Institutional Resilience Meets Critical Junctures: (re)allocation of Power in Three British Parties Post-devolution

Abstract

How do parties react when their institutional environment is federalized or devolved? This article investigates how the three dominant British parties have responded to devolution in terms of internal reallocation of power. Party change is evaluated in the light of a functionalist and an institutionalist perspective. We find that Labour has moved incrementally away from centralism; the Conservative Party has changed more extensively towards stratarchy, while the Liberal Democrats, already federalized pre-devolution, have been the least affected of the parties. Our findings lend some support to the institutionalist thesis that (functionally driven) party change is restrained by distinct organizational legacies. However, critical junctures, typically induced by electoral failure, could facilitate a party’s break with organizational legacies to embark on more extensive reform.