Political Parties and Interest Organizations at the Crossroads: Perspectives on the Transformation of Political Organizations

The Convergence of Political Organizations or the Persistence of Multiple Organizational Forms?

One crucial element that all these literatures seem to share is a strong debate around the (apparent) transformation of political organizations. We argue that it is possible to identify highly influential accounts in all genres that point to the usurping of some “gold standard” of political organization and its replacement with some kind of professionalized variant. Sub-literatures seem to almost uniformly debate the transformation of historically dominant political organizational forms—key features include a democratic and participatory style, as well as a de-centralized structure with local chapters, and a reliance on civil society resources—toward a “new” form which is better adapted to contemporary conditions and characterized by a key role for professional staff, a centralized structure, more remote members or supporters, and increased reliance on alternative, non-member sources of income. Following this narrative, which is found in accounts across the full range of political organizations, it seems that the political leverage of contemporary political organizations mainly relates to “their ability to raise funds (including from the public purse), to employ highly professionalized staff, and to engage the resources of professional lobbyists and campaigners,” making politics “a battle between groups of professionals who claim to represent certain (ever more heterogeneous) constituencies but who are no longer socially or organizationally tied to them” (Van Biezen and Poguntke, 2014: 213). Or, as phrased by Hilgartner and Bosk (1988: 57), “not all the actors who market social problems can be considered ‘activists’. For some, social problems are just another day at the office.” In this section, we clarify this narrative, which is present in both the political party and interest organizations literature (although the former offers a more elaborated account of this process), and explore to what extent this perspective understates the organizational diversity of contemporary political organizations.

The party literature, for instance, has discussed the “decline” or “failure” of parties (see Lawson, 1988; for more recent discussions, see Bardi et al., 2014a, 2014b) and has utilized several distinctions to designate different party forms or models: elite/cadre party, the mass party, the catch-all party and the cartel party (see Blyth and Katz, 2005; Katz and Mair, 1995). To crudely summarize, a key element of the transformation to a cartel party form is about seeking state support—as opposed to seeking to mobilize the “base”—as a way of securing party organizational survival. These models, or forms of party, are often presented within a period-based argument—each form is replaced by a new dominant form. While it is the case that this account is interpreted as a claim that parties—and party systems—move in lock-step along this trajectory, Katz and Mair explain that in applying these to individual cases “these models represent heuristically convenient polar types, to which individual parties may approximate more or less closely at any given time” (Katz and Mair, 1995: 19). Thus, “contemporary parties are not necessarily wholly cartel parties any more than parties in previous generations were wholly elite parties, or wholly mass parties, or wholly catch-all parties” (Katz and Mair, 1995: 19). ¹ The point is that one form or another might be considered an optimally adapted generic form, but the extent to which it summarizes the precise empirical form of specific parties is an open question (see also Koole, 1996).

Likewise, highly influential accounts point to a series of generational shifts in the structures of interest organizations, suggesting that changing conditions are conspiring to undermine their role as democratic agents. McCarthy and Zald (1977) described the increasingly defunct nature of the “classical” SMO, which they saw being replaced by a “professional” SMO form (characterized by a reliance on paid leaders and broad support from “conscience constituents” who provide money but do not otherwise get involved). More recently, both Robert Putnam (2000) and Theda Skocpol (1999) have made similar observations about civil society organizations. According to the latter, the groups formed in the early 1900s (based on local branch structures and face-to-face membership engagement) have been transformed into centralized organizations run by professional staff. These organizations are often empty of membership involvement and characterized by a single-issue policy agenda, leading to a “diminished democracy” (Skocpol, 2003) in which integrative policy capacities, important to strategic policymaking and good governance, are lost. Furthermore, the advent of direct mail and other recruitment processes has, it is argued, undermined the logic of a “membership” model and supported a “professionalized” model, that is best exemplified by “relatively centralized and professionally led organizations focused on policy lobbying and education” (Skocpol, 1999: 471; for similar observations on contemporary environmental organizations, see Bosso, 2005; Jordan and Maloney, 1997). ² The NFP literature is also well versed in contemplating the implications of shifting levels of reliance on the state for resources. More specifically, various authors have demonstrated the double-edged nature of these relations with pubic authorities: while they are often beneficial to professionalization, they can also result in a loss of organizational autonomy and a decreased sensitivity to an organization’s constituency (e.g. Mosley, 2012; Nikolic and Koontz, 2008; Schmid and Almog-Bar, 2014; Verschuere and De Corte, 2014). Furthermore, accounts about non-profits becoming more business-like echo many of the processes described above, such as an increased reliance on paid staff and a reduced role for volunteers (due to limited opportunities for internal democracy), and ultimately threaten the social goods which non-profit organizations (NPOs) can provide (Maier et al., 2014: 13).

In sum, both interest organizations and political parties seem to replace “old” styles of organizing with forms that provide a better fit with contemporary conditions. These so-called professionalized and centralized models are geared more toward lobbying activities and securing close relations with government officials and politicians (rather than providing services or building a strong local presence). Yet, we believe that this particular transformation touches only upon one single trend that applies to a particular (and in our view, limited) set of political organizations, rather than the overall population of parties or organized interests. Indeed, various authors have queried the empirical accuracy of this account, arguing that “large, affluent and heavily professionalized” groups are only “a tiny proportion of the total population,” and in this way have discounted the period-based arguments made by other authors (Edwards and McCarthy, 2004: 136). One reason for the contradiction, they argue, is that scholars have a propensity to study what they are familiar with. And often, findings from these particular groups become incorporated into the literature as broader trends or findings. As John McCarthy (2005) points out:

Widespread images of SMOs without members and with checkbook members have drawn attention away from both an empirical and a theoretical focus on more traditional SMO forms, and, as a result, have provided a distorted picture of the recent evolution of the population of national SMOs (McCarthy, 2005: 195; emphasis in original).

Based on analysis of the US national SMOs, he concludes that the “rate of founding of federated SMOs with members has not declined during the past several decades as the focus upon the emergence of professional SMOs has suggested” (McCarthy, 2005: 205). Other work focused on this topic has also questioned the empirical accuracy of the transformation account, finding a continued diversity of organizational forms within the interest group landscape, as well as a possible complementarity or mutualism between membership and non-membership groups (Minkoff et al., 2008; Walker et al., 2011). In short, populations do not seem to be changing complexion, but when one stumbles across contemporary “memberless” groups, they are conveniently interpreted as part of a broader shift. For this reason, we urge for a greater sensitivity to differences in organizational forms and variance in organizational trajectories.

The party literature also bore witness to a critical discussion about whether the shift to cartel parties is irresistible (for a recent systematic assessment of the cartel-argument, see Van Biezen and Kopecky, 2014). The evidence of declining memberships and atrophying internal party organization led some to suggest that the party was losing its role as a linkage between civil society and the state. For some, the attention was toward other types of political organizations, such as interest organizations (Hirst, 1994; Katz, 2014; Merkl, 1988). Recent research strikes a somewhat different tone. For instance, there is skepticism as to whether parties can rely on stronger linkages with civil society organizations (so-called “collateral organizations”) in order to increase their social anchorage or representative capacity, as the latter appear subject to similar processes of professionalization (e.g. Van Biezen and Poguntke, 2014). Other work questions the universal nature of membership decline among parties. In addition, the evolution of a party’s membership base (and its importance to organizational survival) seems closely related to its life-cycle (Kölln, 2014). More generally, in their seminal article, Katz and Mair made clear that their models did not imply a straightforward shift toward one dominant form. They also criticized the use of the mass party as the main benchmark as it “fails to take account of the ways in which parties can adapt to ensure their own survival” (Katz and Mair, 1995: 25; emphasis added). For instance, rather than seeing the (formal) membership decline of political parties as indicative of organizational decline or their “hollowing out,” changing models of policy development and internal decision-making (with a greater reliance on supporters and groups within the broader community) could be considered as attempts to develop a more “open party” and create issue-based communities, and therefore represent part of a trajectory of organizational adaptation to changed patterns of citizen participation (Gauja, 2015b, see also Saward, 2008). Work on the organizational structure of new parties has also demonstrated considerable diversity in organizational forms, for instance, distinguishing between hierarchy, stratarchy and federation (Bolleyer, 2012). This is a thread that ought to be more closely followed up and might inform our approach to the study of political organizations more generally.

Toward a Common Research Agenda of Political Organizations

In a special issue focused on the state of interest group research in Europe, Jan Beyers et al. (2008a) argued that

a more thorough comparative analysis of political parties and interest organizations would be instructive in order to examine both the specific features of each type of political organisation and the interaction between and among them. Such an integrated approach would represent an important advance beyond the isolated focus on single types of political organisation (Beyers et al., 2008a: 1120; emphasis added).

A similar argument was made by Michael Heaney (2012: 569) in his review of the literature on parties and interest organizations in the United States. He concluded that while

a substantial body of political science research explores the linkage between political parties and interest groups […] the perspective that parties and groups are inextricably bound has not been a part of the dominant paradigm either in the study of parties or in the study of groups in recent years (Heaney, 2012: 569; emphasis added).

The “complex relationships” between these organizations have received much more scholarly attention in recent times (see, for instance, the special issue of Party Politics by Allern and Bale, 2012b; Bawn et al., 2012; Berkhout, 2013; Karol, 2009; Witko, 2009; see also Heaney and Rojas, 2015; Schwartz, 2010 on the interaction between SMs and political parties). In contrast, much less progress has been made in examining what Beyers et al. referred to as “the specific features of each type of political organization,” their organizational form and development. This omission is not unique to political science; in studies of “organizations” in a more generic sense, interactions between organizations and their external environment have generally received closer examination compared to their internal structures and processes (e.g. Argote and Greve, 2007: 344). In the closing section of this article, we formulate a research agenda that aims to address this omission, one that we believe would stimulate the development of theoretical frameworks that could guide the analysis and comparison of organizational forms and assessments of organizational transformation.

One productive way forward is to consider the manner by which particular constituencies (or interests) are organized politically and to describe and analyze their organizational repertoires. Instead of taking the “group landscape” or party system as the point of departure, the starting points are constituencies or societal interests, which may associate and mobilize politically in a great variety of forms. This “constituency-oriented approach” asks what set of organizations is involved with the articulation of a given set of interests. We find traces of this approach in the observation that “the articulation of interests refers to the role played by parties and other institutions (typically single issue interest groups or social movements) in publicly expressing and pursuing the political demands of social groups” (Webb and White, 2009: 15). This approach is broadly evident through work on the US context charting the emergence of specific ways of organizing politically (Clemens, 1997) and more specific studies of organizational forms, for instance, consumer groups (Rao, 1998).

It is an appreciation of the interrelated nature of these sets of organizations that is salient to our approach. As Heaney (2012: 569) argues “parties and groups have grown, declined, and changed form in tandem and in response to one another” (Heaney, 2012: 569). In organizational sociology and ecology, mutualistic and symbiotic relationships are of increasing scholarly interest because they gesture to the way(s) in which organizations, which are assumed to compete for resources in a zero-sum game, often times find that cooperation fosters a positive-sum game (Goss, 2013; Minkoff et al., 2008; Walker et al., 2011). As highlighted by Christopher Witko (2009: 233), “in a highly complex, interactive process, party leaders and partisans have found it in their interests to more closely identify with particular interests, and many organized interests have found it useful to form [a] relationship with one of the parties” (see also Gimpel et al., 2014). Empirically, for instance, we sometimes observe that interest organizations will become the opportunistic “party on the ground” for independent candidates or micro-parties. In turn, political parties can be the “political extension” of certain grassroots issue movements or advocacy groups (e.g. Bawn et al., 2012). Another classic scenario is that of interest organizations as key providers of policy expertise, providing “legislative subsidies” to policymakers (Hall and Deardorf, 2006). That is, while individually some political organizations might lack connections to civil society, or political knowhow, a network of organizations which all advocate for a similar constituency might be able to collectively fulfill these different functions. In other words, trade-offs between a focus on membership involvement or policy influence can not only be addressed at the level of an individual organization but might also be examined at a network or ecological level, across different political organizations. This resonates with one of the conclusions by Allern and Bale (2012a: 106). Noting the volatility of voters (and thus access to stable revenues), they claim that “through interest groups, parties may still mobilize their constituencies, seek regular financial support and get access to valuable political information.” ³

Inspired by the work mentioned above and recent innovative approaches by party and group scholars, we distinguish two avenues for applying a constituency-oriented approach to the comparative study of political organizations. A first approach involves a closer examination of the key organizational choices that these organizations need to make in order to establish and maintain themselves. In one of the most sophisticated articles on associational diversity, Debra Minkoff et al. (2008) highlight three structural elements of organizational form: organizational structure, membership strategies and resources (Minkoff et al., 2008; see also Andrews and Edwards, 2004: 487–489; Halpin, 2014: Chapter 4 for similar observations). These elements not only reflect key organizational choices for interest organizations but also represent core organizational aspects of political parties. Recent work by Anika Gauja on the construction of party membership strongly echoes our view. Her working assumption is that conceptions of membership that are rooted in sub-disciplinary boundaries are no longer adequate for analysing contemporary trends in political participation—and that we need to re-evaluate and engage more critically with what is meant by the concept of “membership” in studies of political organization (Gauja, 2015a: 1; see also Van Biezen et al. (2012: 41) on the need to complement analysis of party membership numbers with research on equivalent processes among so-called collateral organizations).

Tackling a similar question, Nicole Bolleyer (2013) has focused our attention on whether intensifying party–state interpenetration is a party-specific or rather a broader societal development that is also characteristic of voluntary organizations. We believe these statements can also be applied to other critical elements of political organizations, such as their organizational structures (e.g. the work of Bolleyer, 2012, on the internal structure of new parties). Only by closer attention to these elements, and studying configurations of a wide array of political organizations in a comparative fashion, will we acquire a better understanding of how external factors—such as differences between federal and unitary political systems—interact with organizational features (e.g. identity or ideology) in shaping the design and potential transformation of political organizations.

An alternative yet highly complementary approach would involve focusing on organizational trajectories, or the varying organizational development and adaptation, of political organizations. ⁴ As Gauja (2015b: 90) indicates, “political parties are generally accepted to be adaptive organizations,” and we think a similar claim can be made as regards interest organizations (e.g. Fraussen, 2013; Halpin, 2014). A key contribution to this area was made by Ingrid Van Biezen (2005), who assessed the explanatory value of three different perspectives on the development of parties in new democracies in Europe, namely, life-cycle scenarios, generational and period effects. Whereas in the life-cycle scenario parties would have identical features at birth and follow a similar process of development, generational effects imply the persistence of the initial form of parties, leading to organizational differences between parties established in different contexts or waves of democratization. Period effects, third, assume a strong effect of the external environment, resulting in highly similar party types in a similar environment, at any given period. Here, external pressures trump the origins of parties. The value of this framework is that it encourages a deeper reflection on organizational forms, while it can also be applied to different political organizations, such as interest groups, where most scholarly attention has been somewhat more focused on organizational foundings rather than on organizational adaptation; or the shift of one particular model of advocacy to another (e.g. Walker et al., 2011). In addition, we see this approach as highly complementary to recent path-breaking work on organizational dynamics and innovations in SMs and non-profits that emphasizes hybridity and examines how political entrepreneurs creatively recombine elements from different organizational models to respond to varying demands from actors in their environment or different institutional logics (e.g. Goss and Heaney, 2010; Skelcher and Smith, 2015).

To conclude, we believe that the contribution of this constituency-oriented approach to the comparative study of political organizations is twofold. First, it urges a greater sensitivity to the common challenges that these organizations face. In the previous sections of this article we clarified that political parties and interest organizations face similar internal and external pressures. Both political organizations, for instance, are experimenting with new approaches to membership and forms of supporter engagement and also struggle with managing financial resource dependencies. Moreover, recent work also indicates that they often rely on a very similar pool of supporters who provide both membership muscle and financial resources, as people move from party to movement and back (e.g. Heaney and Rojas, 2015). Considering all this, it is no surprise that many scholars expect these organizations to co-evolve and to develop both complementary — for example, in their role as advocates for a particular constituency, and competitive relations — for instance, in their quest for financial resources. A comparative study design, including a variety of political organizations, will enable a more systematic analysis of these interdependencies, and the extent to which organizational innovations spread across different types of organization. Second, and more fundamentally, if we seek a comprehensive understanding of critical political science questions, such as bias in political representation and policy influence, examining the organizational choices and evolution of one particular type of political organization can only provide partial answers. Rather than looking for sequences, with organization transitioning from SM to party and so on, different types of political organization might be found to co-exist. With some notable exceptions, however, the absence of engagement across the party and interest organization literatures has resulted in parallel conversations on what might productively be conceptualized as the same basic trends or processes. A more intensive sharing of core ideas and findings regarding organizational choices and evolutions, applicable to the full range of political organizations, is likely to facilitate deeper insights into “who gets what, when and how.”