IPSA Online Paper Room - Characterization and Influence of Internal Factions in the Chilean Socialist Party, 19892008

Political science has usually considered political parties as unitary actors. However, in reality, as Sartori (1992) points out, many imes parties are complex organizations encompassing different internal subunits or factions. Party factions have been analyzed n contexts as different as Japan (Cox, Rosenbluth, Thies, 1999), Italy (Giannetti & Laver, 2005), Germany (Braeuninger & Debus, 2005), or Brazil (Amorim & Santos, 2001). In Chile, despite the publicly acknowledged factionalism of some of the main parties (Christian Democrats and Socialists), there are few studies dealing with factions (e.g. Grayson, 1969; Salcedo & de La Fuente, 2007). This paper attempts at filling that gap in scientific knowledge, at least for the case of the Socialist Party. The goals of the study are twofold. First, we will describe the origin, organization, and evolution of the internal factions of the Chilean Socialist party since 1990 to the present. Second, we will analyze the influence of party factions in two fields: (1) the nomination of parliamentary candidates, and (2) the conformation of presidential cabinets. To accomplish those goals we interviewed an mportant group of party leaders as well as rank and file Socialist militants. In addition, we analyzed newspaper reports on different key periods: the period between presidential elections and inauguration day for the four presidents elected since 1989, and the period of negotiation of parliamentary lists for the five parliamentary elections held since 1989. The paper concludes that actions have been one of the central drives of the Socialist party political action throughout the period, especially on the selection of candidates. This paper is part of a larger project dealing with the influence of factions in all six Chilean parties represented in parliament.

http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/view/3899[14.10.2011 16:18:46]

IPSA Online Paper Room - Party Membership and Party Members' Political Participation in Turkey

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Back << Theme: Local Organizing Committee Sessions (CS10) Political Parties: Crisis or Change? CS10.636 Political Parties and Networks / Los Partidos Polticos y sus Redes Party Membership and Party Members' Political Participation in Turkey Paper not available

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Since the 1980s there has been a widespread disengagement from parties and party politics, especially in European political systems, observed both at the level of the electorate and party members. This trend is especially visible within one of the basic elements of party organization: voluntary membership. On the one hand, party membership in many long-established European democracies is declining strongly and quite consistently and the absolute numbers of members have fallen, sometimes quite considerably; on the other hand, declining is occurring in terms of participation in party activities. Due to this decline thesis, the contemporary party is becoming an organization with a relatively small number of members or with no numbers at all distinct from supporters. In several West European party systems scholars argue that decline both in terms of numbers and members activities depends on different socioeconomic and political factors explained by supply-side and demand-led explanations. This study intends mainly to present an overview of party membership levels and party members participation in party activities in Turkey. In this presentation well firstly report a broad overview of data on the levels of individual membership of Turkish political parties since 1984 by using official datas. Secondly, we want to measure and investigate the level of participation in party activities of the members in Turkish political parties. This study is based on a newly conducted survey of about 2,500 Turkish party members of 10 different parties that have gained parliamentary seats at least in one election among the last three general elections. Well also try to determine what is the impact of decline or rise in membership numbers and levels of activism and outline the trends in party membership in Turkish political parties.

Authors:

Tanju Tosun Ege University, Turkey Gulgun Tosun Ege University, Turkey

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http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/view/2282[14.10.2011 16:22:16]

IPSA Online Paper Room - Political Parties and Organizational Effectiveness: Towards A Framework for Comparative Analysis

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Back << Theme: Research Committee Sessions (RC06) Political sociology RC06.310 Political Parties and Democracy Political Parties and Organizational Effectiveness: Towards A Framework for Comparative Analysis Paper not available

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Organizational variables seem to be important, if not crucial, in comparative studies of political parties. The founding fathers of subdiscipline of parties considered political parties, first of all, as organizations [Schlezinger 1979; Panebianco 1988]. Nevetherless, the well-developed theory of organizations is often neglected in party research. Meanwhile, as Janda showed, application of some of the concepts from organizational theory may be extremely fruitful in comparative analysis of political parties [Janda 1983]. Then it may be supposed that organizational theory is equally useful for studies of party organizational effectiveness, what success of political parties depends on. But besides few exceptions [Anderson 1968, Wellhofer 1979, Deschouwer 1994], there is no sufficiently coherent framework for studying organizational effectiveness of political parties. Meanwhile, comparative studies of party organizational effectiveness would allow us to know better about how political parties work [Lawson 1994]. In this paper it is suggested a conceptual framework which would connect the analysis of party organization with approaches of organizational effectiveness theory, elaborated by Gouldner (1959), Price (1970), Molnar and Rogers (1976), Steers (1977), Goodman and Pennings (1977), Seashore (1977), Hannan and Freeman (1977), Campbell (1977) and other organizational theorists. The framework presented here is an attempt to synthesize two research traditions in organizational theory, based on the rational-goal as well as system-resource approaches, and apply them to comparative analysis of political parties in established as well as in new democracies. Oleg Karintsev People's Friendship University of Russia, Russia

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http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/view/2101[14.10.2011 16:28:51]