Creating new participatory linkages? Political parties and democratisation in Germany,Austria,and the UK

Abstract

A modernisation- and individualisation-induced loss of trust, membership, and voters has been addressed in party research for a while. However, social theory authors such as Beck, Bauman, Sennett, and Taylor have pointed to further organisational dilemmas that have not been addressed in depth: That demands for flexibility, individualisation and non-bindingness and demands for centralized political leadership might go hand in hand; and that notwithstanding increasing individualisation citizens might demand new forms of social collectives and belonging. In this article, I compare how different established party families perceive these contradictions and seek to create new party-society linkages. Based on a series of qualitative in-depth interviews with social democratic and conservative party functionaries, I emphasise that different party families and their reform attempts reflect individualisation, flexible and liquid identities differently and thus refashion the way citizens are linked with political parties and representative democracy.

Introduction

As adaptive organisations, political parties have evolved with changing societies. Party research has established a history of typologies that link social to organisational change (Blyth and Katz, 2005). In the contemporary, in light of shrinking levels of trust, party membership, and voters, as well as the ongoing digitalisation of societies, new and emerging parties have been conceptualised as “movement parties” (Della Porta et al., 2017; Kitschelt, 2006), “connective parties” (Bennett et al., 2018), or “platform parties” (Gerbaudo, 2019). These typologies suggest new party-society linkages increasing “directness, disintermediation, interactivity, adaptability and instantaneous responsiveness” (Gerbaudo, 2019: 188).

However, these conceptualisations mainly focus on new parties (Deseriis, 2019). They underestimate that also established parties of all party families have picked up components of the digital and participatory society. And while party researchers have in depth analysed membership decline and shrinking trust, their research has hardly been systematically connected to social and democratic theory literature, which looks, inter alia, at the modernisation-induced remoulding of the meaning of democracy, participation and political identity (Ringel et al., 2019; Van Biezen and Saward, 2008; Wolkenstein, 2019). This article sets out to address both: to link social theory diagnoses to party change, and to understand how Social Democratic and Conservative party families perceive and process shrinking members and trust.

Without suggesting one homogeneous body of literature, several strands of social theory are instructive for understanding party development: Firstly, social theory scholars have emphasised an individualisation-induced rise of democratic values (Bauman, 2012; Beck et al., 1994). Rather than a social class, a family or social group, the individual is responsible for its own life’s prospects. Consequently, established collective institutions of democracy such as political parties have continuously lost public trust and hardly uphold an emancipatory promise (Blühdorn and Butzlaff, 2019; Mair, 2013). This individualisation-fuelled loss of trust in collective organisation has been widely addressed in earlier party research (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Harmel and Janda, 1994; Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017; Mair, 2013; Wolkenstein, 2020). However, secondly, social theorists have also highlighted that growing democratic values in an increasingly complex world might distress the individual, as citizens are obliged to continuously and individually confirm their (political) subjectivity and identity. As a result, collective democratic institutions might meet paradoxic demands for individualised, flexible, non-binding and temporal forms of engagement and strong leadership at the same time. Consequently, and thirdly, social theorists such as Beck (1992), Bauman (2012), and Sennett (1999) have emphasised that citizens might seek new collective forms of identity production and political engagement if the burdens of individual responsibility and identity formation become too stressful. Yet, the result might not be a collective democratic organisation as we have known for years, for instance in political parties. Emphasising these potentially contradictory demands between democratisation, individual identities, and new pressures on the individual, social theorists provide a highly productive perspective to reconnect party research with the shifting social foundations and democratic ideals which had been much more prominent in earlier work on political parties (Van Biezen and Saward, 2008).

Following an understanding of party change which traces back organisational development to a combination of discrete environmental changes and internal factors (Harmel and Janda, 1994), I assume parties are dependent on how societal changes are perceived and processed by party members and party elites (Scarrow, 1996). Parties’ organisational and programmatic frameworks follow the perceived evolution of preferences, not the other way round (Scarrow, 1999). Social changes have been identified as “some of the most important and pressing catalysts for organisational reform in the modern era […]” yet “the least theorised and well-understood arena for party change” (Gauja, 2017: 10–11). Consequently, party reforms have been conceptualised as intra-party developments that help a party “reacting and adapting to social changes” (Kenig, 2009: 241). This article seeks to go beyond previous accounts of the effects of post-material values and individualisation on parties by engaging a social theory lens to understand how parties make sense of changing social environments. Based on a series of qualitative interviews with party functionaries in Austria, Germany, and the UK, I show (1) how different party families perceive and process changing social environments and (2) how they seek to adapt by creating new party-society linkages between party organisations, affiliated members, and supporters. With these questions, I address the party and individual framework levels suggested by Gauja, Kosiara-Pedersen, and Weissenbach in this issue.

A social change effect on party organisations is hardly uniform. Social trends may present organisational challenges or opportunities to one party but not necessarily to another. For instance, Social Democrats have traditionally placed more emphasis on democratisation and can be expected to incorporate democratic demands by members and voters more readily than others. Left-wing parties and right-wing populists – at least rhetorically – advocate measures of direct democracy much more than parties of the centre-right (Correa-Lopera, 2019). In turn, comparatively lower participatory preferences of right-wing supporters might be easier to accommodate than the demands of those on the political left (Bennett et al., 2018).

In the following, I revisit social theory approaches which lay bare shifting understandings of identity, participation, and political subjectivities. Also, I briefly recapitulate how parties have reformed their organisations in the past and which tensions this has caused. After a section on methods and case selection, I turn to the empirical cases of the Social Democratic and Conservative party family in Austria, Germany, and UK and carve out how they mirror the remoulding of political subjectivities and identities. I argue that the political expectations in contemporary flexible consumer societies have led to a simultaneous democratisation and centralisation of party organisations, which has created specific tensions characteristic of the new party-society linkages.

Shifting participatory expectations and party change

Since the 1980s, sociologists have described the dominating trend in Western societies as the dissolution of established certainties (Beck and Lau, 2005), solid social structures (Bauman, 2012), and predictability (Sennett, 1999), suggesting serious consequences for every membership organisation, such as political parties (see also Gauja et al. in this issue).

These diagnoses imply that processes of individualisation have led to an all-embracing imperative of flexibility and a reluctance towards long-term commitments to a social group, organisation, or other individuals (Sennett, 1999). It has been widely accepted that previously collective concerns have been privatised. To cope with the challenges of modern life has become an individual, not a collective, undertaking (Bauman, 2012). Some scholars have described these developments as the result of ongoing emancipatory processes that free the individual from traditional social, economic, political boundaries (Beck, 1992). As a result, social and collective organisations such as political parties are losing legitimation to debate on matters of public interest (Bauman, 2012; Beck, 1992; Taylor, 1991). These individualisation-induced consequences for membership, trust, and party organisation have been addressed in party research for some time (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Ignazi, 2020; Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017; Wolkenstein, 2020).

Most accounts of parties’ organisational adaptations to these shifts reveal a surprisingly large common ground, if not an modernisation-induced “isomorphism” (Faucher, 2015: 415). They highlight the remoulding of political parties as membership organisations in Western representative democracies based on an ongoing democratisation and opening up (Bille, 2001; Hopkin, 2001). In many ways, parties have departed from established traditions and have seen an unprecedented “convergence of party rules across European parties” (Faucher, 2015: 405). Scarrow (1999) notes a trend characterised by an increasing mobilisation outside of political parties and decreasing participation inside the established institutions “connected with electoral politics” (p. 345). The “overarching trend” (Gauja, 2017: 79) since the 1990s has been a democratisation of party organisation in Western societies (Borz and Janda, 2020; though not unequivocally or deterministic, as some have emphasised opposite developments, see Mazzoleni and Voerman, 2017; Pennings and Hazan, 2001). Others have objected that not convergence, but instead organisational differentiation might happen as an effect of differentiating demands in different member/voter groups and as an effect of other parties’ organisational choices (Katz and Mair, 1995).

Nevertheless, many have countered that increasing participation does not automatically equal democratisation (Bale et al., 2020: 19; Borz and Janda, 2020; Cross and Pilet, 2015; Ignazi, 2020). Often enough ‘opening up’ might individualise participation, circumvent the middle-level activists and empower centralised party organisation and elites, too (Faucher, 2015; Katz and Mair, 1995). This has been addressed as a “democratic dilemma” between “system effectiveness and citizen effectiveness” (Dahl, 1994: 34): Modernising and democratising party institutions might undermine or merely stage the empowerment it is said to promote. Some have suggested new participatory linkages might, in fact, be an “elite strategy to defang the base” (Katz, 2001: 293).

However, beyond the established research on decreasing membership numbers and political trust, social theorists such as Beck, Bauman, Sennett, Taylor emphasise two paradoxes that prove important for the development of political parties. Firstly, that emancipation and flexible identities do not come without a cost. As Bauman (2012) has highlighted, individualisation has led to a growing gap between de jure and de facto liberties. Beyond new liberties, the imperatives of individualisation, liberation and flexibility have also created new arduous tasks for the individual to relentlessly pursue its authentic and sovereign self (Beck et al., 1994; Sennett, 1999). The very ideal of flexibility, autonomy, sovereignty, and freedom itself becomes a burden when the contemporary imperatives cannot be met. Consequently, institutions of political representation might face paradoxical demands. On the one hand, ideals of direct participation, non-binding engagement, and immediateness thrive, whereas organisational membership and long-time engagements might be increasingly considered as inefficient and rigid (Blühdorn and Butzlaff, 2019). On the other, notwithstanding the rejection of binding membership and stable social collectives, political organisations face growing demands to provide political orientation and leadership in an increasingly complex world.

Secondly, individualisation does not mean that there is no hope for a certain re-collectivisation. Beck (1992), Bauman (2012), and Sennett (1999) emphasise that atomised individuals might develop a strong desire for a comforting, yet less binding collective. Dis-embedded individuals increasingly crave orientation, symbolic belonging, community, and a “we” (Sennett, 1999). To avoid the feeling of a loss of control, and to draft new social collectives, new and provisional boundaries become all the more necessary (Beck and Lau, 2005; Sennett, 1999; Taylor, 1991), and might indeed create new opportunities for political organisations to attract members. This perspective assigns a crucial role to party leaders, functionaries, and party organisation in envisioning and articulating new forms of social and political collectives – yet different ones than the old, solid social foundations of party systems.

Thus, social theory points to the apparent paradox that demands for political individualisation and non-bindingness and demands for belonging, political leadership and guidance might go hand in hand. For political parties, this paradox might lead to contradictory consequences: Rising expectations for self-determination, paired with declining confidence in collective institutions, lead to increasing demands for more direct participation and the rejection of organisational forms of intermediation, consensual decision-making, and collective action. This deeply remoulds the idea of membership organisations. However, the increasing pressures on the individual also lead to new demands for collective belonging and political leadership. In this perspective, organisational centralisation and powerful party elites might also be a strategy to accommodate the paradoxes of citizens simultaneously demanding openness, participation, and a disburdening through political leadership. Contemporary democratisation of party organisations therefore might have a twofold effect. It broadens the selectorate and democratises decision-making while at the same time it centralises control by the party elites – this might be the party-organisational embodiment of the paradox formulated above. Yet, these demands form in different ways among different social groups and affect parties and party families in very diverse ways.

Varying across party families, the core ideas of organisational party reforms since the last two decades might be summarised as (a) increasing participation opportunities for party members and supporters (Borz and Janda, 2020; Ignazi, 2020; Kenig, 2009); (b) individualising the relationship between the party and affiliates (Wolkenstein, 2019); (c) top-down centralising the party organisation (Bennett et al., 2018; Gauja and Kosiara-Pedersen, 2021) as well as (d) incorporating political fragmentation/flexibility and increasingly abandoning the idea of programmatic coherence (Lehrer and Lin, 2020). Zooming in on the paradoxes emphasised above, these four areas structure the empirical analysis of the next chapters, which differentiate how different party families process shifting demands.

Methods and case selection

Party families can be expected to vary in their exposure to shifting social environments, their organisational self-understandings, and in their capabilities and willingness to adapt (see also Gauja et al. in this issue). Consequently, previous research shows party families differ in organisational and programmatic identities as well as in membership participation and party-society linkages (Butzlaff et al., 2011; Poguntke et al., 2016). To understand how existing party organisations adapt to social shifts, I focus on traditional and long-established party families and leave green parties, radical left as well as right-wing populist party families as comparative newcomers aside. Instead, I zoom in on social democracy and conservatism in Austria (SPÖ, ÖVP), Germany (SPD, CDU/CSU), and the UK (Labour Party, Conservative Party). I have chosen these six cases as they constitute two ideologically different sides (not extremes) of the traditional economical and socio-cultural dimensions and represent a long tradition of party organisation in established Western democracies. They represent very different organisational heritages as well as government and opposition experiences during the last years, with the latter frequently identified as key drivers of organisational change and adaptation (Gauja, 2017).

Between the two party families, variations in ideology, membership and voters, organisational heritage, governmental experience, and past organisational reforms lead to very different experiences with shifting societal demands. social democratic parties have traditionally placed more emphasis on democratisation, civil society linkages, and an openness to social change. They maintain a rather traditional idea of mass membership, and formal democratisation of intra-party co-determination has played a central role in social democratic discourse. In contrast, their Conservative counterparts have always maintained a much less formal notion of affiliation, less direct member co-determination and have prioritised office-seeking and governance. At first glance, Social Democracy might be expected to cope better with increasing democratic demands. Still, since the 1980s, all six parties have – to a varying degree – pursued processes of organisational change and democratisation of inner-party decision-making (Bale et al., 2020; Bodlos and Plescia, 2018; Michels and Borucki, 2021; Micus, 2011; Walter et al., 2011; Whiteley et al., 2019).

To link social theory diagnoses to party change, and to understand how different party families perceive and process social change, I have chosen a qualitative empirical approach. I have conducted 39 semi-structured qualitative interviews with party officials, organisers, functionaries, and party experts, a minimum of five for each party. The interviews trace how party functionaries construct and interpret changing societies in the contemporary – and how their parties seek to react. They deliver insights into the intra-organisational reasonings and the ways changing understandings of democracy and participation remould the institutions of representation. The interviewees were active or retired functionaries or office holders and were involved in developing party organisation at local, regional, or national levels. Additionally, I interviewed several experts that closely observe a party’s development as academics, journalists, or as functionaries of an affiliated political foundation. A detailed overview of the interviewees’ background, their positions in the party, their socio-demographic composition as well as the questionnaire are included in the supplementary material to this article.

To capture the organisations’ heterogeneity, I recruited interviewees with a snowball sampling technique starting with personal contacts and then asking for further recommendations. To avoid biases and limiting the interviews to smaller groups, I used several starting points for each party’s snowball sampling, and I chose the interviewees according to the existing relevant factions within each party. I sought to cover all relevant political and ideological factions, generations, party levels/positions, gender etc. Most interviews were between 60 and 90 minutes long. Informed consent was obtained verbally and audio-recorded before participation and interviewees were rigorously anonymised in the transcripts.

Guided by the assumptions outlined in the previous section, I employed a methodological design of a directed qualitative content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005) using a deductive category application and coding scheme which were continuously adapted during the interpretation process. The coding and interpretation of the material followed an interpretative paradigm (Sławecki, 2018) to focus on changing understandings of participation and democracy by the interviewees. Codes were organised along the points outlined at the end of section two, while I remained open for social change-induced organisational challenges which were not predefined by the theory section. Following the outlined paradoxes, I scrutinised how party functionaries perceived demand shifts for democracy, participation, and party organisation among party members as well as in society. It was the goal to understand how observations made in social theory – such as processes of individualisation, non-binding participation opportunities, and demands for re-collectivisation – were shared within the political parties, and how they sought to adapt.

The challenges of modernity

The analysis of how Social Democratic and Conservative parties perceive and process shrinking members and trust is structured as developed in section two: (a) participatory expectations, (b) individualisation of participation, (c) organisational centralisation, and (d) social fragmentation. I especially seek to scrutinise the paradoxes that have been described in social theory but have not been sufficiently addressed in party research.

Participatory expectations

It is rather undisputed among the interviewees that demands of citizens to be involved have increased (although some emphasise that they might only have become louder, not more). However, the two party families have interpreted these demands in very different manners. The general picture is that social democratic party organisations experience tensions arising from participatory demands of members and supporters, as social democratic self-understandings still root in the bureaucratic idea of a traditional class organisation. In contrast, conservative interviewees agree to the finding, but underline that for their members and supporters increasing intra-party democracy might not be of top priority.

Since 1989, the SPÖ has periodically organised processes of intra-party democratisation. However, many of the SPÖ-interviewees emphasise that these processes cause tensions. As A1 Andreas puts it: “we need internal democratic structures. The entitlement attitude of members seems to have changed, greatly influenced by the fact that civic engagement has grown much broader. “But he adds: “(By processes of democratisation) some people will feel threatened in their position and that creates an […] area of conflict.” Or, as A6 Daniel emphasises: “Different worlds collide here.” In the eyes of many interviewees, the party’s organisational structure and many of its functionaries have become more and more self-referential and reluctant to open up for new members. This could be understood as a heritage from the SPÖ’s organisational history when the persecution of socialists made a closed and tightly knit milieu-based organisation important. Yet, it contrasts with their impression that voters of contemporary Social Democracy expect to fight for a societal change instead of defending an organisational status quo. To integrate conflicting demands for participation and political leadership as well as to keep “old” members on board, the party leadership organised several processes of deliberations on programme and visions. Yet, in the eyes of the interviewees, these processes often remain superficial and symbolic, whereas any serious reorganisation of power is clearly avoided.

Similarly, in the SPD the imperative of democratising the party is felt strongly. Debates around organisational reform are resurfacing regularly since the beginning of the 1990s. Yet, many blame a clumsy and outdated hierarchical structure for inhibiting organisational democratisation and thwarting younger members’ and supporters’ participatory demands: “[…] we aspire to be a modern party organisation from our regional office. But the way the regional party works, this does not happen automatically.” (D5 Emma).

The Labour Party had seen an unprecedented spike in membership following the campaign for the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. A party that had been considered out of sync with modern day progressive demands suddenly appeared to be open for a new radicalism in politics and a party culture oriented towards the individual member and supporter. As many interviewees emphasise, it was exactly this radicalism against the bureaucratic principles of moderated compromise and hierarchy that made it attractive. But as with SPÖ and SPD, more direct forms of participation of members and supporters promising to bypass the traditional party logics created tensions between the “old” and the “new” party members about the future role and participation of members.

In the three social democratic parties, interviewees indicate a seemingly old-fashioned idea of formal organisation as a key hurdle for organisational democratisation. Many agree on a tension between long-term members and functionaries displaying a traditional sense of loyalty and hierarchy (“Fealty Democracy”, A5 Christina), and new and younger members and supporters that demand more flexible and direct participation: “Do your part for the organisation versus I have a great idea and want to propose it” (A9 Gerlinde). These tensions are perceived even stronger between the party and the outside. Therefore, the parties have often relied on ideas of democratisation that focus on expanding participation of existing members instead of expanding membership.

In contrast, the conservative interviewees (although much less than the social democrats) understand that their members expect more involvement, but have always maintained much more informal notions of membership. For instance, experiencing pressure from its members, the CDU/CSU has carefully experimented with leadership and candidate selection processes during the last decades. These developments appear to be a departure from the party’s organisational identity which for a long time was characterised by a national party that coordinated several quasi-autonomous sub-organisations and would function by representation, mediated compromise and a careful balance of interests. Yet, the interviewees emphasise that the party maintains a self-understanding as a seemingly unideological voice of reason and a guarantee for government efficacy, and that their members and supporters would primarily demand the same. Consequently, as long as both are assured, increasing member participation would not be necessary: “We always demand to be in government […] we are quasi the guarantor of stability.” (D54 Natalie).

UK’s Conservatives have traditionally granted their members very little formal influence yet have seen a small but growing movement demanding an opening up of structures and formal intra-party democratisation. As with the CDU/CSU, their organisational identity relied on the informal networks of the local notability and not on the formal influence of members or supporters. The question of running the country in government is much more important: “They really don’t care about the town hall meetings they organise” (UK54 Robert). Instead, the party “openly and deliberately pitches itself to exist to win power” (UK55 Samuel).

Maybe the most compelling example of organisational renovation in the European party landscape is the Austrian ÖVP, which in 2017 transformed from a hierarchically structured Volkspartei into a lose political “movement” of sympathisers focused on its (then) charismatic leader, Sebastian Kurz. The interviewees emphasise that de-formalising bureaucratic hierarchies and opening participation opportunities and communication channels would address the contemporary demands of their members and supporters. In their view, citizens seek access to political decisions, but refrain from long-term membership commitments. In turn, citizen participation understood as the gathering of preferences would foster policy efficiency. Still, participation framed as a tool to collect resources for top-down decision-making deeply remoulds the idea of membership democracy.

Both party families experience shifting demands related to individualisation as suggested by Beck (1992) and Bauman (2012). Yet, in comparison, the organisational path dependencies and self-understandings of the conservative parties show a comparatively loose and flexible culture of informal decision-making. Therefore, the conservative idea of organisation might cater more to what sociological theory diagnoses suggest as contemporary demands for political engagement.

Individualisation

Following shifting understandings of what is perceived emancipatory, in Western societies the notion of individual participation as opposed to collective forms of organisation has been regarded liberating and more democratic (Bauman, 2012; Butzlaff, 2022). All three Social Democratic parties have introduced more direct forms of intra-party participation that have individualised and atomised individual members and by-passed the traditional middle ranks of functionaries (see also Faucher, 2015; Ignazi, 2020; Wolkenstein, 2019).

Interviewees stress that they witness shifting motivations for political engagement. People would mainly seek temporary single-issue projects of limited scope and approach the party with specific ideas in mind. Social democratic interviewees agree that this “project-isation” of membership creates challenges for the organisation. It becomes difficult to motivate members to invest time not only in their personal projects but in the bread-and-butter business of the local party on the ground and they report members expecting “everything that I want shall be implemented” (A5 Christina). Furthermore, it makes it almost elusive to establish a commonly shared ground of what is considered Social Democratic. Following the paradox described by Beck et al. (1994), Bauman (2012), Sennet (1999), and Taylor (1991), social democratic interviewees emphasise individual demands for participation and co-determination, but also the importance of collective values and beliefs for their members and supporters. To them, being part of a social collective, a “collective political homeland” (D2 Benjamin), remains the core element of Social Democratic membership and support – but one that is hardly achievable in harmony with individualised democratisation. As the next section will show, the individualisation and atomisation of membership, even in the name of democratisation, comes with serious consequences for the power distribution within the organisation.

Conservative interviewees agree that people approach the party with a specific project or an individual concern in mind that they wish to pursue. They, too, emphasise that people become active in a less formalised, self-seeking and eclectic manner. However, in the interviews, these observations are combined with less formal ideas of a social collective or membership as the backbone of a political organisation. Conservative interviewees hardly sense a contradiction or an arising conflict, here, and increasingly blur the distinction between members and supporters.

Austrian ÖVP interviewees depict an atomistic member and supporter involvement as a much more efficient and satisfying form of democratisation. In the eyes of A54 Natascha, a conservative Member of Parliament, people reject the idea of participation as a continuous citizen duty, thus allowing for individual and flexible engagement, often via social media: “…very young people write to me via Instagram, very uncomplicated. Often three lines only, […] but I like it, because it is a sign that people engage and […] I can make little polls, […] and I can ask them “tell me what you like!”. It gives me the possibility to integrate people and to invite them.” But, as with the social democratic parties, picking up flexible and non-committing forms of engagement has shifted the power balance within the party organisation, away from the traditional structures of delegation and compromise without necessarily empowering members – in the name of a more democratic way of political organisation.

Centralisation

As party researchers have underlined, democratising the party organisation does not necessarily mean more power to the members, sometimes quite the opposite (Borz and Janda, 2020). While catering to member demands, individualised participation might easily lead to a highly top-down steered or even manipulated post-democratic party organisation (Ignazi, 2020; Wolkenstein, 2019) or give more de facto decision-power to the party elites (Cross and Pilet, 2015; Katz, 2001).

Yet, the interviews show a somewhat more nuanced picture. Firstly, many Social Democratic interviewees agree that individualised participation leads to more steering power for the party leadership and a centralisation of the organisation. Some sense a “massive devaluation of the organisation” (A7 Emilia). However, this is complemented by the impression that there are effective opportunities for bottom-up initiatives to gain influence, such as the rise of Momentum in the UK 2015, whenever it is possible to overcome the atomised character of member engagement and to re-collectivise it to a certain extent. Also, many of the Social Democratic interviewees in Austria and Germany portray a progressive alliance between party leaders and rank and file members against a bastion of tradition-oriented middle ranks in the intermediate levels, which they often perceive frustrating organisational changes. The party organisation itself, which had once been pride and fortress, is now by many viewed as inhibiting successful adaptions to shifting societies.

Secondly, many interviewees perceive similar demands for new forms of belonging as outlined by Beck (1992), Bauman (2012), and Sennett (1999). They understand that members increasingly seek engagement in a temporary and project-oriented way, and that they therefore expect a centralised and professionalised provision of political assistance. Also, many describe growing citizen demands for leadership, guidance and collective belonging in a world that is increasingly perceived as complex, atomising, or even threatening. Therefore, in the Social Democratic perspective, and picking up social theory diagnoses, centralisation is not necessarily manipulative or an autocratisation of the party in disguise. It is not a question of “true” against “false” democratisation, but one that mirrors the ambivalences of social modernisation. Centralisation might be perceived as disburdening citizens from the diagnosed pressures of individualisation.

Most conservative interviewees describe members feeling very pragmatically about top-down introduced organisational and programmatic changes, as long as they lead to electoral success. Members are “interested in outcomes but not too much in the process” (UK53 Thomas). New participation formats are described as strategically important windowdressing to make people feel included. “It’s a superficial staging only, […] a staging of political movement” (A53 Norbert). They organise legitimation for the party’s leadership, but hardly integrate members into intra-party decision-making. In comparison with Social Democratic interviewees, the urge to feel involved and included and to be part of a Conservative political project is satisfied much easier through an efficient administration of governmental affairs. Modern party organisation in the eyes of Conservative members and supporters, so the interviews suggest, means first and foremost efficiency, speed, and rationality in governance. “The Conservative party as an institution is more malleable, it can move” (UK55 Samuel). And “as long as there is no grave problem on the table, the CDU won’t do anything” (D51 Manfred). For the interviewees, increasing bottom-up intra-party democracy appears questionable, as it might compromise this very efficiency and rationality.

In comparison, the Austrian ÖVP has gone furthest in the direction of a movement-isation of its organisation. Since Sebastian Kurz took over party leadership in 2017, the party had changed widely, from its name (until 2021: Team Sebastian Kurz, now: Die neue Volkspartei) to programme, colour, strategy, and structure. Like the CDU/CSU, the ÖVP had been a party characterised by comparatively autonomous regional and sectorial organisations (“Bünde”), which were integrated by means of representation, compromise, quota, and mediation. At the core of the ÖVP’s movement-isation lies the perception that years of a Grand Coalition in Austria had amounted to a political rigidity that only allowed for minimal compromise. Sebastian Kurz campaigned for opening up the party in many ways (in 2017 and again in 2019): non-binding and temporary non-membership participation; a movement-isation of politics; and presenting himself in sharp contrast to the structures of traditional large member organisations that were overburdened by their own path dependencies. For the ÖVP-interviewees, this addressed exactly what people had hoped for: that they could join without hurdles for a couple of hours to support a cause they considered important. In exchange, the party made them feel being heard without demanding a long-term commitment. As a result, the ÖVP’s organisation has been highly centralised, yet framed as a movement-ised party now truly representing contemporary citizens’ democratic demands (“on the one hand, an opening up, on the other hand, a professionalisation of policy design” (A55 Nils)).

Fragmentation

One of the paradoxes derived from social theory authors was the tension between individualised engagement and the demands for new forms of social collectives and belonging (Beck, 1992; Taylor, 1991). Between Social Democratic and Conservative interviewees, I found great differences in how they experience and process this paradox, and how it created organisational challenges (or not).

Social Democratic interviewees have the impression that demands of affiliates have grown more heterogeneous and are increasingly difficult to integrate into one coherent organisation. They report that people approaching the party expect to be part of a political project and wish to contribute for a change. However, they also show less willingness for compromise when it comes to integrating their ideas into a collectively formulated vision. “…there is less willingness to accept the party as a whole […] but the longing of the members that their party […] represents their very individual preference […] and this has a huge potential for conflict.” (D7 Franz) The very individual political project has become the yardstick: not the member is contributing to the party’s collective struggle for a better tomorrow, but the party is expected to facilitate opportunities for the members to realise their own personal projects. If these projects are frustrated, people drop out again easily. “…because of one single policy decision somewhere, I will resign […], and this has not been the case in the past. (D7 Franz)

In this perception, social modernisation challenges and sometimes overwhelms the party’s capacity to integrate growing social heterogeneity. Accordingly, interviewees underline that it is increasingly difficult to integrate newly won members and attached social movement organisations into a coherent and strategically feasible framework of contemporary Social Democracy. The establishment of a coherent programme has become much more demanding and contemporary processes of programmatic deliberation are longer, more costly, and complex than in the 1990s. Furthermore, they are less likely to lead to a coherent result when individuals demand to be integrated in an ever more direct and undistorted manner.

Yet, Social Democratic interviewees feel that their supporters crave for a sense of belonging. Social Democrats think of their parties as a collective bound by shared values and a common idea of a more just and equal society. Members had a “massive need to be part of something […] and for emotional movement-elements” (A7 Emilia). However, the realisation of such a collective organisation is proving ever more difficult as the members and supporters are less willing to accept compromise. The interviewees feel that they are expected to provide a political collective but that their supporters are decreasingly able or willing to commit to it.

In contrast, Conservative interviewees describe their supporters’ and members’ motivations quite differently. They also report demands for more flexible, less binding, and more single-issue oriented participation. However, instead of providing political leadership through a collective vision for the future society, the interviewees perceive supporters demanding pragmatic and efficient “good governance” in the face of growing social complexity and acceleration. For this, the prospect to win and remain in public office are the cornerstones: “Conservatives are so obsessed with winning!” (UK55 Samuel).

Often, interviewees report a trusting relationship between members and party leaders, as long as electoral success appeared likely. For instance, the ÖVP (as opposed to the Social Democratic cases, who emphasise the importance of a coherent programmatic vision) would not go out of its way to integrate heterogeneous demands. Its functionaries would collect people’s wishes and suggestions and then pick what was needed. Modernisation in the eyes of the ÖVP means to lower the hurdles of engagement and to facilitate participation opportunities. Beyond that, the ÖVP promises policy efficiency and – most importantly – electoral success without the endless quarrelling over parliamentary politics or member participation. The ÖVP offered people to join with a single-issue interest without having to accept the whole programmatic spectrum. Different topics that people might be interested in are not necessarily integrated into a coherent version of Conservatism (as this might frustrate single-issue interests). Instead, they are treated separately. The integration into a political movement was provided by then party leader Sebastian Kurz, who offered a framing of openness, efficiency and juvenile notions of power and success (Bodlos and Plescia, 2018). In this fragmented understanding of organisation, the ÖVP embodies the flexible and almost liquid dissolution of commitments emphasised by social theory. Or, as a Social Democratic interviewee puts it: “The will to incongruence is much higher on the right, whereas the claims for consistency are much more explicit among social democrats.” (A3 Bernhard)

Conclusion

In this article, I have made use of social theory perspectives on social modernisation-induced contradictions to scrutinise how different party families are affected by shifting participatory, identity-related, and democratic expectations. I have zoomed in on two diagnoses by Beck (1992), Bauman (2012), Sennett (1999), and Taylor (1991), which create dilemmas for political organisations: (a). That demands for flexibility, individualisation and non-bindingness and demands for political leadership and guidance might go hand in hand; (b). That notwithstanding increasing individualisation citizens might demand new forms of social collectives and belonging. Focusing on these dilemmas allows to go beyond previous accounts of individualisation-induced losses of trust and membership of political parties (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Mair, 2013; Wolkenstein, 2020). Furthermore, I took a closer look at how different party families experience shifting social conditions differently and how they seek to accommodate possibly contradictory demands.

Most interviewees report increasing demands for single-issue oriented, flexible, and non-binding, yet direct, and individual participation. Nevertheless, they differ greatly in how they perceive citizen demands as contradictory and how they seek to adapt. As it appears, Conservative constituencies have a much higher tolerance for contradiction and incongruence, whereas Social Democratic parties struggle with conflicting and ambivalent expectations. Social Democratic interviewees report that affiliates and supporters expect openness and guidance, participatory decision-making and political leadership able to take swift, efficient and strictly value-based decisions – which creates serious tensions between the party on the ground, the middle ranks, and the party leadership. In contrast, the Conservative interviewees emphasise much less tensions arising from shifting supporter expectations. In their eyes, Conservative supporters are first and foremost favouring governance, efficiency, rationality, and electoral success. Consequently, the organisational identities of Conservative parties emphasise governmental responsibilities, whereas Social Democratic interviewees emphasise drafting coherent political visions. And whereas Conservative interviewees highlight the importance of non-binding listening to supporters, social democrats highlight the necessity of formal co-determination.

As a result, Conservative parties understand democratisation as facilitating feelings and emotions of being included and heard, while still centralising and professionalising the organisation. Possibly, staging reform action might help reconcile the paradoxes of modernity described by social theory. A simultaneous democratisation and centralisation of party structures appears to be contradictory, but under conditions of modernity might thrive in harmony and cater to contradictory demands the modern flexible subject cultivates.

Still, this perspective has hardly been recognised in research. Katz, for example, predicts that “the long run effect of empowering while decapitating the membership might contribute to the self-limiting nature of the cartel party model” (Katz, 2001: 293). Wolkenstein (2019: 21) describes the “manipulat (ion)” of members by the party leadership in the name of democratisation”; Ignazi (2020) points to elites taking advantage of intra-party democracy. Indeed, individualising (and subsequently disempowering) the members might greatly reduce a party’s ability to formulate and to address collective grievances or to organise collective action beyond a single issue. Yet, it is not only that party reforms cause tensions between democratising party organisations and a centralised leadership. Organisational changes also mirror social change and democratic ambivalences within Western societies. A social theory lens highlights that by emphasising more democracy and more leadership efficiency, by offering individual empowerment and new forms of collective belonging, parties might also disburden citizens and help reconcile the growing ambivalences societies and individuals face today.

Furthermore, for some parties the described ambivalences have created more organisational tensions than for others. Social Democratic functionaries experience modernisation-induced expectation shifts as much more conflictive than their Conservative counterparts. On the one hand, it seems, this is caused by differing citizen demands. Social Democratic supporters appear to embrace the diagnoses made by social theory much more readily – and therefore create much higher tensions with the more traditional and hierarchical organisational identity of Social Democratic organisations. On the other, due to the historically grown self-understanding of Conservative party organisations, interviewees report much more organisational flexibility to reconcile these contradictions.

Scrutinising party reforms through the lens of social theory reveals that tensions between democratising and centralising organisations may not be the result of authoritarian party elites (alone), but also the result of growing democratic ambivalences in Western societies in general. From this viewpoint, it is not a question of whether democratising parties are truly democratic or deceptive simulators of empowerment. Rather than calling for a “genuine” democratisation, further research should focus on shifting social conditions for different parties and party families and how collective identities and demands for participation and political efficiency might be re-organised under conditions of increasingly fragmented subjectivities.

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Supplemental Material - Creating new participatory linkages? Political parties and democratisation in Germany, Austria, and the UK

Supplemental Material for Creating new participatory linkages? Political parties and democratisation in Germany, Austria, and the UK by Felix Butzlaff in Party Politics