Who's at the helm? When party organization matters for party strategy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Why do parties change their policy positions? A growing literature suggests that the internal balance of power between leaders and activists affects how a party responds to changing environmental incentives. This paper explores when and how party organization matters for party strategy. It argues that a key prediction – that leadership-dominated and activist-dominated parties are responsive to the positional shifts of the mean voter and the party voter, respectively – is conditional on two factors, namely a party's electoral performance and party system polarization. Cross-sectional time series analyses of fifty-five parties in 10 European democracies between 1977 and 2003 confirm that (1) leadership-dominated parties' responsiveness to the mean voter decreases as their electoral fortunes improve, (2) increases as a party system becomes more polarized, while (3) activist-dominated parties more reliably follow the positional shifts of the party voter. This study's findings have important implications for our understanding of how intra-party politics influences inter-party competition, and thus democratic representation more generally.