’s political practices were, throughout the years to come, continuously purged. The highly personal character of power of the Serbian dominant party thus led to the process of its gradual de-institutionalisation. Milošević’s charisma, SPS’s valuable political asset at the early stage of its



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rule, turned out to be its major functional disadvantage. Moreover, the high level of political dependency on its president’s individual qualities made the party’s governance vulnerable in the face of electoral and inter-electoral opposition challenges. In the remainder of this chapter, we first explain the reasons behind the rapid political ascent of Slobodan Milošević to the position of incontestable national and political leader of the Serbian people. Subsequently, we analyse the developmental path of the Socialist Party of Serbia under his personalistic chairmanship. SERBIAN NATIONALIST REVIVAL The 1974 Constitution defined Yugoslavia as consisting of eight constituent units. With their legal status being formed not merely on the Serbian but also on the federal law, Kosovo and Vojvodina – formally designated as autonomous provinces in Serbia – de facto were given similar political status as the six Yugoslav republics (Repishti 1984: 202). The provinces got their own parliaments, presidencies, governments and courts as well as the right to present their own interests without consultations with the republic (Pešić 1996: 30). In addition, while being functionally independent from Serbia, provincial assemblies were represented – and their MPs could hence vote – in its parliament. At the same time, the Republic of Serbia could not pass important laws in matters such as defence and education, as their adoption was contingent upon consensus of the three assemblies. In sum, according to the new constitution, Serbia was formally a unitary state whose relations with its provinces were based on political compromises (Jović 2009a: 172). Furthermore, as the only constitutionally recognised ethnic minority in the country, Kosovo Albanians were given broad cultural and linguistic rights. Their rapid political emancipation and ethnic affirmation, followed by frequent manifestations of Albanian nationalism, made the non-Albanian – mainly Serb and Montenegrin – population in the province feel deprived of previously held political rights. What was essentially jeopardised by the new sociopolitical developments in Kosovo was the long-lasting power hegemony of this minority group.4 Hence, despite the fact that their political influence did not actually drop as sharply in the population and party membership, it was obvious that ‘a significant change of political climate’ was taking place in the province (Cohen 2001: 26). Coupled with a spectacular demographic growth of the Albanian majority,5 this led to a sizeable exodus of Serbs and Montenegrins from Kosovo during the 1970s and 1980s. The death of the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito in May 1980 left the country without the supreme political authority and one of the main unifying

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symbols. With no politically legitimate successor to the late president, Yugoslavia ‘entered a period of “apocalyptic culture” where its core values were increasingly being brought into question by dissident opinion’ (Ramet 1985: 3). The national question, which following the adoption of the 1974 constitution seemingly ‘had been laid to rest’ (Ramet 1985: 6), was now emerging as a new formula for mobilisation of political support. In Serbia, widespread belief that the new federal constitution had left the country politically crippled served as a basis for the construction of a nationalist political narrative. Such impression was only enhanced by the massive demonstrations of Kosovo Albanians in March and April 1981, during which transformation of the province into a separate Yugoslav republic was openly demanded. A considerable part of the Serbian intellectual stratum shared the nationalist sentiment of the wider public. In January 1986, 212 prominent representatives of the Belgrade intellectual scene signed their petition of support to the compatriots in Kosovo in which the following is stated: Everyone in this country who is not indifferent has long ago realized that the genocide in Kosovo cannot be combated without deeper social . . . changes in the whole country. These changes are unimaginable without changes likewise in the relationship between the Autonomous Provinces and the Republic of Serbia. (quoted in Magaš 1993: 52)

Later that year, in an article entitled ‘A Proposal for Hopelessness’, sections of a draft ‘memorandum’ of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) were published in the Serbian daily Večernje Novosti. The sixteenmember commission appointed by the academy in June 1985 to prepare an analysis of the most important political and economic problems in the country came to a general conclusion that the Serbs were great victims of Tito’s regime and its ‘historically worn out ideology’ as well as of ‘genocidal’ policies of other peoples, in the first place Albanians and Croats. ‘A national states of all Serbs’ is an inevitable result should the anti-Serb policies continue, the academics concluded (Pešić 1996: 19–20). The draft memorandum did not create nationalism but simply tapped sentiments that ran deep among Serbs (Silber and Little 1995: 33). Yet, their gathering sense of dissatisfaction with the political status quo remained politically confined for the moment. While notions of a national renaissance were already bubbling through various structures of the Serbian society, what had still not occurred on the political scene was for a major communist political leader to publicly defend and advance a broad-ranging nationalist programme (Cohen 2001: 62). In that sense, the political rise of Slobodan Milošević turned out to be of crucial importance for ‘achieving the fusion between “opinion” and “power” in Serbia’ (Milosavljević 2000).



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RISE OF THE LEADER During the four decades after the end of World War II, the League of Communists enjoyed unchallenged political monopoly in Yugoslavia. At the same time, as a result of the previously elaborated devolution of the federal state’s authority, its power was gradually transferred to party organisations representing constituent republics which were thus transformed into ‘quasi-feudal national oligarchies’ (Ramet 2002: 6). The 1974 adoption of the new Constitution of Yugoslavia represented the culmination of this process. However, the country’s political decentralisation did not mean de-institutionalisation of the ruling party. Even after its president’s passing in 1980, formally adopted rules and procedures were strictly followed within both the SKJ and its eight branches. The Presidency of Yugoslavia, a collective body composed of the representatives of six republics and two provinces whose chairmanship was rotated annually, assumed all the powers Tito once held, thus preventing the concentration of political power. Nearly without any voices of dissent, the party remained the only actor on the Yugoslav political scene. By all criteria mentioned in Harmel, Svåsand and Mjelde (chapter 2), the League of Communists of Serbia – just like the rest of the SKJ – represented a highly institutionalised party organisation at the time when Slobodan Milošević took over in January  1986. Following the steps of his political mentor Ivan Stambolić, Milošević patiently, and in line with internal party procedures, climbed the ladder of power. In April 1984, after serving five years as the president of the Belgrade Bank, Serbia’s most important financial institution, he was elected the head of the SKS Belgrade organisation. Over the next two years, Milošević successfully sought to win sympathies of fellow comrades by presenting himself as unreservedly committed to the main principles of the ruling ideology. On the occasion of his promotion to the SKS’s highest office, Nikola Ljubičić, who had for a long time served as the Yugoslav Secretary of Defense and was widely regarded as Tito’s favourite general, loudly praised Milošević’s political contribution: Slobodan engaged in a struggle against nationalism, against liberalism, and against all forms of counter-revolution in Belgrade. I think he has passed the test. (quoted in Djukić 1994: 35)

However, once he reached the party summit, Milošević’s political attitude began to change. In the period that followed his April 1987 visit to Kosovo, during which he met with representatives of the Serb community and promised them political protection against the alleged Albanian oppression, his tone became increasingly nationalistic.6 Hitherto ‘cautious and reserved communist apparatchik offering the population vapid formulations from a

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lexicon of well-honed and officially condoned platitudes’ (Cohen 2001: 64), Milošević started talking openly about what many still regarded as a political taboo. Thus attracting considerable media attention, he was soon promoted into the symbol of the reawakening Serb national pride. A year after the Academy’s memorandum was leaked to the public, ‘the search for a mobilizer of Serb anger and resentment was finally rewarded’ (Rusinow 1995: 404). Fully aware of the political potential of the popular and media support he enjoyed at the moment, Milošević started strengthening his position within the SKS. In order to make a public appearance of an authoritative political leader determined to make necessary changes, he introduced an iron discipline into the party organisation he led. Entirely unlike the earlier practices of the collective leadership, he now issued orders without asking the inner-party circle for advice (Jović 2009a: 262). More importantly, Milošević was determined to purge from the party’s governing bodies those representatives critical of his style of leadership. One of them was his long-time political patron and the then president of the Serbian Presidency Ivan Stambolić who, in stark contrast to Milošević’s rhetoric, argued that ‘every Serb who denies confidence to Albanian communists should be told that he is a nationalist’ (BBC, 5 May 1987). In September 1987, at a meeting of the SKS Presidency, Milošević openly attacked his party rivals. He demanded removal from party membership of Dragiša Pavlović, the head of the Belgrade SKS organisation, who previously criticised his party boss claiming that ‘the situation in Kosovo cannot be improved with a carelessly promised haste’ (Corriere della Sera, 8 October 1987). Milošević accused Pavlović of ‘obstructing the implementation of party’s policies by challenging decisions of higher party organs’ (quoted in Vladisavljević 2008: 68). In addition, he argued that Stambolić also abused power by sending a letter of support to Pavlović two days earlier. In what turned out to be a historic vote, eleven out of twenty Presidium members supported Milošević’s initiative. Pavlović was expelled from the party, and a few months later, Stambolić was removed from the office. Even though many portrayed Milošević’s success as a victory of ‘revolutionists’ over ‘institutionalists’ (Jović 2009a: 268), the entire process was carried out in accordance with the formal party procedures. And while breaking only the unwritten rules of political conduct during this period, Milošević subsequently radically changed political strategy. Instead of using the party as a source of political power, he embarked on a mass nationalist mobilisation of his supporters with the aim of dismantling its disobedient structures. In the following conference of the Yugoslav League of Communists, Milošević announced his intention, thereby venturing well beyond the confines of standard intra-party communication: ‘Party leaders are obliged to work in compliance with the wishes of the people or should, otherwise, be replaced’ (Tanjug, 30 May 1988).



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In the situation where, as he insisted, ‘institutions were not working’, Milošević chose to ignore them and gave way to ‘street democracy’, thus opening a new phase of political life in Serbia and Yugoslavia. Assisted by Kosovo Serb leaders who already had a considerable experience in organising similar political campaigns, he orchestrated a series of protest meetings and demonstrations in order to eliminate the last pockets of political resistance within the party ranks. From July 1988 to March 1989, more than 100 mass rallies of support for his politics and against the party leaders in Vojvodina and Kosovo, accused of ‘being insensitive to the plight of Serbs in Kosovo’ and ‘obstructing constitutional changes that would reassert Serb sovereignty’, were held throughout Serbia (Cohen 2001: 75). Soon after, faced with enormous public pressure, the defiant governing structures of Serbia’s autonomous provinces were forced to capitulate before Milošević. This was the first overthrow through the use of extra-institutional means of a legitimate government in Yugoslavia in the post–World War II period. On 29 March 1989, the constitutional changes were formally proclaimed in the Serbian assembly. The biggest Yugoslav republic was again legally united and Milošević was its absolute political leader. In fact, for a vast majority of people in Serbia, Milošević gained a reputation and authority which transcended all the normal considerations of party and politics (Thomas, 1999: 48). Based on his political conduct throughout the decade that followed, he seemed to be perfectly aware of this fact. LE PARTIE, C’EST MOI The Socialist Party of Serbia was officially established on 17 July 1990 as a result of the merger of the Serbian League of Communists and the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Serbia (Socijalistički savez radnog naroda Srbije – SSRN), the country’s largest sociopolitical organisation. Adopted on this occasion and amended three times (1993, 1996 and 2000) within the next decade, the SPS statute vested the greatest amount of power into the Main Board, ‘the highest party organ in-between two congresses’. At the same time, the party president was officially in charge of political coordination and party representation (table 6.1). In practice, however, the entire institutional structure of the SPS served as nothing more than a political mechanism necessary for the continuation of its leader’s personal rule. In his address to the first SPS congress, Milošević promised a decisive break with the ‘bureaucratic deformations’ of the ancien regime (NIN, 20 July 1990). Yet, as reflected by its Main Board composition, whose 111 out of 135 members were former ruling party officials, and as emphasised in its programme, the SPS was to stay on the SKS’s ideological path. More

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Table 6.1.  Power Structure as Defined by SPS Statutes (1990–2000) (Serbia) Main Board – Defines party politics in-between two congresses – Elects vice presidents, secretary general of the Main Board, and members of the Executive Board – Fills in up to 1/3 of Main Board seats – Determines the forms of SPS’s cooperation with other parties – Determines the list of party candidates for the positions of the prime minister, speaker and vice speakers of the Parliament, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, speaker of the Federal Assembly, and the Belgrade party head (1993) – Decides on the number and elects Executive Board members (1993) – Prepares party programme – Determines the list of party representatives in the national and local assemblies

President – Coordinates party work – Summons the Main Board – Presides over the Main Board meetings – Represents the SPS

importantly, the Socialists inherited their predecessors’ developed organisational structure, including a wide network of local branches, and the $160 million worth material and financial assets (Andrejević 1990: 41–45). In combination with an almost absolute media control in the country, due to which the Serbian opposition seriously considered a possibility of boycott of the first parliamentary election held on December 9, the SPS’s triumph could have hardly been called into question. And indeed, running under the slogan ‘With us there is no uncertainty’, the Socialists won 46.1 per cent of the vote, that is, three times more than the second-placed Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski pokret obnove – SPO).7 However, the result of the concomitantly organised presidential election, which Milošević won with an impressive 65.3  per cent of the vote, clearly demonstrated that the popularity of the SPS leader was considerably greater (see table 6.2).8 That Milošević was, in political terms, more than just his party’s head was also clear from the statement of his main electoral rival, the SPO leader Vuk Drašković. Prior to the polling, while hoping that his party would win a greater proportion of the vote than the SPS, Drašković was willing to admit that Milošević would probably secure the presidency (Thomas 1999: 74). Likewise, even by those intellectuals who openly supported the Serbian opposition before the first election, Milošević was still perceived as a suprapolitical figure. As Veselin Djuretić, historian and one of the most prominent representatives of Serbian nationalism among the SANU members, pointed out at the SPO’s congress in October 1990: ‘The SPO is the embodiment of that energy which was released in Kosovo in 1987 and the initiator of that energy is one man – Slobodan Milošević’ (Tanjug, 29 October 1990).



De-Institutionalising Power of Decision-Making Personalisation 101 Table 6.2.  The Winning Results (in % and Million Votes), 1990 Serbian General Elections Miloševic´ SPS

65.3 46.1

3,285 2,320

Source: Goati (2001).

The first multiparty elections in Serbia’s modern history merely confirmed the complete political dominance of Slobodan Milošević. At the same time, they marked the beginning of a decade-long period of his semi-authoritarian rule, which, adjacent to the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia, brought about international isolation and economic collapse to Serbia. In the situation when, after Croatia, the war had also broken out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milošević sought to score some positive political points through the April 1992 creation of a state federation with Montenegro, called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Savezna Republika Jugoslavija – SRJ). However, as a result of the Serbian government’s involvement in the Bosnian armed conflict, the UN Security Council introduced severe economic sanctions against the new state merely a month after its establishment. Hoping that he would improve the country’s image within the international community, Milošević invited Milan Panić, an American businessman of Serbian origin, to take on the post of the federal prime minister. The manner in which he made this choice, depicted in the following statement of Borisav Jović, then the acting president of the SPS,9 stands as another proof of Milošević’s absolute political dominance within the party: About who was going to be elected for the Federal Prime Minister, people from the Party organs, including myself as its president, knew absolutely nothing. I  had tried, on several occasions, to discuss it with Milošević, but he would always suggest me to leave it for later. At the Executive Board session, everyone was struck dumb when they heard an unfamiliar name . . . although the proposal was not objected. (2009b: 95)

Milošević soon came to realise that he had made a wrong choice of the federal premier, as Panić, supposedly being easy to politically control, sought to impose himself as the country’s supreme political authority in his efforts to restore its international reputation. Without consulting with anyone from the party, just as he had nominated him for the position, Milošević now decided to purge Panić. Strongly pressured by the opposition which blamed him for a catastrophic socioeconomic situation in the country,10 the Serbian president called early elections for 20 December 1992. And while he had no problem securing the second presidential term (he won 53.2 per cent of the vote), the SPS garnered just 28.7 per cent and was therefore forced to form

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Table 6.3.  The Winning Results (in % and Million Votes), 1992 Serbian General Elections Miloševic´ SPS

53.2 28.7

2,515 1,359

Source: Goati (2001).

a minority government. Compared to the 1990 elections, the discrepancy between the levels of popular support for Milošević and his party was even bigger (see table 6.3). ONE-MAN POLITICAL SHOW Throughout the next couple of years, Milošević invested all his efforts in an attempt to bring down the wall of devastating economic sanctions against the Serb-Montenegrin state federation. Accustomed to regularly taking over the authority of the Serbian parliament and government (Goati 2001: 84), he thereby acted as the representative of the federal interests in international affairs. By playing an ironically constructive political role in ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), mainly through a continuous pressure on the belligerent and increasingly disobedient Bosnian Serb leadership, Milošević sought – and not without success – to recast himself as ‘an icon of peace and reconciliation’ in the Balkans. To that goal, he not only accepted a new peace plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 1994,11 subsequently imposing a trade blockade to Republika Srpska (Serb-controlled part of Bosnia) whose leaders initially refused to lay down the weapons, but also chose not to react when the Croatian army launched a massive military campaign in May 1995 against the Serb rebels in the country. Some of the prominent members of the incumbent SPS voiced their disagreement with the new course of the official Serbian politics. Mihailo Marković, the party’s main ideologist and one of its vice presidents, thus stated that ‘for those who desire peace at any price, capitulation is something which can be easily accepted’ (Telegraf, 13 September 1995). Another major reason for discontent within the SPS ranks was related to the political rise of the Yugoslav United Left (Jugoslovenska levica – JUL). Led by Milošević’s wife, Mirjana Marković, this otherwise marginal party, founded in March 1995, soon gained a considerable political prominence as its members started filling important positions within the structures of power. The SPS Main Board, which had a mandate to decide on the forms of cooperation with other political parties, was thereby completely ignored. In view of that, while Milošević argued that the JUL was intended to be an alternative source



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of reliable socialist cadres who, unlike their SPS counterparts, would not be politically compromised, many of the high-ranking Socialists had a feeling that the new party was actually to supersede theirs. Borisav Jović, another vice president of the SPS, thus argued: It has now come so far that JUL receives more space on radio and television than our party does. I am also opposed to JUL because that left-wing party is headed by the wife of the Republic’s President, and that is a fact which is difficult for our people to understand or to bear. Our people find it difficult to accept that two members of the same family should head two parties. And not only two parties – because of their personal power and ambitions we have here the makings of a dynasty. (Vreme, 29 July 1995)

Already in the second SPS congress held in October 1992, which had been preceded by some inner-party critique of his ‘adventure’ with Panić, Milošević moved to cement his political supremacy. While purging a number of high party officials – among whom the former president of the Central Committee of the SKS, the SPS’s Secretary General and the head of its Belgrade organisation – he officially returned to the position of the party leader thus ‘establishing domination over the Party and becoming an absolute master of all decisions to be made’ (Jović 2009b: 140). However, as some dissonant political tones were still coming from the SPS’s highest ranks, Milošević, encouraged by the foreign policy successes,12 decided to bring the process of personalisation of political power in Serbia to culmination. Following the removal in August of Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanović, who had expressed his disagreement with Milošević’s passive stance towards the Croatian military offensive against the Serb rebels, a number of media directors – including those of the state television, the most influential daily (Politika), and the news agency (Tanjug) – were replaced. The culmination of this process took place on the SPS’s Main Board meeting held on November 28, on the occasion of which Mihailo Marković, Borisav Jović, Slobodan Jovanović (the head of the party organisation in Belgrade), Radovan Pankov (the head of the party organisation in Vojvodina) and several other members of its leadership were purged. In addition to the fact that these decisions were made contrary to the party statute, the manner in which Milošević discarded the party colleagues exposed, as fully as possible, the structure of power in the SPS: Milošević came to the Main Board meeting over which he was to preside, simply read out the list of those to be removed and appointed to duty; and, without asking whether anyone present had anything to say, and after only 12 minutes in session, closed the meeting. Meanwhile, not one member of the Main Board, the only body that has the right to appoint or replace functionaries by party statute,

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dared utter a single word, let alone ask for a vote. (Naša borba, 1 December 1995)

In an open letter addressed to the board members following the meeting, Marković accused them of a complete lack of political credibility: You silently pushed through something that is completely counter to any democracy. How do you want to work from now on? Will you ever manage to stand up and tell the president that you are the highest party body between Congresses, which defines policy and takes the most important decisions, and that he has to listen to you, not the other way around? (Vreme, 24 March 1996)

The following months provided a straightforward and, considering the political dynamics in the SPS, easily predictable answer to these questions. In its third congress, held on 2 March 1996, Milošević once again reconstructed the party cadre in accordance with his own current political preferences. Merely 51 out of 153 members of the Main Board and 6 out of 26 members of the Executive Board were re-elected. By altering two-thirds of its leadership, Milošević, in effect, demonstrated how politically insignificant his party was. It turned out, as one Serbian journalist commented, ‘that the only task of the well trained Socialists, who at his whistle came running to the Third SPS Congress, was to proclaim him the great leader almost by acclamation’ (Naša borba, 4 March 1996). At the same time, by nominating for party positions people close to JUL, Milošević sought to strengthen its ‘already firmly entrenched position in relation with the SPS’ (Thomas 1999: 263). THE EPILOGUE Milošević’s party management would soon politically backfire as strongly as never before. After a decade in power during which ‘he had failed to unify the Serbs into an enlarged state, turned Serbia into an internationally isolated pariah entity, significantly lowered the living standard, bolstered corruption, and created mafia-like gangs’ (Cohen 2001: 201), his personal political prestige could simply not do the trick anymore. In the local elections held in November 1996, the coalition of the three major opposition parties – SPO, the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka – DS), and the Civic Alliance of Serbia (Građanski savez Srbije – GSS) – won control over 41 out of 188 municipalities and, more importantly, over Belgrade and most of the other big cities in the country. The SPS leader finally recognised the election results only after three-month long protests of Serbian students and opposition parties. Now with a considerably lesser amount of political power at the local level, Milošević decided to strengthen his grip on Serbian media in anticipation of



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the upcoming parliamentary election. From December 1996 to July 1997, allegedly because of technical infringements on the broadcasting regulations, as many as fifty-five local TV and radio stations were shut down. Under such conditions, most of the Serbian opposition – including the Democratic Party – decided to boycott the September 1997 parliamentary election. However, running with two smaller parties, the SPS managed to win merely 34.2 per cent of the vote, thus again showing its political weakness and, as a result, being forced into a coalition government. At the same time, as his second term as the Serbian president ended, Milošević moved to the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As another consequence of the personalisation of power within the SPS, his successor to the Serbian presidency, Milan Milutinović, was elected only after four rounds of voting. What is more, according to the official data, Milutinović secured the triumph by ‘winning’ more than 200,000 Kosovo Albanian votes, which speaks clearly about the character of the election. Although his new function was, at least according to the SRJ Constitution, supposed to be mainly ceremonial, Milošević continued playing the most important political role in the country. Yet, compared with his early years in power, political circumstances in Serbia and, hence, the character of its regime changed drastically. Running out of financial means necessary for its maintenance, with the room for political manoeuvre critically narrowed – especially after the 1998/1999 war in Kosovo and the ensuing NATO intervention against the SRJ – Milošević moved towards an ever more repressive mode of governance. In the following period, the Serbian public witnessed the continuation of media freedom suppression, a large-scale purge of the judiciary13 and a number of high-profile political assassinations.14 From the ‘power of authority’ stage, during which manipulative authorities employed a panoply of techniques for domination, the Serbian regime gradually advanced into the ‘authority of power’ phase in which an isolated elite acquired harsher features, willing to employ all measures – including violence – to forestall its replacement (Popov, quoted in Cohen 2001: 345). In such an atmosphere, on 17 February 2000, the SPS held the fourth congress. In accordance with the party tradition of purges, all four vice presidents were ‘moved’ to the Executive Board, whereas only one new vice president was elected. In addition, only ten out of twenty-six members of this body were re-elected. At the same time, celebrating the tenth birthday, the party once again stood unanimously behind its president. As the only candidate for the position of its head, Milošević got the support of 2,308 out of 2,309 delegates, with the one invalid vote being his own (Politika, 18 February 2000). In stark contrast to this image, hundreds of thousands of Serbian citizens went out into the streets of Belgrade on 5 October, asking Milošević to step

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Table 6.4.  SPS’s Electoral Performances after the Regime Change in Serbia Year Vote %

2003

2007

2008

2012

2014

2016

7.6

5.6

7.6

14.5

13.5

10.9

Source: Nohlen and Stover (2010) and the Serbian Electoral Commission (reports available at http://www. rik.parlament.gov.rs/arhiva.php).

down after he had tried to rig the results of election for the SRJ president. On the next day, he officially recognised the defeat to the opposition candidate, Vojislav Koštunica. Despite the fact that the SPS and its coalition partners still held more than three-fourths of seats in the parliament of the Republic, the Serbian hybrid regime thus effectively ceased to exist. Without their leader in power, the Socialists won merely 13.2 per cent of the vote – almost three times less than in 1997 – in the early election held on December 23. Arguably due to well-developed party infrastructure, the Socialist Party of Serbia survived the loss of power and the 2001 extradition of Slobodan Milošević to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Moreover, subsequent to the 2008 parliamentary elections, the SPS succeeded in what hardly anyone in Serbia could even imagine in October 2000 – return to power as a minor partner in the ruling coalition with the Democratic Party. However, measured by the vote percentage, even the party’s best electoral performance – carried out in coalitions with two smaller parties – in the period that followed the regime change in Serbia was merely a half of the worst result it made during the decade in power (see table 6.4). In other words, albeit still an important player at the Serbian political scene, the SPS never actually recovered from the loss of the leader who recreated and, in essence, politically substituted the party throughout the 1990s. CONCLUDING REMARKS In this chapter, we argue that, in the political context of recently pluralised regimes, party institutionalisation first and foremost relates to the process through which a given party organisation acquires political influence irrespective of its leader’s. Accordingly, we propose the level of internal institutionalisation of these parties to be assessed against the level of power personalisation within their ranks. We argue that the most direct and relevant way to measure the personalisation of power is by looking at the composition of party leadership and central bodies. In party organisations with personalised power structures, we assert that party heads will seek to maintain discipline, that is, assure submission to their authority by means of regular and considerable changes of these organs’



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makeup. Furthermore, we contend that, in order to determine the level of external institutionalisation of a given party organisation, it is also necessary to take into account the way it is perceived by the political public. To that goal, we suggest the level of political influence of these parties to be measured against their leaders’ personal political leverage by juxtaposing their electoral results in an observed time period. To demonstrate significance of the structure of political power for party institutionalisation, we provided a detailed account of the developmental path of the Socialist Party of Serbia. The internal power structure of this party was arbitrarily modelled by its leader, Slobodan Milošević. At the moment of introduction of the multiparty system in Serbia, he was the country’s undisputed political and national leader. As a consequence, throughout the decade that followed, he was able to monopolise decision-making power at the summit of the party’s political hierarchy. The exercise of power in the SPS during this period was, in essence, a one-man show. Although it had inherited a considerable organisational capacity from its powerful communist-predecessor party, the SPS merely complied with Milošević’s personal political views. To ensure loyalty and prevent any threat to his absolute control of the party, he dismantled internal structures and procedures, and regularly purged its most prominent members, thus significantly weakening its political foundations. Moreover, by giving over a large number of political, business and media appointments to his wife’s party, following its establishment in 1995, Milošević purposefully transferred a great amount of power out of the party he led. Consequently, with the authority concentrated entirely in his hands, the SPS could, in political competition with the opposition, rely primarily on its president’s charisma. However, as its appeal gradually faded due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in the country, the SPS – notwithstanding the ‘menu of manipulation’ (Schedler 2002) at disposal – grew increasingly vulnerable in the face of numerous political challenges. The party’s electoral defeat at the end of 2000, which marked the end of the Serbian hybrid regime, was ultimately decided by its structurally defined overdependence on Milošević’s personal political prestige. Owing to the same reason, the regime’s stability was, throughout the decade that ended with its collapse, seriously threatened on several occasions. NOTES 1. Some parts of this chapter owe their origins to a working paper by Ivan Vuković titled ‘The Socialist Party of Serbia 1990–2000: Political Impotence of the Organizational Omnipotence’, published online by the Centre for Southeast European Studies (https://suedosteuropa.uni-graz.at/en/publications/working-papers/2012/

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the-socialist-party-of-serbia-1990-2000-political-impotence-of-the-organizationalomnipotence/) and to Ivan Vuković’s PhD dissertation titled ‘Party Outcomes in Hybrid Regimes in the Western Balkans and Beyond’, submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Central European University, Budapest, May 2014. 2. ‘Formally’ is used in view of the fact that in a significant number of countries which over the last quarter century introduced multi-party competition, hybrid (semiauthoritarian) regimes were created as a result. 3. The SPS was, to use Schonfeld’s words, characterised by monocratic form of headship ‘defined by the prime role of a single person in the shaping of a group’s decision’, where ‘the entire organisation tends to identify with him’ (1981: 231). 4. The 1971 census, for instance, showed that Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, who made up 21 per cent of its total population, still held one-third positions in the party and mass organisations, 45 per cent of the government and legislative functionaries, and more than half of the provincial managerial personnel. Academic elite and technical intelligentsia in Kosovo were also overwhelmingly non-Albanian (Cohen 2001: 24). 5. During the 1970s, with 27 live births per 1000 population, Kosovo officially had the highest birth rate in Europe. It was estimated that, as a result, its population of 1.6 million (in 1981) would grow to 2.6 million by the end of the century, and 3.5 million by 2021 (Radio Free Europe Research, 7 August 1987). 6. In the course of the meeting, clashes broke out between local police and Serb demonstrators. Purportedly moved by the scenes of police violence, Milošević used the presence of TV reporters to famously utter: ‘No one should dare to beat you’, the sentence that, in words of the Kosovo Serb leader Miroslav Šolević, ‘enthroned him as a [Serbian] Tsar’ (quoted in Silber and Little 1995: 37). ‘There will be no tyranny on this soil’, Milošević pledged before the mass, and continued in the same tone: ‘We will win this battle. Yugoslavia does not exist without Kosovo. Yugoslavia will disintegrate without Kosovo. Yugoslavia and Serbia will not give it away’ (quoted in Djukić 2001: 17). 7. Due to a majoritarian electoral system, the SPS won 77.6 per cent of seats in the Parliament. 8. With the total turnout standing at close to 5 million, the discrepancy in the number of votes garnered by Milošević and the SPS was 965,212 in favour of the party leader. 9. He was effectively replacing Milošević given that, according to the Serbian Constitution, the president of the Republic was not allowed to be politically active within a party. 10. Cohen reminds that, compared to the 1989 level, Serbian GDP slid by 60 per cent, and net wages lost almost two-thirds of value by the end of 1992, while several hundred thousand people – mainly young and educated – left the country in this period (2001: 161). 11. The plan was created by the international Contact Group (composed of the United States, the UK, Germany, France and Russia) with an idea to organise BiH as federation of the two ethnically based political entities – one that was supposed to



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encompass 51 per cent of its territory, under jurisdiction of Bosniaks and Croats, and the other to be governed by Serbs. The Bosnian Serb leadership rejected the proposal as its army, at that moment, controlled 70 per cent of the Bosnian territory. 12. As Thomas explains, ‘as 1995 drew to a close, Milošević had every reason to be pleased with the course politics had taken. The international community had accepted him, albeit reluctantly as a guarantor of peace in the Balkans and a pillar of the Dayton agreement. Milošević could now present himself to the Serbian people as a man who had brought Serbia peace, relief from the sanctions regime, and acceptance back into the international community’ (1999: 251). 13. Within a year from the October 1998 adoption of the notorious ‘Public Information Act’, which empowered courts to act against media that ‘damaged the reputation of the SRJ’, more than 250 TV and radio stations in Serbia were closed down. In addition, allegedly for ‘engaging in opposition activities’, 900 out of 2,000 judges in Serbia were forced to leave the office in the period from 1998 to 2000. 14. The victims list, among others, include Radovan Stojičić, Serbian police chief; Pavle Bulatović, federal defence minister; Slavko Ćuruvija, one of the most influential independent Serbian journalists; and Željko Ražnatović Arkan, Serbian paramilitary leader in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

Chapter 7

Inverse Relationship between Party Institutionalisation and Party System Competitiveness: The Transformation of Postwar Japanese Party Politics1 Takayoshi Uekami and Hidenori Tsutsumi INTRODUCTION The most prominent characteristic of Japanese party politics in the past was the single-party dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Formed in 1955, the LDP was in power continuously until 1993. It was infamous for factionalism and clientelism, although these characteristics largely disappeared in the 1990s, when the party system became more competitive. Changes of government occurred in 1993, 2009 and 2012. Power relations in the LDP were consolidated, leading to a decline in factionalism and clientelism among members of the Diet, Japan’s national parliament. The present LDP, which returned to government following the House of Representatives (HR; Lower House) election in 2012, has been brought together by Prime Minister Abe Shinzō under a policy of conservatism. How should we understand these changes in Japan’s formerly dominant political party? In order to answer this question, this chapter examines the mechanisms of change on a micro level, based on an analysis of the institutionalisation of the party and the increasing competitiveness of the party system as a whole. This chapter applies the concept of institutionalisation to gain an understanding of the changes undergone by established political parties in developed countries. First of all, we cross-classify the degree of institutionalisation within the political party and of the competitiveness of the party system into four types. Theoretically, the competitive or uncompetitive party system may lead to institutionalisation or de-institutionalisation of the party itself. Reviewing party politics in postwar Japan, we show that as the system of single-party dominance became established, the dominant party became subject to the internal forces of factionalism and clientelism. After the 1990s, as a more competitive party system replaced single-party dominance, factionalism 111

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within the former dominant party was suppressed, and an effort was made to bring the party together under a conservative ideology. The concept of institutionalisation of the party works on a macro level; however, it fails to explain the mechanisms of change on a micro level. We posit that changes in the degree of inter-party competition influence the power of the dominant factional coalition and factions within the party, thus leading to changes in the party’s structure and policies. Using data on members of the HR, we show how an increase in the degree of competition between political parties caused an increase in the power of the LDP executive, and brought about a decrease in the number of HR members belonging to a faction. Next, we first discuss the concept of institutionalisation on a macro level, before proceeding to an examination of the mechanisms of change on a micro level. Finally, we present our conclusions and their implications. THE INSTITUTIONALISATION AND COMPETITIVENESS OF PARTY POLITICS IN POSTWAR JAPAN In this section, we evaluate the institutionalisation of the political party, and the competitiveness of the party system, the changes they have undergone and the relationship between them, based on a concise depiction of party politics in Japan after the end of World War II. This principally entails a macro-level analysis, from an historical perspective. Randall and Svåsand (2002) suggest that institutionalisation has two dimensions: the dimension of internal vs. external, and the dimension of structural vs. attitudinal. Internal structural institutionalisation is conceptualised as ‘systemness’; internal attitudinal institutionalisation is ‘value infusion’; external structural institutionalisation is ‘decisional autonomy’; external-attitudinal institutionalisation is ‘reification’.2 According to the latest work by Harmel, Svåsand and Mjelde (presented in chapter 2 of this book), a political party is institutionalised when its internal organisational actions have become routinised and have acquired value on their own; other actors recognise its lasting power externally; and the party exhibits objective durability. Furthermore, this institutionalisation can advance and retreat (or deinstitutionalise) in each of the multiple dimensions. Party institutionalisation will be hindered when these formal institutions compete with informal ones or when formal institutions compete with informal institutions. It should be noted here that the concept of institutionalisation can be divided into internal and external dimensions, and there may be a discrepancy between structure and actual behaviour which obstructs the progress of institutionalisation. In this chapter, we will focus on internal aspects of party institutionalisation and on factors which promote or discourage internal



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institutionalisation. We will investigate how the party responds – by institutionalising (or de-institutionalising) itself – to the change in competitiveness of party system. In the rest of this chapter, we will examine how the LDP, a dominant party in Japan, has coped with the increasingly competitive environment by concentrating formal power in the leadership, thus curtailing influence of the informal factions. Figure 7.1 shows the four combinations of institutionalisation of the political party and competitiveness of party system. Type I is where the party reinforces the party system, and vice versa. Conversely, Type IV is where the collapse of the party and dominant party system progress simultaneously. However, Type II and Type III are where the institutionalisation or stabilisation of party and system do not occur in tandem. An inverse relationship of cause and effect exists in Type II, where the competitive party system drives the institutionalisation of the party. Let’s assume that a decline in party support from voters and/or electoral reform can transform the party system.3 In an increasingly uncertain environment, an existing party may choose internal institutionalisation in order to survive. Room may also open up for new parties to be formed and institutionalised.4 As the party system becomes competitive, however, the structures and behaviours that surround the party become more fluid, meaning that institutionalisation is limited to the party’s internal organisation. In Type III, it is postulated that within a highly established dominant party system, the party may become caught up in factional struggles. In this case, de-institutionalisation is limited to the intra-party sphere, as the uncompetitiveness of the party system causes the party’s external environment to stabilise. We conclude that the single-party dominance enjoyed by the LDP was the combination of an ‘uncompetitive party system’ and a ‘dominant party

Figure 7.1.  Relationship between Party Institutionalisation and Party System Competitiveness

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exposed to internal factionalising pressures’. The political reforms of the 1990s made Japan’s party system more competitive, and coalition governments were formed. This unstabilised party system brought about the weakening of factions and increasing institutionalisation within the dominant party. In other words, postwar Japan may be understood as an example of the transition from Type III to Type II. Party Politics in Postwar Japan It was not until 1955 that the fundamental composition of party politics in postwar Japan became established. Numerous political parties appeared after the end of the war, but they were gradually consolidated on the conservative side by the LDP, and on the progressive side by the Socialist Party of Japan. The 1960s saw an increase in the number of opposition parties, with the Democratic Socialist Party (a breakaway from the Socialist Party), the Komeito (a party founded by a newly formed Buddhist group) and the Japanese Communist Party (legalised after the war) each gaining seats, especially in urban areas. These opposition parties were policy-seeking: their purpose was the realisation of their ideology, and they never threatened the continuation of the LDP government. The LDP, in contrast, was vote-seeking: while advocating a policy of conservatism, it actually placed most importance on the result of popular elections in order to remain in government. The LDP was in government until 1993, always with a majority of seats in the HR. The political opposition was fragmented, with the Socialist Party only holding about half as many seats as the LDP, at most. The chances of a change in government were slim. In terms of comparative politics, Japan was classified as a one-party dominant political system (Sartori 1976; Pempel ed. 1990). It was not until the 1990s that this pattern of party politics, established in 1955, began to undergo a transformation. During this period in Japanese party politics the stability of the relationship between parties – and between the political system, the state and the public electorate – fostered a continuation of the one-party dominant system. Political Reform The electoral system formerly used in the HR was classed as a single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system for a fixed multiple number of seats. This system is known to encourage the casting of personal votes (Carey and Shugart 1995). In addition, local governments in Japan were dependent on the allocation of financial resources from the central government. Scheiner (2006) explains that the combination of clientelism and centralisation of fiscal power underpinned the support for LDP governments. In the 1990s,



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public criticism of this political corruption bolstered efforts for political reform. Immediately prior to the 1993 HR election, dissenting members from the LDP formed two new political parties: the Japan Renewal Party and the New Party Sakigake. In the HR election that followed, the LDP was unable to gain a majority, and the eight political parties, excluding the LDP and the Communist Party, formed a coalition government. In 1994, the new non-LDP coalition government succeeded in changing the HR electoral system from a SNTV system to an electoral system comprising single-member districts (SMD) and proportionally represented (PR) multiple-seat constituencies (mixed member majoritarian, MMM), and establishing a system of public subsidies for political parties. Subsequently, however, schisms formed in the new coalition due to the formation of a new political party, and the coalition soon collapsed. The new electoral system consisted of 300 seats from SMD and 200 seats distributed according to PR by the d’Hondt method, thus placing greater weight on SMD.5 It was necessary for the fragmented opposition parties to work together in order to challenge LDP candidates in SMD. It was in this context that political parties participating in the non-LDP coalition excluded the Socialist Party and New Party Sakigake, which had come into conflict over the operation of government, and formed the New Frontier Party (NFP). The NFP differed considerably from previous opposition parties in that it was a vote-seeking party that viewed winning government as a primary objective.6 Meanwhile, the LDP entered into negotiations with the two parties excluded from the NFP, the Socialist Party and Sakigake, and succeeded in forming a coalition government. Party System Change The LDP regained power at the 1996 HR election and reclaimed government in its own right, but lost its majority in the House of Councilors (HC; Upper House) at the 1998 election. In the next year, the LDP formed a new coalition government with the Komeito and the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party soon broke away, but the coalition between the LDP and the Komeito lasted until the government’s defeat at the 2009 HR election. In contrast, the NFP disbanded after failing to win power at the 1996 HR election. Many members of the former NFP, excepting those originally from the Komeito, joined the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which had been formed by members from the Socialist Party and Sakigake. Before the 2003 HR election, the Liberal Party, which had broken from the LDP coalition, merged with the DPJ, further increasing the DPJ’s power base. The main aim of the DPJ was to win government, and in this sense, it posed a real threat to the LDP (Uekami and Tsutsumi 2011).

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The LDP sought to use traditional clientelism to mobilise supporters (Calder 1988). As budget deficits accumulated, however, the NFP and DPJ called for radical administrative reform. In this context, Koizumi Jun’ichirō, who became the president of the LDP and prime minister of Japan in 2001, gained the support of the electorate for his policy of economic reform based on neo-liberalism (Otake 2003). Criticism of growing economic disparities and the aftermath of the global recession following the Lehman Shock made the continued pursuit of neo-liberalism difficult. Koizumi’s successor was forced to find a new strategy, and Abe Shinzō appealed to the public with a conservative ideology (Nakakita 2014; Nakano 2015). In the end, the DPJ defeated the coalition government of the LDP and Komeito in the 2009 HR election, and rose to government. In order to secure a majority in the HC, the DPJ formed a coalition with the People’s New Party, a new political party formed by defecting members of the LDP, and the Social Democratic Party (formally the Socialist Party). The DPJ resisted the clientelism and neo-liberalism of the LDP and sought the realisation of their policies of universal welfare but were frustrated by a lack of financial resources. As internal divisions regarding fiscal reconstruction became increasingly fierce, many members left the DPJ and formed new political parties. Increasing public criticism of the DPJ government and the absence of coordination between non-LDP political parties allowed the LDP and Komeito to reclaim government at the 2012 HR election (Kushida and Lipscy 2013; Maeda and Tsutsumi 2015). The relationship between political parties was thus destabilised by the emergence of new parties, as well as by changes of government. Administrative and fiscal reform became the subject of debate, and the relationship between political parties and the state was re-assessed. There was an increase in non-aligned voters, and the electorate’s support for the party system was shaken. Thus, we can say that the destabilisation of the party system progressed during this period. Institutionalisation of the LDP Under the old multi-member SNTV system that used to be used in the HR elections before the introduction of MMM system, it was normal for three to five candidates to be elected from each electoral district. In order for large parties such as the LDP to maintain their seats in the Diet, they needed to mount multiple candidates in the same district. Different factions within the LDP would endeavour to gain party endorsement for candidates they had recruited and continued to support the campaigns of those candidates even if they were not officially endorsed.7 The LDP employed a system that enabled elected candidates to be recognised as LDP members regardless of whether or not they had received official



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endorsement, and this acted as a considerable limitation on the party executive’s power to endorse candidates. The factions did not simply recruit candidates; they also exercised great influence on their promotion following election. Newly elected Diet members would be affiliated with the faction that had supported them during their election campaign and accumulate experience that would eventually lead to ministerial and other senior appointments. The recommendation of their faction was crucial to such appointments. Faction leaders would in turn rely on the support of their membership when they stood for election to party president. Furthermore, it was not uncommon for presidential election procedures to be altered through negotiation among the factions (Tanaka 1986). Inter-factional struggles were intense and reached their peak in the 1970s. There was even a case in which the prime minister was forced to dissolve the House of Representatives after a parliamentary vote of no confidence in the cabinet was passed due to the non-attendance of members affiliated with opposing factions. Following Leiserson (1968), we can understand the LDP governments of the past as coalitions of factions made up of individual Diet members (see figure 7.2). Under the old multi-member SNTV system, opposition parties rarely nominated more than one candidate in any single district and showed no desire to wrest power from the LDP. The low risk of actually losing government was a precondition for the development of factionalism and clientelism in the LDP. Split into factions, the LDP was forced even to engage in patronage demanded by a support base beyond the party itself, and its decision-making focus was thus diffused. In the internal and external structural dimensions

Figure 7.2.  Factional Structure of Japan’s LDP (House of Representatives Members Only)

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of the LDP, the standard of institutionalisation was not high. The interesting feature is that a highly stabilised party system conversely created a dominant party that was exposed to the pressures of non-institutionalisation. Under the new HR electoral system introduced in 1994, the LDP executive seized authority for candidate endorsements, and the power of its factions began to wane (Otake 2003; Takenaka 2006). Vote by party members took root as the means of nominating candidates and selecting party leaders (Uekami 2008; Smith and Tsutsumi 2016). Additionally, as the need for patronage in elections diminished, so too did the strength of the party’s relationships with outside support groups seeking favours (Köllner 2002). Furthermore, public subsidies to political parties came to represent 60 per cent of the LDP’s overall income, and 25 per cent of income for individual Diet members, lowering the reliance on individual fund-raising. As a result, the role of factions in apportioning funds also diminished (Takenaka 2006; Carlson 2010). In other words, the standards of formalisation in the LDP were raised, and the degree of institutionalisation on a structural level increased. In the internal and attitudinal dimension, clientelism was replaced by a conservative ideological pitch as the main strategy for garnering support. This attempt at value infusion at the party level is consistent with the concept of party institutionalisation. In external-attitudinal terms, however, it must be noted that voter support has become more fluid. The onset of institutionalisation could be said to be more prominent in the LDP internally. If the increasing competitiveness of the dominant party system is being accompanied by institutionalisation of the dominant party, does this mean that the relationship between them is one of cause and effect? The next section brings a micro-level approach to bear on this question. CHANGE IN POLITICAL PARTIES: THEORIES AND HYPOTHESES The institutionalisation of political parties and the party system are macrolevel phenomena. In order to mount the argument that change in a party system prompts change in parties themselves, it is necessary to explicate the micro-level mechanisms of change. In this section, we briefly review the existing literature on change in organisation, policies and governmental strategies of political parties, and present the theories and hypotheses employed in this chapter. Literature Review How do changes take place in the organisation, policies and governmental strategies of political parties? There have been many attempts to verify



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theories and hypotheses in response to this question. Addressing these in detail is beyond the scope of this chapter; the following is simply a brief summary of salient points. Studies in the typology of political party organisation have been undertaken in order to explain historical macro-phenomena,8 with traditional theories such as spatial competition theory and coalition formation theory tending to treat each party as a unitary actor9 (Downs 1957; Riker 1962; Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco 1982). In response to this strand of research, Harmel and others have sought to explain specific changes at certain points in time by reference to factors internal to the parties concerned (Harmel and Janda 1994; Harmel et al. 1995; Harmel and Tan 2003). These studies look not only at external causes of change such as election losses but also at how external stimuli are transformed into internal factors such as inter-factional power relations, power of the dominant factional coalition and leadership of the party head, leading to organisational and policy changes. Such studies could be seen as seeking more precise explanations than those rendered by traditional political party research. A succession of studies in recent years has also noted the impact of intraparty politics on policy making and participation in coalition governments. Some of the most recent findings include an account of inter-factional conflict and election loss leading to changes in a party’s policies (Budge et al. 2010), and use of degree of internal division and presence/absence of a centralised system of power of as means of determining whether a party joins a coalition government (Ceron 2014). The approach of studies such as these is to explain party behaviour by reference to internal factors. This chapter builds on these research developments by explaining political party organisation and policy change with an emphasis on internal causes. We discuss how changes in the party system dictate the survivability of coalition governments and prospects for success in elections and, mediated by these factors, influence the power of internal factions and the dominant factional coalition. Our approach in this chapter is not intended to deny that changes to the electoral system are a more fundamental independent variable influencing changes in party systems and even parties themselves (see note 7 in this regard). We do not employ such an account, however, as it cannot be used to explain specific changes taking place at particular points in time. Theory and Hypotheses Harmel and Janda (1994) state that a political party’s performance criteria are dictated by the party’s primary goal (p. 279, A5). In the following analysis, it is assumed that political parties seek votes and/or office in line with prevailing conditions.10

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The routes by which inter-party competition can influence internal party politics can be contemplated in terms of two different types of change: pattern and degree of inter-party competition. We will focus on the latter. As inter-party competition grows more intense within a formerly dominant party system, it becomes essential for a party to formulate appropriate election strategies and approaches to day-to-day management astutely in response to other parties and public opinion trends. In order to maximise votes and seats in parliament and to win or retain government, the party is required to achieve not only inter-factional compromise but also rational decision making. The result, theoretically, is that powers such as candidate endorsement, personnel and determination of governmental and party policies are entrusted to the party executive. Party organisation becomes more centralised, and the influence of pre-existing internal groups such as factions grows weaker in relative terms. This centralisation process can be understood also as a relationship between principal and agent. As principals, parliamentary members entrust some powers to their party executive – the agent – in order to achieve goals such as success in elections and appropriate management of government.11 Accordingly, the influence exerted by pre-existing internal groups diminishes. This logical consequence can be summarised in the hypothesis below: Main Hypothesis: As inter-party competition grows, party organisation becomes more centralised, and pre-existing internal groups are weakened. A slightly more concrete formulation is needed in order to test this hypothesis. The logic is sound, but it is not necessarily clear in what circumstances the party executive would be strengthened and factional power diminished. One situation that may typically lead to enhancement of the party executive’s leadership is victory in an election. Factional weakening is likely to result in an increase in the numbers of members not affiliated with any faction. This allows us to reformulate the main hypothesis as a working hypothesis: Ha: Election victory leads to an increase in the proportion of HR members not affiliated with any faction (non-affiliated members). Conversely, an election loss and resultant decline in leadership by the party executive is anticipated to cause an increase in the number of factionaffiliated HR members. This is because the relative rise in influence of the factions within the party means that factional affiliation becomes a more attractive proposition for members seeking to secure certain positions and achieve specific policy goals. Additionally, members’ choices in relation to factional affiliation are thought to be influenced not only by actual election results but also by the prospects of victory or defeat. This point will also be explored below.



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The incentive to join a faction is thought to diminish particularly for newly elected members. If factional support is no longer necessary in order to gain party endorsement, there is no reason why a newly elected member should join a faction after election. Furthermore, if the leadership of the party executive is strengthened as a result of victory in inter-party competition, there is likely to be especially little incentive for new members to join factions for purposes such as seeking higher office. Incumbent members, on the other hand, are as a rule already entitled to endorsement, so they have no need to become obligated to the party executive. Many veteran LDP members in office since the pre-reform heyday of the factions would have gained endorsement and achieved promotions by affiliating themselves with factions. New non-affiliated members provide the foundations of power for the party executive, but they do not furnish their support unconditionally. Generally, new members have a weak support base within their constituencies: election outcomes are thought to be swayed to a large degree by the popularity of party leaders. As long as the party leader remains popular, therefore, non-affiliated members are sure to support the party executive. These ideas are encapsulated in the following working hypotheses: Hb: In general, new HR members tend not to join factions. Hc: New HR members tend not to join factions if their party wins an election. Hd: New non-affiliated HR members support popular party leaders, but do not support unpopular party leaders. As regards Hypothesis b, in order to establish the tendency for new members not to join factions, it is necessary to pursue comparison with members elected several times. For Hypothesis c, comparison between successful and unsuccessful elections must be used to establish whether or not the tendency not to join becomes more pronounced. Hypothesis d must be tested by establishing the relationship between leader popularity and support through comparison with new HR members that are affiliated with factions. It might be envisaged that both the approach to factions and the level of support for the party leader displayed by new members will vary depending on whether the member is affiliated with a faction forming part of the dominant coalition or not. TESTING THE HYPOTHESES In this section, we test the hypotheses outlined above. First, however, we provide an overview of the factions that have exerted major influence on the institutionalisation of the LDP and their respective policies. Figure 7.2 shows the proportions of HR members affiliated with the LDP’s different factions since the 1990s. Factions, which had been part of

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the LDP ever since the party’s formation, coalesced in the early 1970s into four major factions and one smaller faction, namely the Heisei Study Group, Kōchi Group, and Seiwa Policy Study Group, as well as the pre-existing Policy Science Group and Banmachi Policy Study Group. For the purpose of convenience, in this chapter, the labels Heisei, Kōchi, Seiwa, Others, and Non-affiliated are used.12 Contrary to the impression given by their official names, factions of the LDP could not be characterised as policy groups: they are groups founded on personal connections among individuals. Nevertheless, as the political convictions of a faction’s founder are internalised by its followers, ideological differences can emerge across different groups (Zakowski 2011: 181). We therefore measured the overall policy positions of each faction by utilising the UTokyo-Asahi Survey (UTAS).13 Mean principal component scores and standard deviation for members of each faction were calculated as shown in table 7.1. In the liberal/conservative dimension, factional policy positions became gradually more conservative between 2003 and 2012. Analysis of policy positions in the big government/small government dimension shows that in 2005 small government was favoured in line with the position LDP leader Koizumi Jun’ichirō, but that the position shifted to big government in 2012, when initiatives such as monetary easing and public works were proposed under the banner of ‘Abenomics’. It can be said that the LDP gets infused with value as the factional policy differences diminish and the party becomes more united under the conservative ideology. Testing the Hypotheses: Change in the Degree of Inter-Party Competition Here we test the hypothesis concerning the mechanisms whereby heightened competition among parties leads to a decline in factionalism within the LDP. Ha: Election victory leads to an increase in the proportion of members not affiliated with any faction (non-affiliated members). Under the 1955 system, the great majority of LDP Diet members had factional affiliations. Figure 7.2 shows that this tendency continued almost unabated into the 1990s. In the 2000s, however, there was an increase in the proportion of HR members not affiliated with any faction. What can be concluded regarding the timing at which such non-affiliated party members increased? The increase followed the 2005 HR election, which was called after Prime Minister Koizumi’s postal privatisation bill had been defeated. At this election, despite the LDP’s refusal to endorse incumbent candidates who

.333 (0.460) 46 .252 (0.568) 36 .537 (0.537) 41 .440 (0.583) 67 .259 (0.440) 21 .386 (0.538) 211

.444 (0.440) 30 .161 (0.578) 39 .605 (0.544) 52 .502 (0.429) 67 .457 (0.578) 85 .452 (0.537) 273

2005 .614 (0.551) 13 .383 (0.544) 23 .942 (0.531) 19 .606 (0.486) 33 .524 (0.464) 24 .600 (0.530) 112

2009 1.026 (0.496) 26 .799 (0.480) 25 .981 (0.440) 51 .917 (0.471) 63 .963 (0.390) 107 .947 (0.438) 272

2012 –.160 (0.938) 46 .031 (0.824) 36 .367 (0.918) 41 –.033 (0.883) 67 .373 (0.621) 21 .068 (0.886) 211

2003 .663 (0.969) 30 .876 (1.000) 39 .821 (0.837) 52 .533 (0.724) 67 .865 (1.036) 85 .755 (0.922) 273

2005 –.982 (0.539) 13 –1.089 (0.571) 23 –.823 (0.493) 19 –.856 (0.592) 33 –.694 (0.844) 24 –.878 (0.635) 112

2009

Big Gov. (–) – Small Gov. (+)

–.711 (0.753) 26 –.705 (0.666) 25 –.725 (0.718) 51 –.724 (0.825) 63 –.573 (0.788) 107 –.662 (0.768) 272

2012

Note: The number shown in upper row is the mean principal component score of the faction members. The number shown in middle row indicates the standard deviation, and that shown in lower column indicates the number of members of the faction.

Total

Non-affiliated

Others

Seiwa

Kōchi

Heisei

2003

Liberal (–) – Conservative (+)

Table 7.1.  Factional Policy Positions in Japan’s LDP

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Takayoshi Uekami and Hidenori Tsutsumi

had opposed the bill and chose to nominate alternative candidates instead, the party still achieved a crushing victory, claiming 296 seats. The proportion of non-affiliated HR members jumped to 25 per cent. Following Koizumi’s replacement by new Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, however, a series of cabinet-level scandals saw approval ratings plummet, and the LDP suffered major losses in the 2007 HC election. Abe resigned and was replaced by Fukuda Yasuo, and then Asō Tarō, but support for the LDP continued to languish. The party was (as expected) defeated soundly at the 2009 HR election, losing government to a coalition of parties led by the DPJ. By this point, the proportion of non-affiliated HR members in the LDP had fallen to 15 per cent. The DPJ thus seized power from the LDP in 2009, but voter support declined steadily in the following years; by the time the next HR election was held in late 2012, another regime change was seen as inevitable. The proportion of non-affiliated HR members in the LDP had risen again to one quarter after the 2009 defeat, and by August 2012, around one-third of members had no factional affiliations. This proportion grew further to around 40 per cent after the LDP regained power following a major victory in the 2012 HR election. Hypothesis a predicted that the proportion of non-affiliated members would rise following an election victory or prospect thereof. This tendency has been observed since the election strategies of parties and party leaders began to attract attention in 2005. Hypothesis a is thus largely supported. The next question arising from this analysis concerns exactly what kinds of HR members are unaffiliated with factions, and in what circumstances. Hb: In general, new HR members tend not to join factions. Hc: New HR members tend not to join factions if their party wins an election. This question is answered below using binary logistic regression analysis with factional affiliation/non-affiliation as the dependent variable, after adding policy position, electoral district characteristics and victory in proportional representation (PR)/loss in a single-member district (SMD) as control variables (see table 7.2). As seen earlier, there is a degree of variation in policy positions across the different LDP factions. The possibility that HR members choose their factional affiliations based on policy cannot be denied, and it is therefore necessary to control for policy positions. Members confronted with fierce competition at the polls may also join factions in the hope of garnering further support. This demands control for electoral fragility. Here we make use of the concept of ‘zombie’ members who have lost their SMD polls but salvaged their positions in the PR system and the degree of electoral district

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