Tuesday, June 25, 2013
D1.18A (Oudemanhuispoort)
Does the organizational structure of parties affect their mobilizational capacity and their electoral success? Multiple factors have been associated with electoral performance but a systematic comparative study of the effect of organizational structure is missing from the literature. In fact, most of the literature treats party organization as a dependent rather than an independent variable. In this paper, we fill this gap in the literature focusing on the understudied group of center-right European parties--those belonging to the European People’s Party. We use several organizational aspects: the extent of party organization, the centralization of party activites, the balance of power in candidate selection, and the way the party leader is elected. We examine the link between party organization and electoral appeal using a new dataset we compiled by conducting qualitative interviews with party officials, analyzing party statutes, as well as consulting opinion polls and expert surveys. Our analysis indicates that there is a clear link between organizational structures of center-right European parties and their mobilizational capacity and electoral success.
