Electoral Defeat and Party Change: From Makeover to Retouching 3031040317, 9783031040313

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Electoral Defeat and Party Change From Makeover to Retouching Anna Pacześniak Maciej Bachryj-Krzywaźnia Małgorzata Kaczorowska

Electoral Defeat and Party Change

Anna Pacze´sniak · Maciej Bachryj-Krzywa´znia · Małgorzata Kaczorowska

Electoral Defeat and Party Change From Makeover to Retouching

Anna Pacze´sniak Faculty of Social Science University of Wrocław Wrocław, Poland

Maciej Bachryj-Krzywa´znia Faculty of Social Science University of Wrocław Wrocław, Poland

Małgorzata Kaczorowska Faculty of Political Science and International Studies University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland

ISBN 978-3-031-04031-3 ISBN 978-3-031-04032-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book is the fruit of a research project entitled “Electoral defeat as the catalyst for change in the European political parties” funded by the Polish National Science Centre (grant no. 2017/27/B/HS5/00537), which was run jointly by the authors in the period of 2018–2022. Its implementation involved scores of people. First of all, we would like to express our gratitude to the respondents from Belgian, British and Polish parties (leaders, MPs, MEPs, members of partisan decision-making bodies) who agreed to participate in our survey. They selflessly devoted their time to share their knowledge, experiences and opinions on the functioning of their organisations. Collecting data on over 70 formations from 30 different European countries would have been a much more daunting task had it not been for the help we received from our colleagues—renowned scholars, researchers of party politics and party systems—who accepted our invitation to participate in expert surveys. Many of them not only completed the survey, but also provided us with additional information and context for understanding the post-defeat developments in various European parties. We are sincerely grateful for their support. We would also like to thank a duo of junior research assistants, Szymon Pilch and Paulina St˛epien. ´ Their fresh perspective proved useful as we conceptualised our research. The key part of their contribution, however, came in the form of tedious, yet indispensable work of transcribing and

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

coding individual in-depth interviews as well as inputting quantitative data into statistical software for analysis. We have presented papers offering early findings of our research at many conferences and seminars, including the European Consortium for Political Research General Conference in Wroclaw (2019), ECPR Virtual General Conference (2021), 15th Congress of Association Française de Sciences Politiques in Bordeaux (2019), 26th International Political Science Association World Congress of Political Science (2021), as well as at several conferences in Poland. We are grateful to many participants of all these events for their questions, comments and suggestions. Our biggest appreciation goes to Susan Scarrow and Steven B. Wolinetz, whose constructive observations helped us improve the cohesion of the narrative and the methodological precision. A research fellowship funded by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange under the Bekker Programme allowed Anna Pacze´sniak to discuss the findings from our study with members of the Cevipol (Centre d’Etude de la Vie Politique) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Jean-Benoit Pilet and Thomas Leguin have been particularly involved as the first critical readers of the manuscript. We are thankful to Anna Łab˛edzka, who helped us prepare the English proposal for the book and focused our attention on certain very important elements. Peer reviewers who went over our proposal also provided some extremely useful feedback. We appreciate their acknowledgement of the value of the entire project, in addition to their remarks on the manuscript itself. Our gratitude goes also to the editors of Palgrave MacMillan for their understanding and support. Finally, we owe our thanks to Paweł Burzała who took on the job of not merely translating the manuscript, but also blending our differing styles as authors and ensuring the readers would receive a book consistent in tone and language throughout.

Praise for Electoral Defeat and Party Change

“This important study explores the complex implications of electoral defeat as a central catalyst for party change which can have fundamental consequences for who leads parties, what parties stand for and how they are organized. Comparing—cases from Western and Central Eastern Europe it provides a valuable resource for scholars trying to make sense of how and why parties respond in varied ways to an event that often comes as a considerable shock.” —Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Universität Munich, Germany “This book focuses on electoral defeat as one of the possible but important shocks that can lead to changes in the party organization, leadership, strategy or programmatic orientation. The authors have been able to shed new light on these complex processes by combining a large N quantitative analysis with in-depth studies of party change in three very different countries. It is a must-read for scholars and students who want to understand what electoral defeat is doing to parties and how different degrees of party change can be one of the answers.” —Kris Deschouwer, Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

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PRAISE FOR ELECTORAL DEFEAT AND PARTY CHANGE

“This engaging and well-constructed study explores the impact of electoral defeats on the internal organisation of political parties, their political programmes and those who operate within them. Adopting a nuanced framework that combines objective elements of organisational change with subjective accounts of the consequences of defeat from key party actors, the study convincingly shows that it is not just the defeat itself, but how actors’ own beliefs and subjective assessments of that defeat shape the organisational decisions made by parties.” —Anika Gauja, Professor, University of Sydney, Australia “While it may be true that electoral defeat is the mother of party change, it is (also) a subjective category. The authors show convincingly that the perceptions of key party actors about the magnitude and causes of defeat influence the way parties change. This book looks into the subjective black box of electoral defeat and offers important insights for our understanding of when and how parties react to electoral losses.” —Thomas Poguntke, Chair of Comparative Politics, Universität Düsseldorf, Germany

Contents

1

Introduction 1.1 The Organization of the Book References

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2

Theoretical and Methodological Framework 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Electoral Defeat and Party Change: Conceptualisation, Connotations and Correlations 2.3 Factors Affecting Electoral Defeat and Its Interpretation 2.4 Theoretical Expectations About the Impact of Electoral Defeat on Political Parties 2.5 Data Selection and Research Methods References

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The Loser Has to Fall (?): Party Leadership After Electoral Defeat 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Election Results and the (Dis)continuity of Party Leadership 3.3 Which Variables Are Relevant to Leadership Change After Electoral Defeat? 3.4 Party Leadership in Election-Losing Parties from Belgium, the UK and Poland

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CONTENTS

3.5 Conclusion References 4

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The Bigger Wound the Smaller Bandage—Revisions of the Programme Discourse 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Electoral Defeat and Programme Change 4.3 Measuring Party Change After Electoral Defeat: Datasets and Samples 4.4 Depth of Change and the Loss of Relevance as a Result of Defeat 4.5 Type of Party System and Post-Defeat Programme Change 4.6 Conclusion References Abandoning a Sinking Ship (?): Party Membership Change 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Changing Party Membership and Electoral Defeats—Theoretical Approach 5.3 Methodology and Samples 5.4 Post-defeat Relevance Changes vis-à-vis Membership Changes 5.5 The Impact of Electoral Defeat on Party Members and Their Activism Within Selected Belgian, British and Polish Political Parties 5.6 Conclusions References The Story of Electoral Defeat—How Subjective Experience Shapes Party Change 6.1 Introduction 6.2 The Structure of Post-defeat Narratives 6.2.1 The Case of Political Parties from Poland 6.2.2 The Case of Political Parties from Belgium 6.2.3 The Case of Political Parties from the United Kingdom

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CONTENTS

Narrative and Depth of Party Change—Pattern or Patterns? 6.3.1 The Polish Case 6.3.2 The Belgian Case 6.3.3 The United Kingdom Case 6.4 Conclusion: Narrative as a Catalyst and Inhibitor of Party Change References

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6.3

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Political Parties After a Defeat: Retouch Instead of Makeover—Conclusions

143 144 148 149 154 156 157

Appendix

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Index

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Abbreviations

CEE EP ER EU GR IDI LGBT MAPP MARPOR MEP MP PMP PPDB PR RRI TR UK WE WWII

Central and Eastern European European Parliament Electoral Relevance European Union Governmental Relevance Individual In-Depth Interview Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Members and Activists of Political Parties Manifesto Research on Political Representation Member of the European Parliament Member of the Parliament Party Members Project Political Party Database Parliamentary Relevance Relative Relevance Index Total Relevance United Kingdom Western Europe World War II

Party names in English (in Original Language) AKEL Ap

Progressive Party of Working People (Anorthotikó Kómma Ergazómenou Laoú) Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet)

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ABBREVIATIONS

Ataka BDP

BSP C CDS-PP Ciudadanos CVP ˇ CSSD DIMAR DISY DP DPS Ecolo EDEK EE-LV EER ERL FDP FF FP GLP GP GPS Die Grüne Die Grünen HL KD KD KDH ˇ KDU-CSL KrF

Attack (Ataka) Conservative Democratic Party of Switzerland (BürgerlichDemokratische Partei Schweiz/ Parti bourgeois démocratique suisse) Bulgarian Socialist Party (Bulgarska Sotsialisticheska Partiya) Centre Party (Centerpartiet) People’s Party (Centro Democrático e Social – Partido Popular) Citizens (Ciudadanos) Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland (Christlich Demokratische Volkspartei/ Parti Démocrate-Chrétien Suisse) ˇ Czech Social Democratic Party (Ceská strana sociálnˇe demokratická) Democratic Left (Dimokratiki Aristera) Democratic Rally (Dimokratikós Sinagermós) The Labour Party (Darbo partija) Movement for Rights and Freedoms (Dvizhenie za prava i svobodi) Ecologists (Ecolo) Movement for Social Democracy (Eniaia demokratiki enosi kentrou) Greens (Europe Écologie - Les Verts) Estonian Greens (Erakond Eestimaa Rohelised) People’s Union of Estonia (Eestimaa Rahvaliit) Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei) The Republican Party (Fianna Fail) Liberal People’s Party (Folkpartiet liberalerna) Green Liberal Party (Gruenliberale Partei der Schwiz/ Parti vertlibéral) i.e. Green Party (Comhaontas Glas) Green Party of Switzerland (GRUENE Schweiz /PES – Les VERT-e-s suisses) de. Green (Die Grüne) at. Greens (Die Grünen) Croatian Labourists—Labour Party (Hrvatski laburisti – Stranka rada) fi. Christian Democrats (Kristillisdemokraatit) se. Chritian Democraats (Kristdemokraterna) Christian Democratic Movement (Kresˇtanskodemokratické hnutie) Christian and Democratic Union—Czechoslovak People’s Party ˇ (Kˇresˇtanská a demokratická unie—Ceskoslovenská strana lidová) Christian Democratic Party (Kristelig Folkeparti)

ABBREVIATIONS

ˇ KSCM LibDem Die Linke LMP LN LP LP LR M ND PASOK PdL/FI PiS PN PNL PO PS PS PSD PSL PSOE PvdA SDKU-DS SDP SDP SF SLD SNP SP Sp.a SPÖ SSP TOP 09 To Potami

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Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana ˇ Cech a Moravy) Liberal Democrats The Left (Die Linke) Hungary’s Green Party—Politics Can Be Different, (Magyarország Zöld Pártja—Lehet Más a Politika) Northern League (Lega Nord) ir. Labour Party (Pairiti an Lucht Oibre) br. Labour Party The Republicans (Les Républicains) Moderate Party (Moderata samlingspartiet) New Democracy (Nea Demokratia) Panhellenic Socialist movement (Pannellinio Sosialistiko Kinima) The people of freedom/ Forward Italy (Il Popolo Della Libertà/ Forza Italia) Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwo´sc´ ) Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista) National Liberal Party (Partidul Nat, ional Liberal) Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) bl. Socialist Party (Parti socialiste) fr. Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste) Social Democratic Party (Parido Social Democrata) Polish People’s Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe) Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol) Labour party (Partij van de Arbeid) Slovak Democratic and Christian Union—Democratic Party (Slovenská demokratická a kresˇtanská únia—Demokratická strana) Social Democratic Party of Croatia (Socijaldemokratska partija Hrvatske) Social Democratic Party of Finland (Suomen sosialidemokraattinen puolue) Socialist People’s Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti) Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej) Scottish National Party Socialist Party (Socilisische Partij) Socialist Party—Other (Socialistische partij.anders) Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs) Social Democratic party “Harmony” (Saskana socialdemokratska partija) Tradice Odpovˇednost Prosperita 09 The River (To Potami)

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ABBREVIATIONS

TT UDC

UKIP Vas. VB ZZS

Order and Justice (Tvarka ir tesinigumas) Union of the Centre, Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (Unione di Centro, Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e Democratici di Centro) United Kingdom Independence Party Left Alliance (Vasemmistoliitto) Flemich Interest (Vlaams Belang) Union of Greens and Farmers (Zalo un Zemnieku savieniba)

List of Tables

Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1 3.2

Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 3.5 Table 3.6 Table 3.7 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4

Change of relevance index—Sp.a. case Change of relevance index—PiS case Change of relevance index—LP case Total relevance and relative relevancy change compared List of political parties included in the study Parties that did not change their leadership after a defeat Parties that changed their leadership through a standard procedure Parties that changed their leadership directly after a defeat Leadership change in left-wing and centre-left vs right-wing and centre-right parties Leadership change in opposition vs governing parties Leadership change in parties from WE vs those from CEE Leadership change and the change in electoral, parliamentary and governmental relevance Superficial programme changes after electoral defeat and relevance change Moderate programme changes after electoral defeat and relevance change Deep programme changes after electoral defeat and relevance change Platform shifts and relevance change after electoral defeat

16 17 19 20 27 46 47 48 49 49 50 50 71 72 73 74

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table Table Table Table

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Table 6.5 Table 6.6 Table 6.7 Table 6.8 Table 6.9 Table 6.10 Table A.1 Table A.2

Relevance loss and the depth of programme changes Programme changes and parties’ shifts from left to right after electoral defeats Changes in membership numbers after electoral defeat and relevance change Parties where the number of members has increased after electoral defeat and relevance change Changing membership and members’ rights within 12 political parties from Belgium, Poland and the UK Explanations for electoral defeat Narrative and depth of party change—Poland Change of party relevance after electoral defeat—Poland Selected factors influencing party change in political parties in Poland Narrative and depth of party change—Belgium Change of party relevance after electoral election—Belgium Selected factors influencing party change in political parties in Belgium Narrative and depth of party change—United Kingdom Change of party relevance after electoral election—United Kingdom Selected factors influencing party change in political parties in United Kingdom List of national experts List of individual in-depth interviews

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

At every stage of our lives, we experience successes and failures once in a while. The same is true for politicians and political organisations. Their defeats amount to something of an initiation ritual, even if they occur not early on, but later throughout a politician’s career. Why have we taken up the electoral failure as our topic of interest? We wanted to investigate what happens inside political parties after they lose an election. We were interested in whether there were any broader patterns in their behaviour. Our intention was to find out whether they learn from their mistakes and apply lessons from defeats. We were also interested in how party elites evaluate their losses, how they interpret their election results and how this affects possible changes within their organisations. The review of the current academic literature on party defeats suggests that the subject is either analysed alongside other factors influencing parties, or the examination revolves around the causes of the unfavourable electoral outcomes (e.g. misalignment of the programme with the expectations of the electorate, flawed design of candidate slates and bad personal decisions, management mistakes, insufficient involvement of party resources, etc.). Furthermore, most political scientists who analyse the impact of defeats on parties, such as Dupoirier and Grunberg (1986), Brand (1990), Agh (1997, 2000), Langston (2003), Buffotot and Hanley (1998), Bréchon and Cautres (1998) or Louault (2011), usually limit their focus to entities from one specific country and its © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Pacze´sniak et al., Electoral Defeat and Party Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0_1

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party system, or even to single parties and their grassroots structures. Recent years have seen some comparative analyses encompassing larger groups of political parties across several party systems (Louault and Pellen 2019; Margalit et al. 2021). However, such works do not cover all aspects of change—they centre on selected elements, such as leadership change or the evolution of party programmes. Therefore, there is still a shortage of cross-sectional, in-depth research that would go beyond case studies and enable the formulation of broader conclusions or identification of verifiable patterns which are valid across various situations and circumstances. The readers receive a book where authors have, in a comprehensive and holistic way, tried to grasp the effects of electoral defeats on political parties. We wanted to capture cross-national regularities in parties’ reactions to unsatisfactory results by analysing quantitatively as large a group of political parties as possible. Going further, we engaged in an in-depth analysis of a smaller set of 12 parties from Belgium, the UK and Poland. The design of the sample means the examined formations represent different regions (Western vs. Central and Eastern Europe), ideological profiles and age. They also operate in three distinctly different party systems and political cultures. We treat electoral defeat not so much as an effect of previous actions or omissions, but as a beginning—a catalyst for a change in political parties. A defeat has many consequences for a party’s organisation, programme, leadership, members, activists, associates and supporters. To a greater or lesser extent, it changes the balance of power between factions and can even lead to secessions or splits. These reshufflings are spontaneous and cannot be fully controlled, but they can also be initiated and managed (either by the current leadership or by the contenders waiting in line to take over the reins). Defeat then becomes an instrument for reordering internal relations, a factor triggering the internal circulation of elites which begins (and sometimes ends) with leaders’ resignation. Leadership change usually destabilises the existing relations within the party, even though new leaders typically seek to consolidate their power (Harmel and Janda 1994). This may not only change the way a party is governed, but also influence the membership base and cause the emergence of new programme concepts. What distinguishes our book is not only the fact we treat electoral defeat as a trigger for change, but also the incorporation of subjective factors which, along with objective (external and internal) elements,

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are relevant to subsequent changes (or lack thereof) occurring within the parties after an electoral defeat. Such a perspective reflects the twofold nature of political parties that, on the one hand, operate as a network of organisational and structural elements and mechanisms but, on the other hand, are directed by the awareness and beliefs of their members and leaders. In other words, the book considers not only the objective aspects of party organisation, its features or structure but also the role of its very basic substrata—the human factor. These two aspects should not be studied separately, but rather as interwoven, inseparable variables affecting a party change. The book presents post-defeat party transformations—the objectively distinguishable results of implemented actions and the unintended changes—by referring to the actors’ inner sets of beliefs. This does not mean the objective aspects are disregarded. The perspective adopted for the book postulates that the influence of objective factors is filtered through the human factor—in this case, the perceptions, beliefs and opinions of people in charge of the party. Researching such subjects requires an adequate theoretical perspective—one that takes into account the peculiarity of both above-mentioned dimensions. Various forms of formal-legal analysis may be applied with regard to the structural-systemic conditions. Scrutinising procedures, rules as well as formal and informal principles will facilitate an overall understanding of the adaptation process. Comparative analysis may reveal how the impact of electoral defeat depends on structural factors and how the change is reflected in areas such as leadership, policies, structure, party rules or tactics. Elements of party system analysis are also useful. The empirical research on political parties often utilises the cybernetic approach which treats the parties as a type of political system wherein decisions (also those concerning adaptation strategies) are the output—the result of environmental impulses transformed within the system. Given the fact systems never exist in isolation and their functioning is, to some degree, determined by their environment (Easton 1957), systems analysis shows how the same impulse (in this case an electoral defeat) affects a party depending on its environment (i.e. the type of party system). Our analysis is also supplemented with the interpretive approach (Bevir and Rhodes 2015, 2018; Bevir and Blakely 2018), as we juxtapose intraparty changes with subjective perceptions of electoral defeats. While the interpretive perspective does not deny the role of environmental factors, it sees the impact of defeats as being not direct, but rather filtered through

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political actors’ cognitive processes and perceptions of reality. Hence, it recognises an important regulator of party transformation processes—the state of knowledge and beliefs held by individuals forming its decisionmaking bodies. The inclusion of this element into the analysis allows us to link systematic environmental stimuli with the content of decisions made by the management or leadership of the parties in question. This perspective indicates that actions undertaken by a party are not so much a straightforward reaction to the environmental stimulus, but rather an outcome of a subjective interpretation of that stimulus by the decision-making bodies. The result of these interpretations, i.e. the actors’ subjective knowledge, is a direct motivating factor that regulates the content of decision-making and actions taken by party management. Such a point of view requires a hermeneutical analytical procedure aimed at reconstructing one’s subjective perception of a given situation. The narrative analysis seemed to fit the task best, as it enabled us to the unveil actors’ perspectives and beliefs regarding the people, factors and processes responsible for the occurrence of a particular event (event-centred narrative, see: Tambouku et al. 2013, 5; Patterson 2013, 28)—in this case, an electoral defeat (Bevir and Rhodes 2018, 16–18; Bevir 2006; Della Porta and Keating 2006, 24–25; Haste et al. 2018, 314–317; BachryjKrzywa´znia 2018). The research required us to collect data that could be subjected to narrative analysis aimed at depicting how an unfavourable electoral result is described and explained by the members of party elites (Polkinghorne 2003, 12–21; Silverman 2006, 164–167).

1.1

The Organization of the Book

The book is divided into five chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion. In Chapter 2, we outline the purposes of our research as well as its theoretical framework and methodology. After first conceptualising and operationalising the category of electoral defeat, we discuss the relationship between the electoral setbacks and the party change, pointing to mutual connotations and correlations. We then move on to explain some approaches to studying electoral defeats and changes within political parties, placing the perspective adopted for the purpose of this book in a specific research context. Next, we propose a comprehensive model for analysing the impact of electoral defeat on intentional and unintentional changes within political parties. The chapter concludes with a section explaining the selection of the cases that were analysed. We

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describe how the mixed method scheme was used to answer questions about the factors that determine the character, depth, scope and outcomes of changes introduced by European political parties in the aftermath of electoral losses. In Chapter 3, we analyse the impact of electoral defeats on changes in a leadership. The purpose is to examine the links between election results and the (dis)continuity of party leadership. Therefore, we show whether the fact of suffering a defeat is enough to push a party towards a swift leadership change. Moreover, we try to identify relations between the variables that would link the electoral defeat with the leadership change. Finally, we present a qualitative analysis of the selected political parties from Belgium, the United Kingdom and Poland, demonstrating that context matters. In Chapter 4, we describe the changes in the relevance experienced by different parties in the wake of their electoral defeats and the accompanying adjustments in their programmes. In this part, we analyse if there is a link between the extent of relevance loss and the magnitude of the policy shift. We also identify transformations in the programmes that follow electoral failures, examining whether political formations from different party systems respond to an electoral defeat with a similar degree of change. In Chapter 5, we focus on post-defeat transformations in the membership base, looking at how the numbers and the position of members within political parties evolve. We distinguish several groups, including a very intriguing case of several political parties that managed to grow their ranks despite experiencing a defeat. We also take a closer look at what happened inside the political parties representing three different party systems: Belgium, the UK and Poland. The purpose is to identify the regularities within unique national contexts which could explain why some parties attracted more members, whereas others shrank in numbers. In Chapter 6 of the book, we consider how the perception and evaluation of the electoral outcome is relevant to the changes taking place in parties after failures. Here, we compare different narratives around a given electoral defeat, presented by twelve parties from three different party systems, in order to single out the narrative features which facilitate or inhibit a post-defeat party transformation. Moreover, we consider how the depth of party change and the type of post-defeat narrative is related to the party’s status prior to the defeat and its office aspiration. The book ends with conclusions and a brief synthesis. It includes a recapitulation of what was done within the research framework and

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summarises to what extent our theoretical assumptions, indicated in the second chapter, were correct. We identify also new questions that emerged during the research and make recommendations for further analysis of the impact of the electoral outcome on political parties.

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Harmel, R., and K. Janda. 1994. An Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party Change. Journal of Theoretical Politics 6 (3): 259–287. Haste, H., J. Jones, and K. Monroe. 2018. Political Psychology. In Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science, ed. M. Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes, 309–323. London and New York: Routledge. Langston, J. 2003. Rising from Ashes? Reorganizing and Unifying the PRI’s State Party Organizations After Electoral Defeat. Comparative Political Studies 36 (3): 293–318. Louault, F. 2011. Les défaites électorales. Le cas du Parti des travailleurs dans le Rio Grande do Sul (Brésil) 1982–2008. Thèse de doctorat en science politique. Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. Louault, F., and C. Pellen, eds. 2019. La défaite électorale. Productions, appropriations, bifurcations. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Margalit, Y., T. Slough, and M. Ting. 2021. After Defeat: How Governing Parties Respond to Electoral Loss. Political Science Research and Methods: 1–20. Patterson, W. 2013. Narratives of Events: Labovian Narrative Analysis and Its Limitations. In Doing Narrative Research, ed. M. Tamboukou, M. Andrews, and C. Squire, 27–46. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington DC: Sage. Polkinghorne, D.E. 2003. Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis. In Life History and Narrative, ed. J. Amos Hatch and R. Wisniewski. London and Washington, DC: The Falmer Press. Silverman, D. 2006. Interpreting Qualitative Data. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington DC: Sage. Tamboukou, M., M. Andrews, and C. Squire. 2013. Introduction: What Is Narrative Research? In Doing Narrative Research, ed. M. Tamboukou, M. Andrews, and C. Squire, 1–26. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington DC: Sage.

CHAPTER 2

Theoretical and Methodological Framework

2.1

Introduction

The existence of any political party involves taking part in electoral competitions, either as an individual player or as a member of an electoral coalition. Therefore, both defeats and victories are integral parts of democratic elections. Without understanding defeats and their impact on subsequent performance in the political careers, our knowledge about the mechanism of winning would be incomplete (Bolleyer 2013, 2; Anderson et al. 2005, 1–2). The way political parties deal with electoral defeats affects their further existence and, sometimes, even determines their survival. The electoral defeat is often regarded as a “mother of party change” (Janda 1990, 5; Deschouwer 1992, 9), even if there is general consensus that an electoral setback alone usually is not sufficient to force parties to re-evaluate their internal structures and processes or introduce the party reforms (Gauja 2017, 7). Some authors, such as Rose and Mackie (1988, 556–557), prove even that level of electoral support has a surprisingly weak effect on parties’ persistence. However, the combination of catalysts both inside and outside the party, for example, an electoral defeat and change of leadership (which often follow each other), could create a party’s change (Harmel and Janda 1994; Harmel 2002, 127–128). Therefore, some questions remain to be answered. Why is the influence of defeat more profound for some parties than for others? Why

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do some formations change more thoroughly than others? What party characteristics underpin these differences? Both political parties and scholars interested in electoral defeats often focus their analyses on identifying the causes of diminishing support. The perspective we present in the book treats an electoral defeat not so much as an effect of previous actions or omissions, but as a catalyst for future change, therefore our aim is not to analyse the reasons for political parties’ poor electoral performance. A failure in electoral competition induces a number of intentional and unintentional changes and consequences to numerous aspects of a party’s functioning, including the internal organisation and structure, leadership, policies, tactics and internal rules. This will be the subject of the analyses in the book. Explaining the party change after an electoral defeat is a complex task which requires us to analyse the objective and subjective factors, both internal and external to the party (Harmel and Janda 1994; Harmel 2002, 127–128; Gauja 2017, 7–9). Examples of objective variables that can potentially affect the magnitude of a defeat and, consequently, subsequent changes, are party and electoral system, the practice of cabinet formation, party age and extent of institutionalisation, etc. In turn, the primary subjective factors are the perceptions and interpretations of the electoral performance adopted within the party and by its environment (competing formations, media, voters). Based on a constructivist variant of an institutionalist approach which relies on the observation that “‘perception’ is the intermediate variable that has to be placed between objective facts and the reactions of the parties ” (Deschouwer 1992, 16), we argue the ways in which the actors comprehend their environment are equally important to the environment itself. Therefore, we believe that researching these actors’ beliefs, perceptions and opinions about the defeat their party experienced are necessary to create a more comprehensive picture of mechanisms and dependencies behind the party change. This chapter outlines the purposes of our research, introduces its theoretical framework and discusses the methodology for gathering and analysing data. Having conceptualised and operationalised the category of electoral defeat, we discuss the relationship between electoral setbacks and party change, pointing to mutual connotations and correlations. We then move on to explain approaches to studying electoral defeats and change within political parties and place the perspective adopted in this book within them. Next, we propose a comprehensive model for analysing the impact of electoral defeat on intentional and unintentional changes within

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political parties, which is the theoretical framework used in our analyses. The chapter concludes with a section explaining the selection of the cases analysed, both the larger sample (73 parties from 28 European countries) and the small sample that is the subject of in-depth analyses regarding post-defeat narratives (12 parties from Belgium, United Kingdom, and Poland). We describe how the mixed method scheme was used to answer questions about the factors influencing the character, depth, scope and consequences of changes in European political parties that have suffered electoral defeats.

2.2 Electoral Defeat and Party Change: Conceptualisation, Connotations and Correlations The electoral defeats, losses, failures and setbacks are inevitable stages of every political career and constitute an important step towards political maturity, both for individuals and entire parties (Alterman 2007, 127). For some, they are so disruptive and discouraging that it causes them to abandon politics. For others, they may provide a positive stimulus— motivate them to seek a different strategy or apply more resources which, in turn, can lead to successes in subsequent elections. The terms “electoral defeat” and “electoral loss” are close in meaning and are frequently used interchangeably. They are not, however, identical. Louault (2011, 19) states that a loss is an objective condition, while a defeat is a subjective perception. A loss is the opposite of a win, whereas a defeat is the opposite of success. Hence, one can treat these two pairs (loss/win and defeat/success) as antonyms. The statement that someone is a winner by necessity entails that there is also a loser, as a win and loss represent two inevitable outcomes of a rivalry between at least two individuals, groups or parties. In the case of the defeat/success opposites, one needs to note that a success of one party does not necessarily mean a defeat of another one and vice versa—a defeat of one formation does not automatically translate into a success of its competitor. Hence, electoral defeat appears to be a contextual category. Is it a situation whereby one’s result is worse than the competitor’s? Or rather when it is below the expectations of the party leadership or earlier polling numbers? Secondly, categorising the electoral result as a defeat is, to an extent, a matter of subjective perceptions. One might say that defeat is in the eye of the beholder, as various

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actors (including media, experts, the electorate, the international environment or the parties themselves) make their own claims as to what is a defeat and what is a success. The subjective dimension of the electoral defeat does not entail that the category cannot be operationalised. When constructing the definition of defeat that would be applied to select cases for analysis, we took three objective criteria into account: the number of seats in the parliament, the level of electoral support expressed with the number of votes garnered and, finally, the party’s status after the election: in office (ruling or co-ruling) vs. in opposition. Hence, an electoral defeat is a situation whereby the party wins fewer seats in the parliament or its electoral support decreases compared to the previous election. However, if the party gains or retains a presence in the government, a decline in support or a decrease in the number of mandates held is not considered an electoral defeat. We realise that the combination of two types of criteria, i.e. referring to the electoral support and the status of the party after the elections, may be debatable, but this procedure is dictated by the observation of political parties which, in the case of falling electoral support and simultaneous retention of power, do not treat a worse electoral result as a clear impulse for change. Using solely objective determinants of defeat is not to deny the role of subjective factors, it is only to enable the selection of the political parties analysed. In the next step, with qualitative analysis, we also examine the perception and interpretation of the electoral result within the party and their influence on the consequences of the experience of defeat (see Chapter 6). The defeated party’s political status has one more facet to be considered when examining its openness to change. Panebianco (1988) emphasised the importance of government status in explaining party reforms, pointing out that prolonged presence in opposition appears to be a condition for significant organisational transformations. As Legein explains, “sitting in government requires the mobilisation of all the resources of the party which sees most of its cadres and leading figures monopolised by ministerial and parliamentary work. Rebranding the external party image or modifying the internal dynamics takes time and requires political staff who are prepared to embody these reforms in both arenas ” (Legein 2021, 7). Remaining in opposition or losing the status of the party in office frees up the resources needed to bring about change in the party. In this case, the political party may devote more time and energy to focus on what to change, because matters of governance no longer occupy her. On the

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other hand, when mentioning party resources, one cannot ignore the fact that lower electoral support translates in European political parties into lower public funding, which makes it necessary to reduce party staff. In combination with being relegated to the opposition, losing support and seats in the parliament may—at least potentially—have a strong impact on political parties. While the electoral competition is not necessarily the most important motivator for any political party (Deschouwer 1992), no political party operating in a democratic system can act entirely without regard for its support among the voters. Losing the votes and mandates indirectly hinder the party’s ability to achieve its political goals. Still, a defeat does not automatically translate into an impulse for the type of change that Cerny (1990) describes as catalytic and transformative. Sometimes, it brings merely routine adjustments aimed at stabilising the organisation rather than transforming it. This is so because political parties are rather conservative organisations (Panebianco 1988; Harmel and Janda 1994; Eldersveld 1998; Harmel 2002) that resist change and adapt slowly. At the same time, change is perceived as a permanent process essential to parties’ existence (van Haute 2011). Political formations, in order to survive in a competitive environment and achieve their goals, must adapt to challenges, both external and internal (Webb et al. 2002; Rihoux 2006). Nonetheless, we see electoral defeat as an external trigger, or accelerator, of processes occurring within parties. Not all changes within the political parties are intentional. While we focused on those processes that are consciously initiated by the organisation (its leadership, members, activists) in the aftermath of a defeat and require a favourable balance of internal party power, we did not lose sight of unintended, uncontrolled and, typically, unwanted developments, consequences such as a loss of members, decomposition or collapse. Moreover, even if we analyse intentional change, we should realise that the degree of the intentionality of change can vary. Some reforms are somehow forced by changes in the environment and the party has no choice but to adapt to them. This remark is not inconsistent with an observation by Legein that party changes happen when “planets align” to either provide a window of opportunity for implementing an intentional reform or simply apply enough pressure on the party in question to force a change, albeit the two conditions may sometimes occur simultaneously (Legein 2021, 3).

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Objective factors that affect the extent of post-defeat change may either be of systemic (external) nature or stem from the party’s profile and characteristics. The former category includes a party and electoral system—elements that influenced our choice of cases for in-depth qualitative analysis (which we describe further in this chapter). The latter group of objective factors encompasses parties’ political goals, age (development and institutionalisation phase), the strength of its internal subsystems, office aspiration and relevance. The last two categories call for further elaboration and operationalization. Since political formations may have different objectives, not all of them are equally office-seeking, some choose to prioritise other aspects over the ability to form and run a government (Harmel and Janda 1994). Moreover, throughout their life cycles, not all parties gain equal opportunities to participate in coalition negotiations and, potentially, form the cabinet. While certain formations are a regular presence in a government, others barely ever (if at all) get to that point. Therefore, the prospect of winning or losing power is not equally realistic in the eyes of all parties. This means it is also not an equally potent impulse for change. One variable that accounts for these differences is office aspiration (Schumacher et al. 2015). Parties which score low on this index do not expect to be in office because they are almost never in the office, whereas those which score high in office aspiration expect to be in office because they usually are. The parties moving in and out of office are the middle category. The value of the office aspiration index for an election in which a party experienced defeat was calculated as follows: the number of years in the office prior to the election divided by the number of years the party had been present in the parliament prior to the election. The theoretical range of the index is between 0 (always in opposition) and 1 (always in government). We also introduce the category of relevance into our analysis of changes induced by electoral defeat. When defining the political relevance, we were inspired by the classic concept proposed by Sartori (1976), Iearci’s (1992) critique of Sartori’s proposal as well as Laakso and Taagapera’s (1979) index of an effective number of parties. Our proposal is based on an assumption that a party has three basic tools it can use to shape the course of politics, which also define its position and potential within a party system: – being in office, either as a senior or junior coalition partner, defines a party’s governmental relevance (GR);

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– parliamentary position—the bigger a party is in terms of the share of parliamentary seats, the more it can do. Even if not in the office, the party may disturb, criticise or create alternatives to the governing parties, as well as attract MPs or parties which support the ruling coalition. This defines the party’s parliamentary relevance (PR); – electoral support—which usually aligns with parliamentary position, but in some electoral systems (majority systems, proportional systems with the d’Hondt method and high thresholds) does not easily translate into parliamentary representation—defines the party’s electoral relevance (ER). The above aspects of the party relevance were calculated in the following way: – GR—if a party is a senior coalition partner and has the leadership of government, it scores 1. Each junior partner scores 0.5, while opposition parties score 0; – PR—percentage of the total number of parliamentary seats; – ER—vote share. When combined, the three aspects define parties’ total relevance (TR): TR = ER + PR + GR. Let’s consider this index on a few examples. For the Flemish socialist party Sp.a 2014 federal Belgian election did not bring a dramatic decline in electoral support nor share of parliamentary seats. Therefore the change of electoral and parliamentary relevance is minimal or none. However, the party in office prior to the election moved to opposition which is reflected in the loss of governmental relevance. As we can see in Table 2.1 the total relevance drop is mainly due to loss of governmental status. Things obviously look different in case of defeat experienced by the opposition party. Polish Law and Justice party (PiS) can serve as another example. The parliamentary election in 2011 resulted for PiS in a relatively small decline in the share of electoral loss and parliamentary seats and did not change party status. It has already been in opposition. Though this case fits our definition of electoral defeat its magnitude, measured with total relevancy change, is smaller than in previous case (Table 2.2). In other words, the defeat was less bitter than in the case of Belgian Sp.a.

Year of election

2010 2014

Party acronym

Sp.a

−0.009

ER change

Source Own calculations based on official election results

0.092 0.083

Electoral (ER)

Relevance index

Change of relevance index—Sp.a. case

Table 2.1

0.087 0.087

Parliamentary (PR) 0.000

PR change

0.50 0.00

Governmental (GR)

−0.50

GR change

0.679 0.170

Total (TR)

−0.51

TR change

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Year of election

2007 2011

Party acronym

PiS

−0.022

ER change

Source Own calculations based on official election results

0.321 0.299

Electoral (ER)

Relevance index

Change of relevance index—PiS case

Table 2.2

0.361 0.341

Parliamentary (PR) −0.020

PR change

0.00 0.00

Governmental (GR)

0.00

GR change

0.682 0.640

Total (TR)

−0.04

TR change

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British Labour Party is another very unique example. It was included in our research as a formation that experienced a defeat. This was because, when operationalising the concept of an electoral defeat, the first criterion we applied to opposition parties was the fact of losing the number of parliamentary mandates in comparison with the preceding election. Only if there was no change in seats held, we resort to the second criterion, i.e. the percentage of votes garnered. The LP met the first criterion, as its result in 2015 led to the shrinking of its parliamentary representation. Hence, the second criterion was not considered. However, if one looks at the exact numbers for the 2015 election, it turns out Labour actually garnered a slightly higher percentage of votes than in 2010 (Table 2.3). The simultaneous loss of mandates was the consequence of the UK’s voting system which, at times, introduces a notable disparity between the number or percentage of votes garnered and the number of mandates won. In our operationalisation of the concept of defeat, we attempted to encompass a wide variety of cases from very different party and electoral systems, but accounting for every possible configuration of results was simply not possible. Consequently, even though Labour’s 2015 performance fits into our criteria of defeat, it needs to be considered a unique instance. Though the party benefitted from the 2015 general election in terms of share of votes, yet it remained in opposition and loss in terms of total relevance. The details of how electoral defeats affected the examined parties’ total relevance and their particular components, we show in the subsection Data selection and research methods. For the small sample of 12 parties selected for in-depth qualitative analysis, we proposed also a fourth index—the relative relevance index (RRI) which allows seeing the party’s share of power in a particular parliamentary configuration. It is calculated as a total relevance divided by the sum of total relevancies of all the parties present in a parliament during a particular term. In other words, the point of reference for measuring the magnitude of electoral defeat, in case of this index is not a party’s previous electoral result but the share of power change in a particular parliamentary configuration. Introducing this additional index for the small sample allowed us to have better look at the Labour Party’s unique case and how it fits patterns of post-defeat change identified in the following parts of the book. Table 2.4. compares total relevance and relative relevance change in the three above cases. It shows that all of them experience loss in terms of total relevance change but the Labour Party, despite the defeat, slightly improved its position in terms of relative relevance due to

2010 2015

LP

0.014

ER change

Source Own calculations based on official election results

0.290 0.304

Electoral (ER) 0.397 0.355

Parliamentary (PR)

Year of election

Party acronym

Relevance index

Change of relevance index—LP case

Table 2.3

−0.040

PR change

0.00 0.00

Governmental (GR)

0.00

GR change

0.687 0.661

Total (TR)

−0.03

TR change

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Table 2.4 Total relevance and relative relevancy change compared Party acronym

LP Sp.a PiS

Year of election 2010 2015 2010 2014 2007 2011

Relevance index Total (TR) 0.687 0.661 0.679 0.170 0.682 0.640

TR change −0.03 −0.51 −0.04

Relative (RR)

RR change

0.19 0.22 0.12 0.04 0.20 0.18

0.03 −0.09 −0.01

Source Own calculations based on official election results

an increase in votes share. In the case of Sp.a significant loss in terms of TR does not translate to the same extent of loss in terms of RRI. It means that despite the fact that the party moved to opposition its position in the parliamentary configuration did not change a lot, and the party remained comparably as relevant as in the result of prior election. This turned out to be, as we present in detail in Chapter 6, an important factor affecting the party’s readiness for change.

2.3 Factors Affecting Electoral Defeat and Its Interpretation As an objective, external factors, the party system and electoral system affect both the win/loss equation (e.g. through the sheer mechanics of constituency division or a vote counting method) and the subjective perception of defeat. Two-party systems entail a closed cycle of power alteration which means that the victorious formation gets all the political spoils. A loss automatically deprives the defeated of public offices. Even a minute shift in electoral support may lead to a complete loss of control over the country’s policies and render a party incapable of pursuing its agenda. In multi-party systems with a solid tradition of coalition cabinets, a decrease in support does not necessarily remove a given party from government. Hence, defeats are not always as painful and change-inducing as in two-party systems. For a political party that has a stable network of cooperation within a multi-party system, change can be prompted not by an electoral defeat itself, but rather by a situation whereby its traditional coalition partners choose not to invite it to the

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coalition negotiating table. It may also happen when a new actor, with a higher coalition potential, emerges to compete for the same segment of the electorate (Herbut 2002, 193–194). The nature and scope of changes implemented by a party as a consequence of a defeat may depend on its stated catalogue of political objectives. To explain this connection, one can apply Harmel and Janda’s (1994) integrated theory of party goals and party change. When analysing the impact of external factors on a party change, they noticed that such external impulses only induce meaningful reforms if they hinder the party’s effectiveness as an institution and its ability to pursue its goals. Otherwise, deep changes are unlikely, since political formations are reluctant to give up tried and tested procedures altogether. Instead, they usually opt to merely tweak them just enough to adapt to the new circumstances. Harmel and Janda identified four types of objectives that political parties adopt for themselves and which, in our view, strongly affect how electoral defeats translate into remedial measures implemented afterwards. In their model, the first group are the parties who prioritise voters’ support as expressed in elections. The second group includes parties that seek to maximise their presence in terms of public offices held. The third category encompasses formations that primarily wish to promote a certain agenda, ideology and policies. Finally, the fourth group is made of up parties which emphasise the level of their internal democracy. If one accepts such a division, it becomes obvious that the consequences of electoral defeat must vary across organisations with such diverse objectives. At a first glance, it may seem that the first two types of goals are inextricably linked—only by succeeding at the polls and serving in government (either on its own or as part of a coalition) can a party place its representatives in public offices. However, this is not necessarily the case. In multi-party systems, a formation can very well occupy a satisfactory number of posts without winning an election or improving its result compared to the previous one (actually, it may do so even if its support declines). Meanwhile, for the parties who prioritise ideological goals and programmes, the parliamentary arena can be of secondary (or even marginal) importance. Hence, losing votes and public offices will not motivate them to implement substantial organisational, personnel or communication changes, so long as they retain their potential to mobilise their target segments of the electorate. Formations that strive to maintain a high standard of internal democracy will typically react to defeats by introducing organisational changes that ensure the broadest

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possible inclusion of members and grassroots structures in the evaluation and reform process (Cross and Blais 2012; Cross 2013; Scarrow 2015; Kosiara-Pedersen et al. 2017). While we were well aware of the potential influence this factor can have on the character and extent of the postdefeat changes, we decided against including it in our empirical research that encompassed over 70 parties. Our decision was driven by the fact that many among the examined formations did not articulate their objectives in a clear, direct, unequivocal manner. Identifying them would require us to conduct additional, targeted research which lies outside the scope of our original purpose behind the effort. Nonetheless, this aspect did emerge in some of the interviews with representatives of Belgian, British and Polish parties selected for in-depth analysis. Another factor relevant to the consequences of electoral defeats is a given party’s development stage. It affects, among other aspects, the routinisation of parties’ reactions to external circumstances. Here, one may refer to a concept proposed by Harmel and Svåsand (1993), who suggested three development phases in the life cycle of a political party. The first stage, identification, is when a party formulates its key objectives and tries to make the general public aware of them. It seems that at this point, a defeat can prompt two basic scenarios: disintegration and disappearance of the political party or survival on the political scene. Which option will prevail depends not so much on the exact result of the election, but rather on other resources (e.g. funds) available to the formation. Their shortage may spell the party’s doom and prevent it from ever reaching the second stage—organisation. During the organisation period, internal procedures are developed and turned into routines. The party builds up its electoral appeal, while also trying to find a stable consensus among various factions and policy directions. At this stage, it is particularly sensitive to defeats—if it experiences one, we can expect the most significant reforms and changes to the organisation. The third phase, stabilisation, occurs when the party consolidates its credibility and reputation on the political scene, coordinates internal procedures and constructs stable relations with partners and the external environment. By that point, it becomes mature enough to withstand defeats without experiencing irreparable damage to its long-term continuity. The post-defeat change can also be influenced by the strength of a given party’s subsystems, which many scholars describe using Katz and Mair’s (1995) classification as party in central office, party in public office and party on the ground. Numerous empirical examples have shown that

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it is the latter subsystem that is most often the key to survival in the case of defeat. Upon recording a poor result at the polls (possibly failing to meet the electoral threshold), a party with strong local structures is more likely to recover, even if the negative experience is repeated several times. At the same time, retaining an extensive base of grassroots activists, mid-level elites and the so-called rank-and-file members may constitute a sizeable challenge. The party needs to prevent their demobilisation and demotivation and identify new goals they can pursue or areas in which they can meaningfully contribute to the organisation so that they feel needed until the next election. The breadth of factors that may shape transformational processes within parties makes researching party change a complex undertaking. It calls for applying a range of theoretical approaches as well as making choices regarding methodologies and research techniques. The design of the research process became all the more important, as the purpose of our research was to account for both objective and subjective variables at play and combine them into a single theoretical model. The following sections of this chapter provide our theoretical expectations and detail how and why we made methodological choices so as to meet these challenges.

2.4

Theoretical Expectations About the Impact of Electoral Defeat on Political Parties

The theoretical models and existing research lead to the conclusion that electoral defeat is a factor that significantly influences transformations in political parties. And this is the founding idea of the whole book. However, previous findings on the links between poor electoral performance and changes in political parties often differ in their detailed conclusions. Our theoretical expectations are as follows: 1. Not every electoral defeat triggers changes of similar depth in political parties. What seems important is not so much the fact of the defeat itself, but its scale, which we measure by the change in political relevance. 2. Even a similar scale of electoral defeat may result in differential changes in particular dimensions of party functioning (e.g. leadership, policies, party rules and membership, structure, etc.). Indeed, electoral defeat does not occur in a vacuum, and context matters.

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Intervening variables may distort the measurement of the causal effect of electoral defeat on changes within the party. 3. Party change after electoral defeat does not depend only on objective, quantifiable factors to measure the scale of the defeat, but also on subjective factors such as intra-party perception and interpretation of the electoral result. 4. Changes triggered by electoral defeat can be intentional (introduced and controlled by the party) as well as unintentional (e.g. loss of membership base). Both types of changes can interact to strengthen or weaken the effect of electoral defeat. Taking these expectations into consideration, we propose a comprehensive model for analysing the impact of electoral defeat on intentional and unintentional changes within political parties. Its graphic representation is Fig. 2.1. The purpose of the proposed model is to describe an aspect of political reality by explaining assumptions stemming from the cybernetic approach, the conceptual framework as well as interactions and relations

Fig. 2.1 Model for analysing the impact of electoral defeat on changes in political parties (Source Own elaboration)

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between specific concepts within it. Like any other model, it is a generalised construct, yet one that still enables the analysis of the context and peculiarities of a given case. Its constitutive elements may be treated as separate subsystems which, for the purpose of the analytical process, can be expanded into a more elaborate form. This is especially true for objective and subjective factors. This provides the model with a certain flexibility, as it can be applied to include factors and variables which we have not considered in our research.

2.5

Data Selection and Research Methods

By establishing an operational definition of electoral defeat and sifting through election results in all European Union (EU) member states, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway, we have selected the cases to be analysed. The large sample consists of 73 political parties from 28 European countries, all of which experienced electoral defeats between 2011 and 2017 (Table 2.5). The parties in question recorded decreased support, measured by the number or the share of votes garnered, compared to the previous election, which is reflected in the negative value of electoral relevance index (ERI change). This translated into a reduced number of seats held in the parliament which is presented in the drop in parliamentary relevance index (PRI). The higher decline in ERI and PRI the higher extent of electoral defeat. As an additional condition, we have included only those entities which after the election were confined to the status of opposition parties. Governmental relevance index (GRI) informs about party status prior to defeat. Party which has already been in opposition prior to election and retained its status did not lose nor gain in this aspect, therefore they scored 0. Parties which were in office, either as a ruling or co-ruling, and in the result of election moved to opposition, scored, respectively, −1 or −0.5. However, in two national cases this sub-index was a problematic one. In the most of the selected cases party governmental status is a direct result of its electoral performance and parliamentary gains. However, this does not apply to Cyprus and Switzerland. In the Cypriot presidential system the president is the head of the executive branch and does not need the confidence of the majority of the legislature. Therefore, the party governmental status is not directly related to its electoral performance. In the Switzerland case, there is an arithmetic formula which divides executive seats in the Federal Council among four parties irrespectively of their electoral performance. So, for

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Swiss and Cypriot parties we concluded that GRI would be misleading and marked it in the table as “na”—not applicable. The comparative analysis is based on a dataset collected at the turn of 2018 and 2019 by 30 political scientists with expertise in the particular national political scenes and parties (the list of experts is provided in the appendix). The involved scholars filled out a questionnaire composed of 15 closed and open-ended questions. The first section was devoted to the leadership after the electoral defeat. The second part concerned the causes of the defeat and their assessment. Parts three and four were focused on changes in membership and internal organisation, respectively. In the final, fifth part of the survey, we asked about programme changes in the political parties under consideration. Our choice of 2011 as a starting point for the period to be analysed was dictated by cognitive accessibility. We judged that some facts and nuances regarding elections further in the past might not be easy for experts to recall and discuss. In opting to end our analysis on the events of 2017, we recognised a common observation that changes within parties take time—we assumed that we need at least a year for them to actually occur and become observable. The party change was examined in the following dimensions: (1) leadership; (2) party decomposition; (3) balance of power in the party; (4) programme; (5) structures. For all these aspects, each expert’s statement was assigned a score of 0. 1 or 2 points. In the leadership dimension, 0 points corresponded to no change in leadership. In party decomposition, 0 means there were no secessions among the activists. Similarly, in the remaining aspects 0 stands for the lack of change in the balance of power, programme or organisational structures, respectively. A change in leadership has a score of 1 if the deposition of the leader is not an immediate result of the defeat, but occurs due to a scheduled internal selection procedure (e.g. leadership election). In terms of party decomposition, such a score signifies that although some activists left, they did not create a new grouping and the resulting change in the balance of power was marginal. In the last two dimensions, a score of 1 shows, respectively, minor alterations to the party’s agenda and the creation of new bodies within its structure, provided these new elements did not have a visible impact on the functioning of the organisation. 2 points were assigned for an accelerated change in leadership, a secession that led to the establishment of a new formation, significant shifts on the left–right spectrum or in the balance of power, as well as a structural makeover that noticeably

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Table 2.5 List of political parties included in the study Country

Austria Belgium

Bulgaria

Switzerland

Czech Republic

Cyprus

Germany

Denmark Estonia Greece

Party

Die Grünen SPÖ VB PS Sp.a Ecolo DPS BSP Ataka CVP/PDC GPS BDP GLP ˇ CSSD ˇ KSCM ˇ CSL TOP09 AKEL EDEK DISY FDP Die Linke Die Grüne SF EER ERL PASOK DIMAR ND To Potami

Spain Finland

Ciudadanos PSOE SDP Vas KD

Year of defeat

Relevance change ERI change

PRI change

GRI change

TRI change

Index of party change

2017 2017 2014 2014 2014 2014 2017 2014 2014 2015 2015 2015 2015 2017 2017 2017 2017 2016 2016 2016 2013 2013 2013 2015 2011 2011 January 2015 January 2015 January 2015 September 2015 2016 2016 2015 2015 2015

−0.086 −0.001 −0.041 −0.020 −0.009 −0.015 −0.058 −0.113 −0.028 −0.007 −0.013 −0.013 −0.008 −0.139 −0.072 −0.010 −0.067 −0.070 −0.027 −0.036 −0.098 −0.033 −0.023 −0.050 −0.033 −0.050 −0.076

−0.131 0.000 −0.060 −0.020 0.000 −0.013 −0.050 −0.188 −0.048 −0.005 −0.020 −0.010 −0.025 −0.175 −0.090 −0.020 −0.045 −0.054 −0.036 −0.036 −0.131 −0.017 −0.001 −0.050 −0.059 −0.059 −0.430

0.00 −0.50 0.00 −0.50 −0.50 0.00 0.00 −0.50 0.00 na na na na −0.50 0.00 −0.50 0.00 na na na −0.50 0.00 0.00 −0.50 0.00 0.00 −0.50

−0.22 −0.50 −0.10 −0.54 −0.51 −0.03 −0.11 −0.80 −0.08 −0.01 −0.03 −0.02 −0.03 −0.81 −0.16 −0.53 −0.11 −0.12 −0.06 −0.07 −0.73 −0.05 −0.02 −0.60 −0.09 −0.11 −1.01

1.20 1.60 0.80 0.80 1.00 0.80 0.00 1.20 0.00 0.80 0.20 0.20 1.40 0.60 0.00 0.00 0.60 0.50 0.00 0.60 0.80 0.20 0.60 0.80 0.80 1.80 0.80

−0.058

−0.057

0.00

−0.11

1.50

−0.019

−0.177

−1.00

−1.20

1.20

−0.020

−0.020

0.00

−0.04

0.60

−0.009 0.006 −0.026 −0.010 −0.005

−0.023 −0.014 −0.040 −0.010 −0.005

0.00 0.00 −0.50 −0.50 −0.50

−0.03 −0.01 −0.57 −0.52 −0.51

0.40 0.40 0.25 0.80 0.60

(continued)

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´ A. PACZESNIAK ET AL.

Table 2.5 (continued) Country

France

Croatia Hungary Ireland

Italy

Lithuania Latvia Malta Netherlands Norway Poland

Portugal Romania Sweden

Slovakia United Kingdom

Party

PS LR EE-LV SDP HL LMP LP GP FF PdL/FI LN UdC DP TT SSP ZZS PN PvdA SP Ap KrF PiS PO PSL SLD PSD CDS-PP PNL M C FP KD KDH SDKU-DS LibDem LP SNP UKIP

Year of defeat

Relevance change ERI change

PRI change

GRI change

TRI change

2017 2017 2017 2016 2016 2014 2016 2011 2011 2013 2013 2013 2016 2016 2014 2011 2013 2017 2017 2017 2017 2011 2015 2015 2015 2015 2015 2016 2014 2014 2014 2014 2016 2016 2015 2015 2017 2017

−0.219 −0.036 −0.012 0.006 −0.017 −0.021 −0.128 −0.029 −0.242 −0.158 −0.042 −0.038 −0.151 −0.020 −0.054 −0.075 −0.059 −0.191 −0.006 −0.034 −0.014 −0.022 −0.151 −0.032 −0.008 0.001 −0.039 −0.386 −0.095 −0.595 −0.017 −0.010 −0.033 −0.058 −0.005 0.014 −0.017 −0.108

−0.451 −0.142 −0.028 −0.013 −0.020 −0.055 −0.055 −0.038 −0.350 −0.284 −0.067 −0.045 −0.192 −0.021 −0.070 −0.090 −0.085 −0.193 −0.007 −0.036 −0.012 −0.020 −0.150 −0.026 −0.059 −0.083 −0.026 −0.094 −0.066 −0.003 −0.014 −0.014 −0.107 −0.073 −0.075 −0.040 −0.032 −0.015

−1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 −0.50 −1.00 −1.00 −0.50 0.00 −0.50 −0.50 0.00 −0.50 −1.00 −0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 −1.00 −0.50 0.00 −1.00 −0.50 −0.50 −1.00 −0.50 −0.50 −0.50 0.00 0.00 −0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00

−1.67 −0.18 −0.04 −0.01 −0.04 −0.08 −0.18 −0.57 −1.59 −1.44 −0.61 −0.08 −0.84 −0.54 −0.12 −0.66 −1.14 −0.88 −0.01 −0.07 −0.03 −0.04 −1.30 −0.56 −0.07 −1.08 −0.57 −0.98 −1.16 −1.10 −0.53 −0.52 −0.14 −0.13 −0.58 −0.03 −0.05 −0.12

“na”—not applicable Source Own calculations based on official election results

Index of party change 1.20 1.80 0.00 1.20 1.00 1.20 1.00 1.00 1.20 0.40 0.80 0.60 1.00 1.40 0.50 0.60 0.60 0.60 1.20 0.40 1.00 1.20 1.00 1.00 1.80 0.25 0.20 0.80 0.80 1.00 0.20 0.40 1.25 1.25 0.60 1.60 0.00 1.20

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affects the party’s operations. The depth of party change is measured on a scale from 0 to 10. However, in the case of several parties, data for one or two dimensions were not available. Therefore, we converted the total score for each party to avoid a situation whereby the overall score would over or underrepresent the depth of change simply because there were different numbers of elements in the sum. To account for that, the total value of change in a particular dimension was divided by the number of dimension with available data. Total party change index for each party varies from 0 to 2. In order to conduct an in-depth analysis of the impact of subjective factors, we decided to shrink the sample to a size manageable for a team of a couple of researchers, as we planned to conduct several dozen of in-depth interviews and examine documents produced or owned by the parties in question with regard to election results (declarations, statements, analyses, reports etc.). The latter element provides an insight into how results are perceived and assessed by party elites. By applying content analysis to political manifestos and programmes, we considered whether parties modified their agendas (especially in terms of crucial issues) before and after a defeat. The above considerations led to settling on a smaller sample of 12 parties functioning in three different party systems (Sartori 1976): a moderately polarised multi-party system (in Poland), a two-party system (with the British parliamentary arena used as an example), and an extremely polarised multi-party system (represented by the case of Belgium). The chosen parties differ widely in terms of the scale of their defeat. However, one element common to all of them is an objectively worse post-election situation. Most of the selected parties belong to the socialist/social democratic family: two from Belgium (Parti socialiste and Socialistische partij.anders), two from the United Kingdom (Labour Party and Scottish National Party) and one from Poland (Democratic Left Alliance). We have also examined one green (Ecolo from Belgium), one conservative (Law and Justice from Poland) and one liberal party (Liberal Democrats from the UK). The other two Polish parties (Civic Platform and Polish People’s Party) are both members of the European People’s Party, even though one of them is a liberal-conservative formation and the other one is agrarian. Finally, the remaining two parties (Vlaams Belang and UKIP) are situated on the far right of the political spectrum. The key point of the perspective adopted in the book is the claim that perceptions matter. This is why we focus on critical actors’ beliefs

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´ A. PACZESNIAK ET AL.

and opinions regarding an event which we have objectively recognised as an electoral loss. The goal, therefore, is not to find out how things are, but rather how they are seen, understood and communicated. One of the ways in which a given actor’s perspective is revealed and becomes empirically accessible is the narrative. Studying political narratives is a path to understanding the meaning political actors attribute to particular processes or objects. To achieve this goal, we carried out 49 individual in-depth interviews (IDIs) with prominent figures from selected parties: mostly parliamentarians (MEPs and MPs), but also party leaders and members of decision-making bodies. The parliamentarians were chosen as respondents for two reasons: firstly, they are usually very familiar with the functioning of their political formations and, secondly, researchers typically find them to be somewhat more approachable as interlocutors compared to representatives of party headquarters or leadership. Anyone conducting research among party elites faces barriers, as politicians open and willing to cooperate with scholars are in short supply, particularly in younger democracies such as Poland. The inclusion of MPs and MEPs was therefore dictated by convenience in selecting the research sample. The interviews were conducted from December 2018 to October 2021, in numbers sufficient to achieve theoretical saturation. All quotations are drawn from these interviews, which were anonymised. They are marked with the abbreviations of the respective parties and numbers assigned to each interview. For instance, the third interviewee from Vlaams Belang is marked as “VB_3”. The IDIs were unstructured, so as to give the interviewees ample opportunity to speak freely and elaborate on whatever points they touched on (Oppenheim 1992). This way, the interviews had an exploratory function. Such a choice makes particularly strong sense in political science research which encompasses party leaders and parliamentarians—individuals who subscribe to a clearly defined, cohesive group identity (Hertz and Imber 1995). Interviewers did not float any suggestions or patterns for interpreting electoral losses and their causes. Moreover, at the beginning of each conversation, the interviewees gave their individual assessments of their respective parties’ results and a subjective opinion on whether it should be considered a defeat. To explain and provide context for the defeats experienced by the 12 examined parties, we shall briefly describe each of them, starting with Belgian formations, moving on to Polish parties and finishing with the British ones.

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The federal structure of the state, with broad autonomy granted to regions and community governments, as well as an extremely polarised multi-party system mean that identifying the defeated in Belgian parliamentary elections is somewhat harder than in other countries. Even if the objective criteria we adopted for our research clearly show which parties lost support, seats in the Chamber of Representatives or the status of co-governing formations, the subjective perceptions of election results are often very different from the picture that emerges from hard facts. Established socio-political divisions make significant shifts in electoral support a rarity. Given the multi-tiered structure of the state, parties can often make up for any losses at the federal level by performing better at the regional/community level. Furthermore, a party’s prospects for participating in governing coalitions depend more on the outcome of inter-partisan negotiations than directly on the number of votes garnered. Nonetheless, we have decided to consistently apply the operational definition of an electoral defeat mentioned earlier. As a result, we have looked at four parties which fell under the category of defeated in the 2014 general election: Vlaams Belang (VB), the French-speaking Socialist Party (PS), the Dutch-speaking Socialist Party—Other (Sp.a), and the French-speaking Ecologists (Ecolo). Vlaams Belang suffered the biggest loss in terms of parliamentary seats and was reduced to 5.9% of the Flemish vote. The party is commonly recognised as being populist and extremely right wing (De Landtsheer 2015; van Haute and Pauwels 2016). It supports the notion of an independent Flemish state and opposes the marginalisation of Flanders by the Walloons. Its nativism, combined with exclusionism and ethnopluralist worldview, is related to the issue of migration (Moufahim et al. 2015; De Cleen 2016). In fact, Vlaams Belang’s anti-immigration stance with its strong Islamophobic undercurrent became a far more potent magnet for votes than the traditional Flemish nationalism and separatism (Adam and Deschouwer 2016). Vlaams Belang is a rebrand of Vlaams Blok—a formation which dissolved in the aftermath of a 2004 court ruling. Even though the new entity distanced itself from the rhetoric of its predecessor and sought to change its image (from radical to merely conservative), most other parties continued to apply a cordon sanitaire which had been in place against Vlaams Blok, effectively preventing Vlaams Belang from participating in government at any level. Two Belgian socialist parties—the PS and the Sp.a—were founded as a result of the 1978 split in the unitary Belgian Socialist Party. The

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´ A. PACZESNIAK ET AL.

Dutch- and French-speaking Socialists parted ways and formed two separate political parties. Both experienced a difficult decade in the 1990s. Subsequently, their fates have taken different directions (Delwit 2013, 51). The PS recovered significant electoral and political importance, achieving victory in the June 2010 federal election, securing the position of Prime Minister for its chairman and guaranteeing a place in the federal government for the Socialists from Flanders. In contrast, Sp.a suffered consistently poorer election results for many years. Following the 2014 parliamentary election, the Socialists from Wallonia and Flanders both ended up in the opposition, although the loss of votes and seats in the Chamber of Representatives was not dramatic. The French-speaking political party Ecolo was created in 1980. Its agenda is based largely on ecological causes. Its main goals include combating climate change, promoting sustainable development, achieving gender parity in politics, ensuring transparency and fostering civic participation in political life. The formation’s electoral history is made up of alternating successes and defeats. The setback in the 2014 general election was not the biggest one in Ecolo’s history, although the loss of two (out of eight) seats in the Chamber of Representatives was perceived within the party as a relative failure, especially since the result also affected the regional parliament, for which election was held on the same day. In contrast to Belgium, identifying the defeated parties in the 2011 and 2015 general elections in Poland was not difficult. Specifying whose loss was the heaviest proved to be a little more challenging. In 2011 Law and Justice (PiS) lost a portion of its electoral support in the general election for a second time in a row, after spending four years in the opposition. The party was founded in 2001 and since then has been driven by a conservative agenda and a focus on the primacy of “law and order”. Initially, the party was more Christian Democratic and centrist in its nature. It formed a cabinet in 2005 (first a minority one, then in coalition with two Eurosceptic parties) and governed until an early election was called in 2007. Its programme and strategy were developed by the Kaczynski ´ twin brothers, its founders and leaders. Over time, PiS incorporated economic interventionism into its agenda, while maintaining a culturally and socially conservative stance that systematically moved towards close relations with the Catholic Church and right-wing populism. It developed into a national-conservative party with a Eurosceptic approach. After several key figures, including Lech Kaczynski, ´ then serving as president,

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died in a 2010 plane crash, Jarosław Kaczynski ´ became the undisputed leader and has since retained a dominant position within PiS. In the 2015 election, the Civic Platform (PO) and the Polish People’s Party (PSL)—two formations that had up to that point co-ruled for 8 years—recorded lower scores and lost their position in power. The third loser, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), failed to reach the electoral threshold and found itself outside the parliament. The result proved most costly to the Civic Platform, whose representatives had held the office of prime minister for two full terms. This moderate, centre-right party formed in 2001 combines economic neoliberalism with social conservatism. Most of all, PO wants to appear as a champion of pragmatism, modernisation and European integration. In an effort to attract more support and broaden its voter base, it has tried to appeal to more and more circles and social groups, gradually incorporating a “leftist sensibility”. It calls for an “amicable” separation of the Catholic Church and state. The party has been in power twice: from 2007 until 2011 and later, between 2011 and 2015, acting as a senior partner in a coalition with the Polish People’s Party. PSL also changed its political status after the 2015 general election, moving into the opposition after eight years of co-governing the country. The party maintains that agriculture is one of the key sectors of the Polish economy and aspires to represent the rural electorate and farmers. However, it is aware of the fact that its traditional, natural voter base has been shrinking. Hence, it has recently been trying to revamp itself as a Christian Democratic formation open also to citizens from outside rural areas. PSL is a pivot party with high coalition potential. It has been involved in cabinets on numerous occasions. From 1993 to 1997 and from 1997 to 2001, it partnered with the Democratic Left Alliance. From 2007 until 2011 and from 2011 until 2015, it formed a coalition with PO, on both occasions as a junior partner. The last Polish party selected for analysis is the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) which was created as a separate political party in 1999. Previously, that name was used by a coalition of left-wing formations led by the Social Democracy of Poland—a successor party to the communist Polish United Workers’ Party. SLD emphasises humanist values, including the protection of minority rights, equality of men and women as well as legalisation of same-sex marriages. It calls for a strict separation of the Catholic Church and the state. Almost right from the beginning of the democratic transition and throughout the 1990s, the party retained

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´ A. PACZESNIAK ET AL.

a strong position on the Polish political scene. Its representatives held the post of Prime Minister on four occasions (twice in the period from 1995 to 1997 and twice from 2001 to 2005). In the aftermath of several scandals, it experienced a series of secessions (2004, 2005, 2012) and systematically lost electoral support. In fact, its decline went so far that in the 2015 election it failed to reach the 8% threshold established for electoral coalitions—a fact which meant it lost its parliamentary representation altogether. In the United Kingdom, the consequence of the first-past-the-post voting system is that even a small percentage change in electoral support can result in a loss of a disproportionate number of parliamentary seats. Therefore, the leading criterion for selecting parties to be analysed was a decline in the number of seats in the House of Commons, rather than the percentage of votes garnered in an election which, in the British variant of the majority electoral system, is of secondary importance. Based on our criteria, we considered four parties to have suffered electoral defeats in one or both general elections under consideration. In 2015, there were the Labour Party (LP) and the Liberal Democrats (LibDem), and in 2017, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). The Labour Party was founded in 1900. having evolved from the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century. Its first governmental experience began in 1929. Each period it spent in government (since WWII: 1945–1951, 1964–1970. 1974–1979, 1997–2010) ended in tensions between the parliamentary leadership and its grassroots (Faucher 2013, 373). In 1997, after 18 years in the opposition, the LP under Tony Blair’s leadership won, in a stunning fashion, the first of three successive general elections. Blair’s era accelerated the party’s policy review process. The party adopted some illiberal policies (on matters of security, social order and benefit fraud), while maintaining a liberal stand on social and ethical issues. For example, it passed legislation in favour of equal rights regardless of gender, sexual orientation or ethnic origin (Faucher 2013, 391). In the 2010 general election, LP came second in terms of the numbers of seats won and was forced to relinquish power to the coalition of the Conservatives and LibDem. Five years later, the 2015 general election resulted in a net loss of seats, inter alia as a result of the success of the Scottish National Party in Scotland, where Labour lost almost all seats (except one).

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The Liberal Democrats are positioned in the centre/centre-left of British politics. Ideologically, the party draws upon both liberalism and social democracy. Emphasising stronger protections for civil liberties, the party promotes socially liberal approaches to issues such as LGBT rights, drug legalisation, education policy and criminal justice. The party is internationalist and pro-European. LibDem grew during the 1990s and 2000s, becoming the third-largest party in the House of Commons. Liberal Democrats systematically recorded an increase in support in parliamentary elections until 2010 (to the max. of 23.0% and more than 6,800,000 votes). Between 2010 and 2015, under Nick Clegg’s leadership, the party was a junior partner in David Cameron’s coalition government. The coalition damaged the LibDems’ electoral prospects, leading to a defeat in the 2015 general election that relegated them to the status of the fourth-largest party in the House of Commons. The Scottish National Party, founded in 1934, aims to achieve independent statehood for Scotland and promote the interests of the Scottish people. In the twenty-first century, the SNP has enjoyed extraordinary electoral success and long-term governing status in Scotland. At the same time, it has been an effective opposition actor in the UK. It constitutes a rare example of a formation with solid traditions of participating in government which, in another context, operates as an anti-establishment entity (Bennie and McAngus 2020, 278). SNP is social democratic party which belongs to the family of West European nationalist and regionalist parties, standing among the most successful formations of its type (Mazzoleni and Mueller 2017; Mitchell et al. 2011). In 2015, following the 2014 independence referendum, the SNP attracted 50% of the vote in Scotland and benefited from the disproportional electoral system, returning 95% of Scottish MPs (Bennie and McAngus 2020, 279). It was the best result in the party’s history, in terms of both percentage of support and the number of seats in the House of Commons (56 MPs per all 59 Scottish constituencies). In the 2017 general election, SNP lost 21 seats but remained by far the largest Scottish party at Westminster. The last British party selected for analysis is the UK Independence Party which was founded in 1993. Since its very inception, UKIP campaigned to take Britain out of the European Union. The pressure UKIP exerted on the Conservative government contributed to the decision to organise the 2016 referendum which led to the UK’s commitment to withdraw from the European Union. Ideologically positioned on the right wing, UKIP is characterised as a populist party (Clarke et al. 2016).

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UKIP has placed emphasis on curbing immigration, rejecting multiculturalism and opposing what it calls the “Islamification” of Britain. Its discourse on immigration and cultural identity generated accusations of racism and xenophobia. On social issues such as LGBT rights, education policy, and criminal justice the party is a traditionalist. UKIP reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it became the largest party representing the UK in the European Parliament after the 2014 European election, and then gained 12.6% of the vote in the 2015 general election. The first-past-the-post voting system for electing MPs to the House of Commons was a significant barrier to UKIP’s ambitions since its support was distributed across different areas rather than strongly focused in particular constituencies (Ford and Goodwin 2014, 220). In the 2017 general election, UKIP received fewer than 600,000 votes and won no seats. In addition to the collection of original data from expert surveys (concerning 73 political parties) and in-depth interviews (concerning 12 political parties), in order to enlarge the scope of research and obtain objective results we have also used available databases produced by other political party researchers. Hence, our analysis utilises data from the Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR, https://manife sto-project.wzb.eu), the Political Party Database Project (PPDB, https:// www.politicalpartydb.org), Members and Activists of Political Parties Project (MAPP, http://www.projectmapp.eu), and the Party Members Project database (PMP, https://esrcpartymembersproject.org). We use MARPOR data to study the impact of electoral defeats on changes in political party programmes and to compare two consecutive elections and political parties’ agendas before and after, so as to track changes that are made after defeats. The PPDB and MAPP were helpful in analysing how defeats translate into alterations to membership base, party structures and organisational culture. In our in-depth analysis of the UK political parties, we also used the PMP database, which focuses on the changes taking place in the six largest British parties between 2015 and 2018. The triangulation approach in terms of research methods and techniques used, data sources analysed, as well as research perspectives allowed—we hope—a better understanding of the crux of the issue, had an impact on the reliability of the research conducted, and made it possible to achieve accurate results. The diversity of sources and methods was aimed at detecting and correcting errors in our study by confronting the information obtained from the previous research findings.

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CHAPTER 3

The Loser Has to Fall (?): Party Leadership After Electoral Defeat

3.1

Introduction

For all participating political parties, elections constitute a test of how voters evaluate their activity and programmes. However, their performance at the polls is more and more often affected also by the public’s assessment of party leaders (Garzia and De Angelis 2016). As Renwick and Pilet (2015, 7) point out, “the factors that were traditionally said to drive voting have gradually lost significance. Among the new factors that are gaining importance in the electoral decision are the personal qualities of party leaders ”. Many studies have shown that leading figures can have a positive impact on their formations’ results (Aarts et al. 2011; Barisione 2009; Garzia 2012; Bittner 2011). For Hayes and McAllister (1997, 3) it was clear that “election outcomes are now, more than any time in the past, determined by voters’ assessments of party leaders ”. Although the exact significance of this personal factor varies depending on the electoral and party system as well as political culture, progressing personalisation of campaigns is a universal trend. In fact, it is a part of a broader process— personalisation of politics in general—whereby individual actors often play a more important role than institutions, as the public’s perceptions of politics focus on personalities rather than processes and political leaders are elevated above collective identities and interests (Karvonen 2010, 4). Given that voters increasingly view political parties through the prism of their leaders (Renwick and Pilet 2015), who effectively become their © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Pacze´sniak et al., Electoral Defeat and Party Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0_3

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public image (Cross and Pilet 2015), campaign staffs more and more often tend to centre their strategies around personalities. By emphasising the leaders’ role, they seek to enhance the cohesion, credibility and appeal of their message, but also to infuse the party’s image with more emotional, human qualities (Mazur 2017, 74). Personalisation of campaigns means that while leaders are often credited with the success of their formations, they are assigned individual blame if the election result proves to be unsatisfactory. Thus, defeat is also personalised, as it is put on the shoulders of top-spot candidates with the highest media exposure and party leaders. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the links between election results and the (dis)continuity of party leadership. The structure of the chapter is geared towards that exact goal. First, we refer to the conclusions from previous research on the consequences of election results for personal continuity of leadership. Then, we examine the importance of certain variables for the change in leadership after electoral defeat. Finally, we conduct a qualitative analysis of leadership change in election-losing formations from Belgium, the United Kingdom and Poland.

3.2 Election Results and the (Dis)continuity of Party Leadership Leaders are in charge of driving a party’s policy and making the organisation achieve its goals (Cross and Pilet 2015; Gauja 2017). The responsibilities ascribed to party leadership range from performing executive and administrative duties to shaping policy agendas and making key decisions; from providing a sense of strategic direction to using political communication to signal the party’s responsiveness. Leaders are expected to be both guarantors of continuity and the main instruments of necessary change (Foley 2013, 2–3). Regardless of whether a party prioritises voter support (office-seeking party), presence in public posts (office-seeking party) or its ability to implement its programme (policy-seeking party) (Müller and Strøm 1999), poor performance in an election is always considered a worrying sign, since it can be safely assumed that every competing formation would rather win the contest than lose it (Ennser-Jedenastik and Schumacher 2015, 109). In democratic countries, attracting votes is a necessary prerequisite to being appointed to public offices and being able to influence public policies. Hence, losing votes hinders a party’s pursuit of any of these goals. Comparative research on party leadership clearly

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shows that success at the polls strengthens a leader’s position and makes it harder for competitors to depose him or her (Bynander and ‘t Hart 2007; Horiuchi et al. 2015; Ennser-Jedenastik and Müller 2015). Is the correlation between electoral defeat and leadership change equally pronounced? Ennser-Jedenastik and Schumacher (2015) found that losing elections and losing government office significantly reduce a leader’s chances to remain in his or her job. Interestingly, there is evidence that suggests that, for both performance indicators, the negative impact of losing is larger than the positive impact of winning. In most democratic systems, it is a common practice that the leader of the losing formation should resign from that office, particularly if the defeat means being relegated to the opposition. Electoral defeat and leadership change are often linked, even if the change can be explained by other reasons (e.g. the end of the mandate, resignation—either voluntary or under pressure—etc.). Andrews and Jackman (2008) examined the fate of party leaders in six parliamentary democracies between 1945 and 2000. Their research has shown that electoral defeat and losing the status of a (co-)ruling party are strong predictors of leadership change, while an increase in the number of mandates held or the party’s participation in government minimises the risk of leaders being deposed. Our study on the consequences of defeats, conducted on 73 parties from 28 European countries, has confirmed that leadership change is the single most common reaction to a defeat. It is more frequent than alterations to policies, party structure, rules or tactics (Pacze´sniak et al. 2020). The most likely reason for this is that changing a leader is easier than introducing a meaningful reform of the party’s structure or programme (Schumacher and Giger 2018). These results demonstrate that parties experiencing electoral defeat most willingly change in the aspect which is most easily noticed by external observers: voters, media etc. The notion that leadership change is relatively easy does not apply (or applies to a significantly lesser extent) to personalistic parties which largely depend for their survival on the founder-leader (Kefforf and McDonnell 2018, 379)—a fact sometimes reflected even in the formation’s name. For such parties, losing an election may not provide a strong enough impulse for change, since it appears that the leader is the only guarantor of continued existence in the potentially tumultuous post-defeat period.

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The party type is not the only element that affects leadership continuity. The character of a given party system—which in our theoreticalanalytical model is treated as one of the objective factors—is also significant. As was noted in the second chapter, in two-party systems, even a minimal shift in vote share can lead to a complete loss of control over the country’s policies. Meanwhile, in multi-party systems with a longstanding tradition of coalition cabinets, defeats may not provide a strong impulse to change because some of their variations limit the negative impact of poor electoral performance, as the defeated parties retain access to public offices. Naturally, in such a case the pressure to depose a leader or modify the party’s leadership model altogether is far lower than in two-party systems. It is even conceivable that a leader who despite a poor election result manages to negotiate a better-than-expected presence in public offices for the party’s members will actually strengthen his or her position. Electoral defeat may not only lead to the change of a specific individual entrusted with party leadership, but also initiate or accelerate a revamp of the entire leadership model. For instance, previous studies have shown that political parties are more likely to implement leadership selection reforms—which obviously affect leaders’ position—when they are in opposition (Cross and Blais 2012). While moving into the opposition is not always a consequence of electoral defeat, it is often linked to it, one way or another. This is why we shall further discuss this matter in Chapter 5, dedicated to post-defeat organisational change.

3.3 Which Variables Are Relevant to Leadership Change After Electoral Defeat? As was mentioned above, in our sample of 73 parties, leadership change was the most frequent change occurring directly as a consequence of a defeat. In an expert survey, we have asked not only about whether a given party changed the leader, but also how much time elapsed between the defeat and the leadership change and what where the exact circumstances of the change. The latter aspect in particular required the attention of country experts—their knowledge was necessary to understand the process in question and avoid the pitfall of making an automatic connection between defeat and leadership change. Based on data collected through the expert survey, we have divided the analysed parties into three groups. The first one included formations

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which, despite experiencing a defeat, did not change their leaders (Table 3.1). The second one is made up of parties that replaced their leaders but did so through a standard procedure, by allowing the current leadership’s term of office to run its course (Table 3.2). The third group contains parties in which leadership changed early, directly as a consequence of defeat, with the leader either resigning or being deposed (Table 3.3). All parties listed in the tables are described in terms of: (1) status before election: 39 parties in opposition (Op) and 34 parties in office (Gov); (2) party profile: 21 Social Democratic or Socialist, 20 Christian Democratic, 9 Liberal, 8 Green, 7 Nationalist, 6 Radical left and 2 Conservative; (3) position on the left–right axis: 39 left wing or centre-left (L) and 34 right wing or centre-right (R); (4) region of party origin: 23 parties from Central-Eastern European countries (CEE) and 50 parties from Western European countries (WE); (5) total relevance change. The next step of our research was unstructured exploratory data analysis. We have sought to identify correlations between post-defeat leadership change or continuity and several variables that either characterise a political party or describe the scale of its defeat, as expressed in the decrease of total relevance. The total relevance index (TRI) consists of three sub-indexes: (1) electoral relevance index (ERI) calculated based on the decrease of votes garnered compared to the previous election; (2) parliamentary relevance index (PRI) dictated by the loss of mandates compared to the previous term of office; (3) governmental relevance index (GRI) expressing a party’s loss of ability to participate in government (the indexes are described in more detail in Chapter 2). As it turns out, none of the examined variables was significant for how a party reacted to a defeat in terms of its leadership. The three available options (retaining a leader; letting the leader’s term in office run its course and then electing someone else; accelerating leadership change) did not correlate with the party’s location on the left–right spectrum (Table 3.4), its status prior to the election (Table 3.5) or the region (Table 3.6). Only the geographical variable shows any notable (albeit still small) difference, with parties from CEE countries slightly more likely to replace their leadership after a defeat than formations operating in Western Europe. The difference may result from the fact that political parties in Central and Eastern Europe have had a relatively short existence on the political scene. Being rather elitist than mass parties, they are characterised by leaders and communication factors as the primary elements determining their election performance. Less petrified and inert structures

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Table 3.1 Parties that did not change their leadership after a defeat Country

Party

Status before election

Party profile

Left–right axis

Region

Total relevance change

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

BG BG BG CH CH CZ CZ

DPS BSP ATAKA GPS/PES BDP/PBD ˇ KSCM ˇ KDU-CSL

Op Op Op Gov Gov Op Gov

L L R L R L R

CEE CEE CEE WE WE CEE CEE

−0.11 −0.80 −0.08 −0.03 −0.02 −0.16 −0.53

8 9

CY CY

AKEL EDEK

Gov Op

L L

WE WE

−0.12 −0.06

10

CY

DISY

Op

R

WE

−0.07

11 12 13

DE DK EL

Die Linke SF PASOK

Op Op Gov

L L L

WE WE WE

−0.05 −0.06 −1.01

14

EL

ND

Gov

R

WE

−1.20

15

EL

To Potami

Op

L

WE

−0.04

16 17

ES ES

Ciudadanos PSOE

Op Gov

R L

WE WE

−0.03 −0.01

18

FI

SDP

Gov

L

WE

−0.57

19

FR

Gov

L

WE

−0.04

20

IT

EE-Les Verts Forza Italia

Liberal Socialist Nationalist Green Conservative Radical left Christian Democratic Radical left Social Democratic Christian Democratic Radical left Radical left Social Democratic Christian Democratic Social Democratic Liberal Social Democratic Social Democratic Green

R

WE

−1.44

21

IT

UDC

Op

R

WE

−0.08

22

LV

SSP

Op

L

CEE

−0.12

23 24

LV NL

ZZS PvdA

Gov Gov

Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Social Democratic Nationalist Social Democratic

R L

CEE WE

−0.66 −0.88

Gov

(continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Country

Party

Status before election

Party profile

Left–right axis

Region

Total relevance change

25

NO

Ap

Op

L

WE

−0.07

26

NO

KrF

Op

R

WE

−0.03

27 28

PL PT

PiS PSD

Op Gov

R R

CEE WE

−0.04 −1.08

29 30

SE UK

FP SNP

Gov Op

Social Democratic Christian Democratic Conservative Christian Democratic Liberal Social Democratic

R L

WE WE

−0.53 −0.05

Source Own elaboration, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Table 3.2 Parties that changed their leadership through a standard procedure Country

Party

Status before election

Party profile

Left–right axis

Region

Total relevance change

1 2

BE CZ

Sp.a TOP 09

Gov Op

L R

WE CEE

−0.59 −0.11

3 4 5

DE FI FI

Die Grüne Vas KD

Op Op Gov

L L R

WE WE WE

−0.02 −0.52 −0.51

6

HR

HL

Op

L

CEE

−0.04

7 8

IT PT

LN CDS/PP

Op Gov

Socialist Christian Democratic Green Radical left Christian Democratic Social Democratic Nationalist Christian Democratic

R R

WE WE

−0.61 −0.57

Source Own elaboration, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

allow these organisations to be more flexible and willing to make changes after a shock of poor result (Pacze´sniak et al. 2020, 66–67). However, our search for possible connections between electoral defeat and leadership change was not entirely in vain. First of all, we have observed that the bigger decrease in total relevance, the more likely a

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Table 3.3 Parties that changed their leadership directly after a defeat Country

Party

Status before election

Party profile

Left–right axis

Region

Total relevance change

1 2

AT AT

GRÜNE SPÖ

Op Gov

L L

WE WE

−0.22 −0.50

3 4 5 6

BE BE BE CH

VB PS Ecolo CVP/PDC

Op Gov Op Gov

R L L R

WE WE WE WE

−0.10 −0.54 −0.03 −0.01

7 8

CH CZ

GLP/ PVL ˇ CSSD

Gov Gov

R L

WE CEE

−0.03 −0.81

9 10 11 12

DE EE EE EL

FDP EER ERL DIMAR

Gov Op Op Gov

R L R L

WE CEE CEE WE

−0.73 −0.09 −0.11 −0.11

13

FR

LR

Op

R

WE

−0.18

14 15

FR HR

PS SDP

Gov Op

L L

WE CEE

−1.67 −0.01

16 17

HU IE

LMP Lab

Op Gov

L L

CEE WE

−0.08 −0.18

18 19 20 21 22

IE IE LT LT MT

Green Fianna Fail DP TT PN

Gov Gov Gov Gov Gov

L R L R R

WE WE CEE CEE WE

−0.57 −1.59 −0.84 −0.54 −1.14

23 24

NL PL

SP PO

Op Gov

L R

WE CEE

−0.01 −1.30

25

PL

PSL

Gov

R

CEE

−0.56

26

PL

SLD

Op

Green Social Democratic Nationalist Socialist Green Christian Democratic Liberal Social Democratic Liberal Green Nationalist Social Democratic Christian Democratic Socialist Social Democratic Green Social Democratic Green Liberal Liberal Nationalist Christian Democratic Radical left Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Social Democratic

L

CEE

−0.07

(continued)

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Table 3.3 (continued) Country

Party

Status before election

Party profile

Left–right axis

Region

Total relevance change

27

RO

PNL

Op

R

CEE

−0.98

28

SE

M

Op

R

WE

−1.16

29 30

SE SE

C KD

Gov Gov

L R

WE WE

−1.10 −0.52

31

SK

KDH

Op

R

CEE

−0.14

32

SK

SDKÚ-DS

Op

R

CEE

−0.13

33 34

UK UK

Lib Dem Labour

Gov Op

L L

WE WE

−0.58 −0.03

35

UK

UKIP

Op

Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Liberal Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Liberal Social Democratic Nationalist

R

WE

−0.03

Source Own elaboration, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Table 3.4 Leadership change in left-wing and centre-left vs right-wing and centre-right parties ER change

PR change

Left-wing parties −0.062 −0.073 Right-wing parties −0.059 −0.071

GR change

TR change

Leadership change

−0.229

−0.340

1.00

−0.414

−0.499

1.03

Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Table 3.5 Leadership change in opposition vs governing parties ER change

PR change

Opposition parties −0.035 −0.046 Governmental parties −0.094 −0.108

GR change

TR change

Leadership change

0.000

−0.081

1.03

−0.621

−0.823

1.09

Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

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Table 3.6 Leadership change in parties from WE vs those from CEE ER change

PR change

GR change

Western European countries −0.057 −0.071 −0.360 Central and Eastern European countries −0.069 −0.075 −0.217

TR change

Leadership change

−0.438

0.92

−0.362

1.22

Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Table 3.7 Leadership change and the change in electoral, parliamentary and governmental relevance Leadership change

ER change

PR change

GR change

TR change

No change Change through regular procedure Accelerated change

−0.043 −0.045 −0.084

−0.074 −0.041 −0.082

−0.28 −0.33 −0.33

−0.35 −0.42 −0.48

Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

party is to replace its leader—in other words, the scale of defeat enhances the impulse to change. Secondly, when one breaks total relevance into its sub-indexes, it appears that the accelerated leadership change occurs significantly more often if a party experiences higher decrease in electoral relevance (as expressed by a lower number of votes garnered compared to the previous election) than if the decrease is more pronounced in parliamentary or governmental relevance (Table 3.7). In our opinion, these results confirm the importance usually attached to the leader’s contribution to the party’s electoral performance. A success strengthens the leadership and contributes to its continuity—a fact which, although not addressed further in our research, has been confirmed by other studies, quoted earlier in this chapter. Conversely, in case of a defeat, leaders are seen as the primarily responsible figures and the ones who should face the political consequences. In many of the parties we examined, the accelerated leadership change was prompted by leaders themselves, as they resigned from their posts. This suggests that personalising responsibility was internalised as a norm. Leaders’ decision to accept personal responsibility seems to be a logical step, given

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the increasing personalisation of campaigns, but at the same time allows parties to act decisively and implement quick changes which may indicate responsiveness to external stimuli and voters’ expectations.

3.4 Party Leadership in Election-Losing Parties from Belgium, the UK and Poland Analysing data on several dozens of parties across many European states, with their diverse party systems, political cultures and traditions, may seem like a good starting point for formulating certain generalisations. However, such a broad approach inevitably glosses over the precise context and specificity of every single case, which cannot be shown within the format of overall tables. An in-depth examination of external and internal determinants for each of the 73 parties was simply beyond the processing capacity of this research team and, even if it was possible, it might prove a tedious read. This is why we have opted to focus our attention on 12 parties from three selected countries (Belgium, the UK and Poland), analysing in detail post-defeat developments in those formations. Our effort has demonstrated the limitations inherent in standardising variables, which is a necessary step for conducting comparative research at the international level. In all four examined Belgian parties, leadership change occurred soon after an electoral defeat. In three of them (Parti Socialiste, Vlaams Belang and Ecolo), the leaders were replaced before their terms of office ran their course. Only in Socialistische partij.anders (Sp.a) did the leader last until the end of the term. As a result of the 2014 election, Parti Socialiste lost three seats in the Chamber of Representatives and moved into the opposition after spending three years in government, as part of a coalition cabinet headed by a socialist prime minister, Elio Di Rupo. As it happened, parliamentary elections coincided with European and regional election. In the latter, PS confirmed its position as the largest political formation in Wallonia and the French-speaking Brussels. Its continued strength at the regional level was the main point raised by party members who participated in individual in-depth interviews (IDIs) we conducted. While PS politicians did not hide away from the result of the parliamentary election, they explained that the party’s continued firm grip on power in Wallonia and Brussels meant the entire electoral season was not seen as a defeat, neither by PS

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membership base, not the general public. Regardless of such interpretations, two months after the election the leadership of the party changed hands. After 18 months at the head of PS, Paul Magnette resigned from his post and was replaced by the returning Elio Di Rupo, who had previously stepped down as PS Chairman upon being appointed the Prime Minister in 2011. After Di Rupo had chosen to focus on running the cabinet, PS was led first by Thierry Giet (2011–2013) and, subsequently, from January 2013, by Magnette. After the 2014 election, Magnette moved on to become the Minister-President of the Walloon Government, while Di Rupo, no longer burdened with cabinet duties, returned to head PS. This sequence of events suggests that leadership change was hardly meant as a way to enforce a leader’s accountability. It is worth noting that after the next federal election, in 2019 (not examined in this book), PS lost further three mandates in the Chamber of Representatives, yet regained the status of a co-governing party. In October of that year, Di Rupo, after an altogether long career as PS Chairman, handed the reins over to… Paul Magnette. Hence, if one feels compelled to still seek connections between unsatisfactory election results and leadership change, it must be said that such connection was far more pronounced in 2019 than in 2014. Of all parties competing in the 2014 federal election, Vlaams Belang was the one to suffer the heaviest losses. Its presence in the Chamber of Representatives shrank from 12 to just three seats. The party’s members of parliament (MPs) and leadership with whom we spoke during IDIs had no doubt the result should be interpreted as a defeat—not only at the federal, but also at the European and regional level. The day after the triple election, after an emergency meeting of the party’s Council, Gerolf Annemans, who had headed Vlaams Belans from December 2012 onwards, announced an early election of a new chairman would be held in October 2014. In his IDI, Annemans told us that when he took over the leading role in the party from Bruno Valkeniers in 2012, VB was going through a deep internal crisis sparked by a defeat in a regional election and he willingly chose to act as a crisis manager. As it turned out, the only candidate to run in the October 2014 contest was 27-year-old Tom Van Grieken, who received 93% of all votes cast by congress attendees. Ecolo was another formation that suffered a heavy defeat in May 2014, although in the federal election—the one we focused on in our research— the party fared better than in the other two contests. All in all, Ecolo lost one-third of its electorate compared to 2010. This translated into

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dropping one of two seats in the European Parliament, two out of eight mandates in the federal Chamber of Representatives, nine out of 14 seats in the Parliament of Wallonia and eight out of 16 mandates in the parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region. Emily Hoyos and Olivier Deleuze, who co-led Ecolo at the time of the election, announced in its aftermath that new leadership would be elected in the Spring of 2015, one year before the end of their term of office. They declared they would not run for re-election. They delivered on the promise and in March 2015, Ecolo chose Zakia Khattabi and Patrick Dupriez as its new co-leaders. For Socialistische partij.anders (Sp.a; in 2021 renamed to Vooruit), the 2014 election was not as damaging as for VB or Ecolo. The formation garnered only just under 7,500 votes less than four years before. However, the outcome of cabinet-forming negotiations forced it to move into the opposition. A simplified explanation for that, fascinating complexities of coalition-forming in Belgium notwithstanding, is that Sp.a lost its status of a co-governing party not because of its electoral performance, but because it followed its stronger Francophone counterpart, Parti Socialiste. Given such circumstances, it might seem that the outcome of the election itself should not threaten the position of Sp.a’s leader, Bruno Tobback, appointed to his post in 2011 by as much as 96.6% of party members’ votes. Yet, his four-year term of office did not see the expected upturn in the Flemish socialists’ fortunes. As a consequence, in June 2015 Tobback lost the contest for leadership with John Crombez. Three out of four examined British parties (Labour and Liberal Democrats in 2015, UKIP in 2017) made an accelerated leadership change after experiencing electoral defeat. The one remaining party, SNP, retained its leader after the 2017 election. The post-defeat situation of the Labour Party was somewhat unusual. The formation did not lose support compared to 2010. In fact, it actually won almost 700,000 votes more. Despite that, its representation in the House of Commons shrank by 26 mandates—a fact that confined Labour to a few more years in the opposition. Immediately after election results were announced, the party’s leader, Ed Miliband, stepped down. Harriet Harman took over in an interim role until the leadership election could be organised. In the Autumn of 2015, Labour members as well as registered and affiliated supporters chose Jeremy Corbyn as the new leader by a hefty margin in four-way contest. For Liberal Democrats, the 2015 election was a dismal failure. The party lost not only as many as 49 mandates in the House of Commons,

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but also a large part of its electorate: compared to 2010, it garnered almost 4.5 million votes less. The day after the election, its leader Nick Clegg resigned, even though he, as opposed to many other prominent party figures, managed to get re-elected as an MP. LibDem held a leadership election in July 2015, with Tim Farron beating a single rival for the post. The third British party to replace its leader after an electoral defeat was UKIP. In 2017, UKIP recorded both a decrease in the number of votes garnered (compared to the previous election) and a loss of mandates in the House of Commons. Immediately after the election, Paul Nuttal, having spent only six months as the party’s leader, stepped down. Interim leadership was handed over to Steve Crowther, who from 2010 to 2016 had acted as UKIP Chairman.1 The leadership election of 2017 saw as many as six candidates vying for the top role, with Henry Bolton emerging as the winner. However, he was removed after an Extraordinary General Meeting vote by the party membership only a few months later, in February 2018. Bolton’s departure triggered UKIP’s fourth leadership election in eighteen months, scheduled for April of that year. Gerard Batten, who was announced as an interim leader after Bolton’s removal, was then elected unopposed to fill the post on a permanent basis. This, however, proved not to be the end of leadership turmoil amid the party’s continuing decline—a fact that clearly shows the long-term nature of consequences stemming from the defeat. The genesis of UKIP’s trouble is often sought in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s future in the EU. The last British party to be analysed was the Scottish National Party (SNP). In the 2017 election, SNP recorded over 450,000 votes less than in the previous contest. It retained only 35 out of 56 mandates it had held in the House of Commons. In this particular case, however, such numbers are not necessarily indicative of a heavy defeat. The 2015 election was a historic success for the Scottish nationalists and hardly anybody expected it to be repeated. Therefore, after a less impressive showing in 2017, there was no pressure on their leader—Nicola Sturgeon to resign. She took over SNP leadership in 2014, after the closely fought referendum on Scottish

1 In many parties, the terms “leader” and “chairperson” are practically synonymous— being elected a chairperson is a sign of holding leadership. However, in the case of UKIP, the two functions are actually separate. The chairperson is responsible for the administrative side of operations and its organisational growth, while also leading the work of various partisan bodies, including the National Executive Committee.

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independence. Three years later, her position was not in danger also due to the fact that after the Scottish election in May 2016, SNP confirmed its status on the country’s political scene by retaining the role of a governing party, with Sturgeon as the First Minister of Scotland. As for Polish political parties, one of them retained its leader after an electoral defeat (PiS after the 2011 election), while the other three accelerated leadership change (PO, PSL and SLD after 2015). In the 2011 parliamentary election, PiS garnered almost 900,000 votes less than four years before, losing nine mandates but remaining the largest opposition party. The result did not lead to any serious internal debate over a potential change of leadership—ever since 2003, PiS has been led by its co-founder, Jarosław Kaczynski. ´ Officially, the party stood firmly behind its leader, although there were some voices decrying the deficit of intra-party democracy—a criticism indirectly aimed at Kaczynski. ´ Within less than a month, PiS leadership unceremoniously dealt with internal dissent, expelling those MPs who publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the way the party was managed. The next parliamentary election, held in 2015, brought a change in power. PO and PSL—two formations that had up until then governed for two full terms of office—were relegated to the opposition. In both parties, the defeat triggered a change of leadership. In PO, the period of change actually began before the 2015 election. In 2014, its long-standing leader, Donald Tusk, was appointed the President of the European Council and to focus on his new, high-profile post, relinquished his role in the party. With the 2015 election fast approaching, leadership duties were handed over to Ewa Kopacz, who tried to use this opportunity to establish herself as a leader in her own right rather than just an interim figure anointed by Tusk, with the view to securing a permanent leadership role after the 2018, 160). After the debacle of the parliamentary election (Jacunski ´ 2015 contest, Kopacz still declared her intention to run for PO chairmanship. However, she withdrew from the race just a month later, when she was not elected as the head of PO’s parliamentary caucus. Three other candidates competed for leadership, but two of them also withdrew by the end of the year. Ultimately, the election of the chairman saw only 52% of eligible PO members cast their votes, with Grzegorz Schetyna securing 91% of those. The second party to lose votes, mandates and the presence in government in 2015 was PSL, PO’s junior coalition partner. In fact, the party recorded its worst-ever result. Its leader, Janusz Piechocinski, ´ performed

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just as poorly as the entire formation, garnering only 8005 votes among his constituents. Although his term of office had one more year to run, he stepped down right after the election. The Party’s Supreme Council accepted his resignation and appointed Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz as his interim successor. One year later, in 2016, the choice was confirmed and made permanent by the party’s general congress. A heavy defeat of the United Left coalition, led by SLD, spelled the departure of the party’s leader, Leszek Miller. Formally, Miller announced he would not run for re-election even before the parliamentary election which, as it turned out, would see SLD lose parliamentary representation altogether. He communicated his decision to the party’s National Council after the presidential election, held a few months before the parliamentary contest, in which the candidate he had endorsed won merely 2.38% of the votes. Once Miller, who had led SLD from 1999 to 2004 and again from 2011 to 2016, stepped down, a record number of ten candidates competed to succeed him. With none of them securing the 50% of votes necessary to win in the first round, Włodzimierz Czarzasty emerged victorious from the second round. The size of the sample subjected to qualitative analysis allowed us also to verify whether the change or continuity of leadership after a defeat depends on the leader’s power resources and autonomy. Leaders differ in the freedom of choice they enjoy: in some parties, they effectively determine candidate selection, the shape of agenda and the catalogue of goals, while in others they have to deal with internal veto players such as rankand-file members, mid-level activists or congress delegates who limit the scope of their power (Panebianco 1988, 163). Such discrepancies stem from two types of factors: (1) different statutory regulations and informal practices within parties; (2) personal traits of a specific person put in position of leadership as well as the situational context of that leadership. At one end of the spectrum, we find parties built around the leader’s authority (leader-oriented parties), while the other end is occupied by parties with depersonalised leadership, in which the role of the leader is restricted to coordinating the work of central organs or representing the formation outside (Pacze´sniak and Wincławska 2018, 96). Researcher’s intuition suggests that the type of leadership may be a relevant factor that should be considered when interpreting the stability of leadership in a post-defeat period. The examined parties from Belgium, the United Kingdom and Poland showed three different reactions to an electoral defeat. Nine of them went

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through an accelerated change of leadership. In one party, the leader remained in office until the end of the term and was not re-elected. The remaining two parties retained their leaders. Are parties that reacted in the same manner similar in terms of their leaders’ position and scope of power? The answer is somewhat unequivocal. The most leader-oriented formations in our sample group are PiS, Vlaams Belans and UKIP. While PiS did not change its leader, the other two parties did so shortly after their defeats, accelerating their election procedures. PiS’ organisational practice, including decision-making processes and accountability mechanisms, relies strongly on Jarosław Kaczynski ´ and his absolutist leadership style. Kaczynski ´ derives much of his strength from his vast personal capacity to control, veto and sanction party members and activists (Pytlas 2021, 343, 347). According to PiS statute, the Chairperson is the highest executive authority with the right to designate candidates for parliamentary positions, coordinate socio-political activities of the party and organise the work in central office as well as parliamentary caucus, both at the national and European level (even if other politicians are formally caucus leaders). All vital bodies of the party—the Political Committee which runs everyday operations and the Council which is the highest legislative authority—are led by the Chairperson. In “urgent matters”, the leader can single-handedly make a decision pertaining to their competences, subject to validation at the ´ subsequent session of the body in question (Tomczak 2015). Kaczynski has personal control over nominations and dismissals of regional and local leadership. He can also create, suspend or disband regional PiS structures altogether. PiS was also the only Polish party in which the last four leadership elections took place without even a pro forma competi´ position within PiS tion (Pacze´sniak and Wincławska 2018). Kaczynski’s structure means dethroning him would effectively require a coup d’état— otherwise leadership could only change hands with his own consent. The case of PiS seems to suggest that a party with a strongly personalised leadership does not replace its leader after a decline in electoral performance. However, the developments in Vlaams Belang and UKIP—two other parties with a charismatic, dominant leader (Gunther and Diamond 2003)—paint a different picture. As Wolkenstein (2015) wrote, “research suggests that right-wing populist parties tend to be most successful when they are organised in a strict top-down fashion, with the leader exercising firm control over the party”. VB is a strongly hierarchical formation, where

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leadership selection is hardly competitive—there is usually a single candidate who wins over 90% of votes. This means the leader is the party’s central figure and major asset. The strongly personalised 2019 campaign exemplified this pattern, as it drew voters’ attention primarily to the leader and left almost no room for other candidates (Lefevere et al. 2020). UKIP constitutes a similar case: the leader has a decisive role in determining the formation’s agenda, policies and communication strategies. For many years UKIP was perceived through its charismatic leaders. This changed dramatically after the UK’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, as Nigel Farage stepped down in the aftermath of the country’s decision to leave the Union. Since that point, UKIP has gone through as many as ten different leaders (as of January 2022). Both VB and UKIP changed leadership after defeats in parliamentary elections. Both parties lost huge numbers of voters—a fact that, given the highly personalised character of their campaigns, signalled their leaders no longer had the potential to mobilise the electorate. Hence, the only logical course of action was to replace them. While the three parties were similar in terms of a strong position of their respective leaders, they differed with regard to the scale of their defeats. While PiS interpreted its 2011 result as a defeat—as shown by the party members’ narrative discussed in Chapter 7—it attributed it primarily to external factors rather than the failures of its leader. Furthermore, PiS’ losses were incomparable to those suffered by Vlaams Belang and UKIP. This leads to a conclusion that if a poor result can be explained by non-personal factors, not associated with the leader, it does not lead to leadership change, as the cost of such operation would be too high for a leader-oriented formation. However, if the leader, being the party’s main asset, cannot prevent a sudden, heavy loss of support, the party will move to change leadership in search for political survival—regardless of whether there were other factors contributing to the defeat. Our research sample also included political parties such as PSL, SLD (Poland), LibDem (UK) and Ecolo (Belgium), in which leaders are structurally much weaker and their power is limited by collegial bodies acting as veto players. Perhaps calling that model “depersonalised leadership” would be an exaggeration, given that these formations are not immune to the current trends towards personalisation of politics, mentioned in the introduction to this chapter. Nevertheless, they clearly differ from leader-oriented parties. In the case of Ecolo, one of its most distinguishing features is the fact that ever since its formation, the party has always had

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co-leaders, rather than a single person holding the highest position. As explained by Wavreille and Pilet (2013), Ecolo started with a team of between 5 and 8 secretaries-general, elected individually. Then, in 1994, it shifted to a joint election of a team of 3 secretaries-general. Finally, in 2007, it introduced a two-person leadership, with gender (one man and one woman) and region (one person from Brussels and the other from Wallonia) parity. Compared to other Belgian parties, Ecolo tends to have more competitive leadership contests, usually with at least two candidates (Wauters and Pilet 2013). The two Co-Presidents are elected by the General Assembly for a four-year term. They form a Federal Secretariat controlled by the party’s internal parliament. Leaders’ decision-making autonomy is quite limited—instead, they are responsible for daily operations and representing the party. Key decisions are made by collegial bodies. All examined parties in which the leaders’ autonomy is formally limited by extensive competences of collegial bodies experienced an accelerated change of leadership in the aftermath of a defeat. It is worth noting, that in all these cases leaders resigned from their posts and opted not to run for re-election. Their decisions unquestionably limited the need for internal debate over their personal responsibility for the party’s unsatisfactory performance. Thus, the formations in question were free to move on and focus on changes in other areas—programme, communication, structure—to be discussed in further chapters.

3.5

Conclusion

The analysis of post-defeat developments with regard to the continuity of party leadership leads to several conclusions. First of all, the sole fact of suffering a defeat is not enough to push a party towards a swift leadership change. Admittedly, replacing a leader (either through a normally scheduled procedure or in an accelerated manner) is the most common change in parties that record a decline in electoral performance—it is made by more than half of all parties we examined. However, 30 out of 73 parties retained their leadership. Quantitative data does not account for the specific context of each case, but one can speculate as to the reasons behind such a decision. Parties that lost their status as (co-) governing formations but recorded only a slight decline in votes garnered tended not to blame their leaders. Hence, they allowed them to continue in the role and tasked them with reforming their agendas, structures and/or

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strategies. In doing so, they avoided the internal turmoil which inevitably accompanies leadership change. Is some cases, the lack of change simply reflected the fact there were no pretenders whom the party structures electing the leader found acceptable. Secondly, we have not conclusively identified any statistically significant variables that would link electoral defeat with leadership change. Neither the party’s pre-election status, nor its position on the left–right spectrum, geographical region, nor even the scale of the defeat seem to warrant any clear conclusions. The only interesting correlation referred to electoral relevance which, compared to parliamentary and government relevance, more frequently led to leadership change. Thirdly, the qualitative analysis of 12 parties from Belgium, the United Kingdom and Poland proved that the context matters. Its importance lies not only in the shape of the party system—an element that we considered relevant right from the beginning of our work and which drove us to focus on formations functioning in three different systems. The context of internal circumstances and factors affects how election results are interpreted. This, in turn, drives decisions regarding the future of the party leadership.

References Aarts, K., A. Blais, and H. Schmitt, eds. 2011. Political Leaders and Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Andrews, J.T., and R.T. Jackman. 2008. If Winning Isn’t Everything, Why Do They Keep Score? Consequences of Electoral Performance for Party Leaders. British Journal of Political Science 38 (4): 657–675. Barisione, M. 2009. So, What Difference do Leaders Make? Candidates’ Images and the “Conditionality” of Leader Effects on Voting. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 19 (4): 473–500. Bittner, A. 2011. Platform or Personality?: The Role of Party Leaders in Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bynander, F., and P. ‘t Hart. 2007. The Politics of Party Leader Survival and Succession: Australia in Comparative Perspective. Australian Journal of Political Science 42 (1): 47–72. Cross, W.P., and A. Blais. 2012. Retirements, Resignations, and Removals. In Politics at the Centre: The Selection and Removal of Party Leaders in the Anglo Parliamentary Democracies, ed. W.P. Cross and A. Blais. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Cross, W., and J.-B. Pilet, eds. 2015. The Politics of Party Leadership. A CrossNational Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ennser-Jedenastik, L., and W.C. Müller. 2015. Intra-Party Democracy, Political Performance and the Survival of Party Leaders: Austria, 1945–2011. Party Politics 21 (6): 930–943. Ennser-Jedenastik, L., and G. Schumacher. 2015. Why Some Leaders Die Hard (and Others Don’t). Party Goals, Party Institutions, and How They Interact. In The Politics of Party Leadership: A Cross-National Perspective, ed. W. Cross and J.-B. Pilet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foley, M. 2013. Political Leadership: Themes, Contexts, and Critiques. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garzia, D. 2012. Party and Leader Effects in Parliamentary Elections: Towards a Reassessment. Politics 32 (3): 175–185. Garzia, D., and A. De Angelis. 2016. Partisanship, Leader Evaluations, and the Vote: Disentangling the New Iron Triangle in Electoral Research. Comparative European Politics 14: 604–625. Gauja, A. 2017. Party Reform: The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences of Organizational Change. Oxford University Press. Gunther, R., and L. Diamond. 2003. Species of Political Parties: A New Typology. Party Politics 9 (2): 167–199. Hayes, B.C., and I. McAllister. 1997. Gender, Party Leaders and Election Outcomes in Australia, Britain and the United States. Comparative Political Studies 30 (1): 3–26. Horiuchi, Y., M. Laing, and P. ‘t Hart. 2015. Hard Acts to Follow: Predecessor Effects on Party Leader Survival. Party Politics 21 (3): 357–366. Jacunski, ´ M. 2018. Platforma Obywatelska po przegranych wyborach parlamentarnych 2015 – opozycja czy dekompozycja? In Anatomia porazki ˙ wyborczej, ed. A. Pacze´sniak. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe. Karvonen, L. 2010. The Personalization of Politics: A Study of Parliamentary Democracies. ECPR Press. Kefforf, G., and D. McDonnell. 2018. Inside the Personal Party: Leader-Owners, Light Organizations and Limited Lifespans. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20 (2): 379–394. Lefevere, J., P. Aelst, and J. Peeters. 2020. Campaigning Online and Offline: Different Ballgames? Politics of the Low Countries 2 (Online First). Mazur, M. 2017. Od reprezentanta partii do dominanty wizerunku marki partii – przegl˛ad typów personalizacji strategicznej w polskich kampaniach parlamentarnych. Studia Politologiczne 45: 71–90. Müller, W.C., and K. Strøm, eds. 1999. Policy, Office, or Votes? How Political Parties in Western Democracies Make Hard Decisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Pacze´sniak, A., and M. Wincławska. 2018. Leadership in Polish Political Parties. e-Politicon 28: 92–114. Pacze´sniak, A., M. Bachryj-Krzywa´znia, and M. Kaczorowska. 2020. Electoral Defeat and Party Change: When Do Parties Adapt? Political Preferences 27: 63–78. Panebianco, A. 1988. Political Parties: Organization and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pytlas, B. 2021. Party Organisation of PiS in Poland: Between Electoral Rhetoric and Absolutist Practice. Politics and Governance 9 (4): 340–353. Renwick, A., and J.-B. Pilet. 2015. Faces on the Ballot: The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schumacher, G., and N. Giger. 2018. Do Leadership-Dominated Parties Change More? Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 28 (3): 349–360. Tomczak, Ł. 2015. Czy polskie partie s˛a demokratyczne? Athenaeum Polskie Studia Politologiczne 47 (3): 84–97. Walgrave, S., and M. Nuytemans. 2009. Friction and Party Manifesto Change in 25 Countries, 1945–98. American Journal of Political Science 53 (1): 190– 206. Wauters, B., and J.-B. Pilet. 2013. The Selection of Party Leaders in Belgium. In The Selection of Party Leaders in Parliamentary Democracies, ed. J.-B. Pilet and W. Cross. London: Routledge. Wavreille, M.-C., and J.-B. Pilet. 2013. The Greens in Belgium: An analysis of Ecolo and Groen. Conference Green Parties in Europe: A Comparative Perspective, Brussels. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260826 722_The_Greens_in_Belgium_An_analysis_of_Ecolo_and_Groen. Accessed January 16, 2022. Wolkenstein, F. 2015. UKIP’s Future Hangs on the Strength of Its Leadership, Not Its Internal Democracy. British Politics and Policy a LSE (20 May 2015). http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/72887/1/blogs.lse.ac.uk-UKIPs%20future% 20hangs%20on%20the%20strength%20of%20its%20leadership%20not%20its% 20internal%20democracy.pdf. Accessed January 10, 2022.

CHAPTER 4

The Bigger Wound the Smaller Bandage—Revisions of the Programme Discourse

4.1

Introduction

The model presented in Chapter 2 envisions two types of possible postdefeat party change. The first kind is unintended change—one that is not initiated by the party itself but instead occurs spontaneously. Even though it is unplanned, parties may still attempt to react to and manage it in order to reduce its unwanted consequences. The second type is intentional change, purposefully undertaken by political formations as a panacea to external and internal processes that threaten their ability to exercise their key functions in the aftermath of a defeat. One area in which such changes may be designed refers to parties’ programmes and agendas. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the scope and extent to which parties alter their programmes in response to electoral defeats. It is still not entirely clear what exactly induces parties to change their positions (Zohlnhöfer and Bandau 2020, 502). On the one hand, Gauja (2017, 50) argues that the pursuit of votes is one of the strongest stimuli that push parties to reform, including when it comes to political agendas. On the other hand, some studies have shown certain inertia and reluctance to alter programmes among parties which suffered a defeat at the polls (Norris and Lovenduski 2004). According to Budge et al. (2010, 793), parties’ policy positions are expected to change only to a very limited degree because parties essentially remain faithful to their basic ideology. According to this account, changes in a policy position, if they © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Pacze´sniak et al., Electoral Defeat and Party Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0_4

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occur at all, are the results of intra-party competition between factions representing various ideological strands, rather than external pressure in the form of low support among voters. Some researchers claim that parties do not adjust in response to electoral results, but rather react to public opinion (Adams et al. 2004). Meanwhile, others prove the opposite and put more emphasis on previous election results or a party’s exclusion from government, arguing that if a party has lost votes or governmental presence, it is likely to change its position before the next election (Somer-Topcu 2009; Van Der Velden et al. 2017). Some research shows that programme changes are adopted more likely by governig formations (Schumacher et al. 2015). Other studies lead to different conclusions, noting more significant reforms in parties that operated in the opposition (Bendor 2010). Given such a disparity in outcomes, the subject seems worthy of continued exploration and search for possible patterns. It should be noted that we adopted a two-pronged mark of defeat: a decreased voter support, combined with the fact of either remaining in or moving into the parliamentary opposition as a result of an election. The chapter opens with an overview of our findings regarding the links between programme change and several variables derived from the characteristics of the in question party and its environment. Then, we present data that illustrates dependencies between the depth of programme reform and the scale of an electoral defeat, as measured by the loss of relevance. The same theme continues into the third section, where we move on to seek potential patterns emerging in three different types of party systems. The chapter ends with a summary of conclusions from the presented data and the observed patterns.

4.2

Electoral Defeat and Programme Change

According to the seminal, frequently cited concept developed by Downs (1957), electoral competition presses political parties to continuously adjust their programmes in pursuit of maximising support. Downs’ model sees parties shift towards the centre of the ideological spectrum, where they expect to find the greatest number of potential voters. If one follows this logic, a party that loses votes in an election (compared to its earlier performance) should change its programme to appeal to the centrist electorate, as this is the surest way to remedy the decline. However, research on the evolution of party programmes shows the process is, in fact, far

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more complex and influenced by a myriad of variables. Empirical studies prove that the direction of evolution is not always consistent with Downs’ prediction. One of the themes in the analysis of programme changes is the role played by the leadership and members in shaping a party’s agenda and policies. This, in turn, is related to the type of organisation and its decision-making model. Typically, more leeway for the leadership translates into a broader scope of changes made after an electoral defeat. Conversely, in parties where leaders’ autonomy is more significantly curbed by the rank-and-file members, the evolution tends to be less pronounced (Hennl and Franzman 2017). Schumacher et al. (2013) present similar, albeit more nuanced, conclusions. They also point to the key role of the balance between the rank and file and the elites. However, they indicate the impulse for change goes through the prism of public opinion. Activist-dominated parties reform their programmes primarily in reaction to the evolving preferences of the voters and are less inclined to make changes while in the opposition. Meanwhile, in leadershipdominated formations, the agenda is shaped in response to mean voter position change, while the reforms implemented when in the opposition are more meaningful. Similar differences in reactions to changes in voters’ preferences are observed with regard to mainstream vs. niche parties. Whereas the former respond to the shifts within the entire electorate, the latter modify their programmes mostly in line with the trends among their core voter base (Adams et al. 2006; Ezrow et al. 2010). One additional factor that complicates the picture of dependencies between public opinion and programme changes is the competitive nature of the political environment in democratic countries. When adjusting their agendas, parties need to account for the behaviour of other political actors, which means the direction and exact content of change is significantly affected by analogous moves of their rivals (Adams and Somer-Topcu 2009). The point of departure for the analyses we refer to above is the assumption that programmes are changed in reaction to environmental incentives, i.e. the shift in voters’ preferences. Moreover, these studies consider the change from the perspective of expected electoral performance. This presents parties with a dilemma: implement reforms or maintain position to avoid risks inherent in any change? When talking about this exact problem, Somer-Topcu (2009) concludes that a victory at the polls solidifies a party’s programme, while a defeat encourages a change (although its incentivising impact wanes over time). A similar

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argument is presented by Margalit et al. (2021) who point out that parties are particularly likely to adjust their agendas in the wake of a defeat, albeit their research only encompassed governing parties. In principle, such findings are in line with a theoretical model proposed by Harmel and Janda (1994) which emphasises the importance of electoral performance. Nonetheless, readers should also be aware of the opposite notion, put forth and argued by other researchers. For instance, Adams et al. (2004) maintain that the most recent election result has no bearing on the possible changes to the programme and parties are generally reluctant to divert from their positions. If it does happen, change is spurred by the evolution of public opinion, but only when voters’ preferences begin to significantly move away from what the party offers. The above-mentioned studies show that parties try to react to environmental incentives in order to survive—this is generally consistent with the cybernetic model of post-defeat party change we adopted for our research. A review of existing literature also points to significant differences in the importance of several variables situated between the system (i.e. a party) and its environment. The scope, direction and content of change depend largely on intra-party factors, such as mass-organisational resources, decision-making process and sources of income (Meyer 2013). In summary, it should be noted that changes in parties’ programmes have so far been analysed in the context of very different variables, both internal (such as organisational structure) and external (trends in voters’ preferences, agendas of rival formations). Although some studies have led to similar conclusions, the impact of defeat on programme changes is an aspect in which findings have not been consistent. This supports Fagerholm’s (2016, 506) assertion that the subject warrants further examination. Our research position was defined by two elements. First of all, we wanted to verify whether in response to an environmental stimulus (i.e. a decrease in votes garnered in an election) parties seek adaptive measures, particularly programme adjustments. It should be noted that we looked not only at formations that ceded power as a result of their defeats, but also at those which had already been in the opposition prior to the election in question. In other words, our understanding of “electoral defeat” is broader than “the loss of government presence”. This is why we opted to apply the category of political relevance (see Chapter 2) and its fluctuation—it includes the level of support among voters and the number of parliamentary seats held, the decrease in which defines a defeat. This

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way, we could not only examine the impact of defeat on the programme, but also check if and how the strength of the stimulus corresponds to the depth of change. If one adopts relevance as the measuring stick, it becomes apparent that the impact of defeat is different for a party that loses its ability to govern than for one which had already been confined to the opposition and may have only lost a tiny fraction of its support. Since we are aware of how certain characteristics (e.g. ideological profile, organisational structure, decision-making model) may determine the way a party changes its programme, we consciously separate them as factors to be left outside the scope of our examination. This does not mean we consider them irrelevant to how parties react to external stimuli. It is merely an acknowledgement that our explanatory model constitutes a certain simplification of reality, as it does not account for a broad gamut of features which distinguish formations operating in various European political systems and make them into a very diverse, complex set of entities. Our goal was to focus on averaged values that connect the depth of programme change with the experience of a defeat. In other words, we attempt to show if and how a defeat affects party programme change in general, regardless of differences between specific organisations.

4.3 Measuring Party Change After Electoral Defeat: Datasets and Samples One aspect of prime importance to the above-stated objective is the choice of appropriate measurement methods. For the purpose of this chapter, we looked at two types of data collected from two different samples. The first dataset was obtained through expert surveys, which are a growth industry in political science, especially in terms of measuring party positions. The most developed example is the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Bakker et al. 2015). A basic problem of expert surveys—and one we are aware of—is the fact they measure expert perceptions of issue importance for political parties rather than the parties’ own prioritisation of issues (Green-Pedersen 2019, 43). Despite certain reservations, this method is considered a valuable technique in comparative research (Whitefield et al. 2007). Its use was further justified by the fact our research also encompassed post-defeat changes in several other aspects, all of which combine into the total party change index. Examining different areas called for one specific tool that would allow to aggregate and quantify collected data in a consistent manner. The data was used to analyse a

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large sample.1 The purpose of the measurement was to verify whether the scale of electoral defeat was reflected in the depth of programme change. The second dataset consisted of information about the content of parties’ campaign agendas, collected from the Manifesto Project Database (MARPOR). Party manifestos are the most widely used source when it comes to studying which issues attract the attention of political parties and become the focus of competition, with the comparative manifesto dataset serving as the primary source (Budge et al. 2001; Volkens et al. 2013). Party manifestos provide a direct measure of which issues each party prioritises at relatively frequent intervals—typically four years— and are usually readily available.2 Moreover, they represent priorities adopted by parties as unitary actors, rather than the sum of media appearances of individual politicians (Green-Pedersen 2019, 42). They also present researchers with certain challenges. As Green-Pedersen (2019, 44) points out, their drawback is the cross-national variation in the traditions of producing party manifestos. In some countries, such as the UK and Belgium, all formations customarily produce elaborate manifestos at the outset of each election campaign, whereas in others—for instance Poland—there is no such tradition. Nonetheless, identifying the appropriate documents is challenging in some countries (Hansen 2008). Furthermore, such alternative documents are typically shorter than fullyfledged manifestos—a fact which may affect the construction of a given party’s issue profile. There were two reasons behind our decision not to use data from MARPOR to analyse the entire large sample. The first one was the aforementioned need for identical measurement of various aspects of postdefeat changes. Secondly, MARPOR contains aggregate quantitative data on party programmes, but excludes the manifestos of those parties which

1 For the purpose of this chapter, out of the original sample of 73 parties we excluded four, for which the experts did not provide answers regarding programme changes. 2 As far as the large sample is concerned, four parties were excluded due to lack of data. The small sample left out two Walloon formations, Parti Socialiste and Ecolo— MARPOR does not contain information about their agendas from 2014 and 2019. Since both parties devised very elaborate manifestos, amounting to hundreds of pages each, we were not able to code that volume of information. MARPOR also had no information about SLD’s programme from 2015 and UKIP’s manifesto from 2019, since both these parties entirely lost their parliamentary presence as a result of the elections in question. In these two cases, our team coded the data according to the instruction available at the Manifesto Project’s website.

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have lost their parliamentary status. Language barrier made it impossible for a small research team, such as ours, to fill in such gaps by finding, translating and coding all manifestos not covered in MARPOR. Their exclusion would necessarily lower the number of items in our sample. Hence, we opted to only use MARPOR information to analyse the parties included in the smaller sample, representing three different party systems (Polish, Belgian and British). Both samples contain formations that, prior to their defeats, had (co-)governed and those which had already been in the opposition. Using two datasets collected in different manners and at different times means that for parties which appear in both samples, the values illustrating the depth of change may not be identical across the two measurements. For entities from the large sample, the moment of observation was when experts responded to the survey, while for those in the small sample, it was the release of the manifesto, i.e. the beginning of an election campaign. This is relevant because, as Walgrave and Nuytemans (2009) argue, changes in different parties occur at a different tempo and with varying dynamics, which means measuring them at different points of the electoral cycle may yield divergent results. Moreover, parties from various families differ in their flexibility with regard to the programme, while the type of the political system serves as another determinant. Having all this in mind and given the above-mentioned limitations inherent in MARPOR, we decided to apply different measurement methods for the two samples and not to mix data thus generated. The key question to be answered in the next pages of this chapter refers to the character of dependence between electoral defeat and programme change. Our hypothesis assumes there is a connection, although the unequivocal results of previous research by other scholars give it no specific direction.

4.4 Depth of Change and the Loss of Relevance as a Result of Defeat Based on data collected through expert surveys, we divided the examined parties into three categories. The first one encompassed formations which did not change their programmes in reaction to defeats, or did so only to a minimal extent, for instance by accentuating different points of their agendas. We labelled such change as superficial and assigned it the numerical value of “0”. The second group consists of parties which introduced new content to their agendas and/or abandoned some of the issues. Such

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change was described as moderate and assigned the value of “1”. Lastly, parties which modified their programmes so significantly as to notably shift on the left–right wing spectrum were put together into the “deep change” group, with the value of “2”. All categories were then compared with regard to the change in total relevance3 the parties recorded as a consequence of their defeats. Table 4.1 presents an overview of information about parties which, according to experts’ opinions, introduced only superficial modifications to their programmes. Since the group includes both parties which lost (co-)governing status and those which remained in the opposition, the brackets of relevance change within this group are fairly wide. Table 4.2 presents analogous data for the “moderate change” group which, as it turns out, is the least numerous of the three categories. Still, it also contains both parties that had previously (co-)governed and those which had remained in the opposition. Finally, Table 4.3 covers formations that underwent the most farreaching changes in the aftermath of their defeats. Here, also, both (co-) governing and opposition parties are present. The three tables reveal that moderate change is the least frequent course of events, with most parties opting for either superficial or deep changes in reaction to electoral defeats. Furthermore, all types of programme change were accompanied by a wide variety of relevance change. The “moderate change” groups recorded the lowest range of total relevance change index, with the difference between the lowest and the highest value at 1,08. For the “superficial” and the “deep” groups, the same values stand at 1,41 and 1,66, respectively. Such a significant margin should, however, come as no surprise, given that all groups include parties for which the defeat resulted in the loss of (co-)governing status and parties which had merely remained in the opposition. Our operationalisation of the electoral defeat concept (see Chapter 2 for a full explanation) necessarily means that (co-)governing parties record a higher loss of total relevance, as their defeat deprives them of an important resource—the presence in government. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of average values of relevance change with the depth of programme changes reveals an interesting trend. 3 See details in Chapter 2. Total relevance index (TRI) consists of three sub-indexes: electoral relevance index (ERI), parliamentary relevance index (PRI) and governmental relevance index (GRI).

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Table 4.1 Superficial programme changes after electoral defeat and relevance change Superficial change „0” Country

Party

Year of defeat

Belgium

VB Ecolo Ataka ˇ CSSD ˇ KSCM ˇ CSL TOP09 AKEL EDEK DISY FDP Die Linke EE-LV LP PdL/FI DB TT SSP ZZS PN SP PO PSL CDS-PP PNL M FP KD LP SNP

2014 2014 2014 2017 2017 2017 2017 2016 2016 2016 2013 2013 2017 2016 2013 2016 2016 2014 2011 2013 2017 2015 2015 2015 2016 2014 2014 2014 2015 2017

Bulgaria Czech Republic

Cyprus

Germany France Ireland Italy Lithuania Latvia Malta Netherlands Poland Portugal Romania Sweden

UK Average

ERI change

PRI change

GRI change

TRI change

−0.041 −0.015 −0.028 −0.139 −0.072 −0.010 −0.067 −0.070 −0.027 −0.036 −0.098 −0.033 −0.012 −0.128 −0.158 −0.151 −0.020 −0.054 −0.075 −0.059 −0.006 −0.151 −0.032 −0.039 −0.386 −0.095 −0.017 −0.010 0.014 −0.017 −0.068

−0.060 −0.013 −0.048 −0.175 −0.090 −0.020 −0.045 −0.054 −0.036 −0.036 −0.131 −0.017 −0.028 −0.055 −0.284 −0.192 −0.021 −0.070 −0.090 −0.085 −0.007 −0.150 −0.026 −0.026 −0.094 −0.066 −0.014 −0.014 −0.040 −0.032 −0.067

0.00 0.00 0.00 −0.50 0.00 −0.50 0.00 n/a n/a n/a −0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 −1.00 −0.50 −0.50 0.00 −0.50 −1.00 0.00 −1.00 −0.50 −0.50 −0.50 −1.00 −0.50 −0.50 0.00 0.00 −0.35

−0.10 −0.03 −0.08 −0.81 −0.16 −0.53 −0.11 −0.12 −0.06 −0.07 −0.73 −0.05 −0.04 −0.18 −1.44 −0.84 −0.54 −0.12 −0.66 −1.14 −0.01 −1.30 −0.56 −0.57 −0.98 −1.16 −0.53 −0.52 −0.03 −0.05 −0.45

n/a—not applicable in the cases of Switzerland (“magic formula”) and Cyprus (presidential system) Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

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Table 4.2 Moderate programme changes after electoral defeat and relevance change Moderate change „1” Country

Party

Year of defeat

Austria

Die Grünen SP GPS BDP EER SDP Vas LN UdC C LibDem

2017

−0.086

2014 2015 2015 2007 2015 2015 2013 2013 2014 2015

Belgium Switzerland Estonia Finland Italy Sweden United Kingdom Average

ERI change PRI change

GRI change

TRI change

−0.131

0.00

−0.22

−0.020 −0.013 −0.013 −0.033 −0.026 −0.010 −0.042 −0.038 −0.595 −0.005

−0.020 −0.020 −0.010 −0.059 −0.040 −0.010 −0.067 −0.045 −0.003 −0.075

−0.50 n/a n/a 0.00 −0.50 −0.50 −0.50 0.00 −0.50 −0.50

−0.54 −0.03 −0.02 −0.09 −0.57 −0.52 −0.61 −0.08 −1.10 −0.58

−0.080

−0.044

−0.33

−0.40

n/a—not applicable in the cases of Switzerland (‘magic formula’) and Cyprus (presidential system) Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

As shown in Table 4.4, parties that made superficial changes to their agendas recorded an average loss of total relevance of 0.45. For the “moderate change” group, the average loss stands at 0.40, while for the “deep change”, at 0.37. Paradoxically, formations which suffered the biggest losses as a consequence of their defeats were more inclined to limit themselves to superficial changes, while those losing the least were more likely to take more radical steps. This trend is even more pronounced if one juxtaposes relevance loss vis-à-vis programme change separately for parties that lost their (co-)governing status and those that remained in the opposition (see Table 4.5). For (co-)governing parties which, necessarily, recorded a much higher total relevance loss, the average value describing the depth of programme change stands at 0.88. Meanwhile, their rivals continuously confined to the opposition (and, therefore, experiencing much lower drop in relevance) recorded an average programme change of 1.08. This difference is particularly interesting in combination with the fact that both types of parties were present in all three groups corresponding to the depth of

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Table 4.3 Deep programme changes after electoral defeat and relevance change Deep change „2” Country

Party

Year of defeat

ERI change

PRI change

GRI change

TRI change

Austria Belgium Bulgaria Switzerland

SPÖ Sp.a BSP CVP/PDC GLP Die Grüne SF ERL PASOK

2017 2014 2014 2015 2015 2013 2015 2007 January 2015 January 2015 January 2015 September 2015 2016 2016 2015 2017 2017 2016 2016 2014 2011 2011 2017 2017 2017 2011 2015 2017

−0.001 −0.009 −0.113 −0.007 −0.008 −0.023 −0.050 −0.050 −0.076

0.000 0.000 −0.188 −0.005 −0.025 −0.001 −0.050 −0.059 −0.430

−0.50 −0.50 −0.50 n/a n/a 0.00 −0.50 0.00 −0.50

−0.50 −0.51 −0.80 −0.01 −0.03 −0.02 −0.60 −0.11 −1.01

−0.058

−0.057

0.00

−0.11

−0.019

−0.177

−1.00

−1.20

−0.020

−0.020

0.00

−0.04

−0.009 0.006 −0.005 −0.219 −0.036 0.006 −0.017 −0.021 −0.029 −0.242 −0.191 −0.034 −0.014 −0.022 −0.008 −0.108 −0.049

−0.023 −0.014 −0.005 −0.451 −0.142 −0.013 −0.020 −0.055 −0.038 −0.350 −0.193 −0.036 −0.012 −0.020 −0.059 −0.015 −0.088

0.00 0.00 −0.50 −1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 −0.50 −1.00 −0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 −0.27

−0.03 −0.01 −0.51 −1.67 −0.18 −0.01 −0.04 −0.08 −0.57 −0.87 −0.88 −0.07 −0.03 −0.04 −0.07 −0.12 −0.37

Germany Denmark Estonia Greece

DIMAR ND To Potami Spain Finland France Croatia Hungary Ireland Netherlands Norway Poland UK Average

Ciudadanos PSOE KD PS LR SDP HL LPM GP FF PvdA Ap KrF PiS SLD UKIP

n/a—not applicable in the cases of Switzerland (‘magic formula’) and Cyprus (presidential system) Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

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Table 4.4 Platform shifts and relevance change after electoral defeat Depth of programme change Superficial „0” Moderate „1” Deep „2”

ERI change

PRI change

GRI change

TRI change

−0.068 −0.080 −0.049

−0.067 −0.044 −0.088

−0.35 −0.33 −0.27

−0.45 −0.40 −0.37

Source Own elaboration, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Table 4.5 Relevance loss and the depth of programme changes Status prior to election Governing Opposition

ERI change

PRI change

GRI change

TRI change

Programme change

−0.094 −0.034

−0.086 −0.430

−0.62 0.00

−0.80 −0.08

0.88 1.08

Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

programme change. Based on such indications, it can be hypothesised there is some kind of connection between a party’s status prior to the election (governing vs. opposition) and its willingness to adopt changes in the wake of a defeat. However, the said status should be considered as merely one part of a broader category which described the party’s position in a certain parliamentary configuration, as measured by the value of its relevance.

4.5 Type of Party System and Post-Defeat Programme Change One issue that we needed to account for during our research is the fact that the large sample contains parties operating in very different systemic conditions. There are formations from post-communist countries and Western Europe, from various types of party systems characterised by different levels of fractionalisation. The aforementioned study by Walgrave and Nuytemans (2009) shows that the type of political system is one of several variables that affect how parties enact changes to their programmes. This begs a question: do the trends indicated in the preceding paragraphs apply only to some of the parties, or are they valid regardless of the nature of the system? Intuition seems to suggest that

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actors operating in two-party systems should react differently to a defeat compared to those in multi-party systems, for whom the loss of votes and mandates does not necessarily entail the loss of governmental presence. In terms of programme change, the impact of a defeat should be less pronounced for the latter. To tackle this issue, we decided to look at how electoral defeat affected programme change in parties functioning in three distinctly different types of systems: (1) the moderately polarised multi-party system (Poland); (2) the extremely polarised multi-party system (Belgium); (3) and the two-party system (United Kingdom). To this end, we used data collected in the MARPOR, with the caveat explained in footnote one. Programme change was calculated as a sum of values for changes in each of seven policy domains: external relations, freedom and democracy, political system, economy, welfare and quality of life, the fabric of society, social groups. We decided to not compare changes within specific policy domains, since they result primarily from the particular nature of each national system. It seems likely that issues of particular interest to voters depend largely on the political and socio-economic situation in a given country. The specific nature of national realities is the source of subjects that the domestic political discourse focuses on. Additionally, our analysis includes data that illustrates parties’ shifts on the left–right wing spectrum. Negative values in the “L-R shift after electoral defeat” indicate the dominance of leftist content in an electoral agenda, while positive values correspond to the right-wing profile. For all three types of party systems, the sample contains both (co-)governing formations and those which remained in the opposition. The overview is presented in Table 4.6. The case of Poland, with its moderately polarised multi-party system, confirms the trend observed in the large sample. Parties that prior to their defeats had formed governments (i.e. PO and PSL) and, thus, recorded the highest loss of relevance changed their programmes to a lesser extent compared to the actors in the opposition (PiS and SLD). PiS modified its agenda to suit the centrist voters, i.e. chose a more moderate messaging. Meanwhile, SLD moved slightly to the left, as did PO and PSL, albeit for the latter two formations the shift was far more pronounced. However, this observation warrants an additional explanation. PiS owed its 2015 victory largely to a stronger emphasis on social issues—a move that seems to have struck a responsive chord with the electorate. It may be posited

Opposition Governing Governing Opposition Governing Opposition Opposition Opposition Opposition Governing

2011–2015 2015–2019 2015–2019 2015–2019 2015–2017 2015–2017 2017–2019 2017–2019 2014–2019 2014–2019

−0.04 −1.30 −0.56 −0.07 −0.58 −0.03 −0.05 −0.12 −0.10 −0.51 28,195 20.566 15,068 55,826 11,845 22,161 26,419 27,745 35,212 12,430

17,473 −13,309 −7,263 −27,517 −16,067 −18,137 −25,667 2,037 17,300 −15,502

Year of defeat

10,812 −17,282 −13,477 −28,177 −21,751 −27,560 −24,667 16,031 8,387 −19,199

Election after defeat

L-R shift after defeat

Source Own elaboration based on the MARPOR https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/ (Volkens et al. 2020) [25 August 2021]

Belgium

United Kingdom

PiS PO PSL SLD LibDem Lab SNP UKIP VB Sp.a

Total relevance Total programme change in result of change after defeat defeat

Poland

Time span of change

Party

Country

Party status prior to election

Programme changes and parties’ shifts from left to right after electoral defeats

Table 4.6

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that the programme adjustments made by PSL and PO in 2019 constituted a reaction to PiS’ shift towards the centre four years earlier. Given that rival parties’ agendas are an important determinant for the direction and content of programme changes (Meyer 2013), this is hardly a surprise. It is also consistent with findings of other scholars (Adams and Somer-Topcu 2009) who argue that parties tend to lean in the same direction as their competitors, particularly from the same family. Although SLD, PO and PSL are not members of a single-party family, all three formulate their agendas around leftist concepts, regardless of the fact two of them position themselves as being right-wing.4 The observation of Belgium’s extremely polarised multi-party system points to similarities with Poland. Upon its relatively narrow loss in total relevance as a result of the 2014 election, Vlaams Belang (VB)— an isolated party confined to the opposition—introduced much more substantial corrections to its programme than the previously co-governing Socjalistische Partij Anders (Sp.a). VB opted for a more moderate message, moving towards the centre of the political spectrum. Meanwhile, Sp.a lost far more, as it was forced into the opposition, yet made relatively minor adjustments, geared towards leftist sensibilities. The VB’s case may be seen as consistent with the model proposed by Downs. An isolated party aware of its virtually non-existent coalition appeal and slim chances of being in government, VB understood that its defeat was the result of its voters shifting their support towards a more mainstream, accepted competitor in the form of N-VA (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliante). Therefore, in the run-up to the next election, it adopted less polarising rhetoric that put it closer to the centre. It should be noted that, according to experts and VB leaders, the party did not significantly alter its core ideological identity. This indicates that similarly to Polish parties, there was a discrepancy between the contents of the electoral manifesto and the party’s basic ideology. It is therefore apparent that measuring programme change by comparing manifestos from different campaigns is not necessarily an adequate way to illustrate the actual ideological transformation. In the United Kingdom, the most significant programme changes occurred in the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)—two opposition formations which recorded

4 The aggregate data from MARPOR is based on electoral agendas which do not always match the values and beliefs shaping the parties’ ideological identity.

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a far less pronounced relevance loss when compared to the previously cogoverning Liberal Democrats (LibDems). However, while UKIP strongly radicalised its right-wing agenda, SNP made adjustments that put it a little closer to the centre, albeit did not divert the party from its essentially leftwing position. In other words, SNP reshuffled the emphasis on certain topics within its already existing programme, but remained focused on left-wing ideas. Both opposition parties went further in their reforms than the LibDems, even though they recorded far lower relevance loss. As a caveat, it should be added that the case of SNP is somewhat unique and cannot be used as a good exemplification of the trends indicated here. SNP is a regional party which means it treats elections to the House of Commons (i.e. the ones we took into account in our model) as secondorder, giving primacy to the Scottish Parliament election. Its performance in the latter contest would be a much more suitable measure of its success (of lack thereof). Even though SNP recorded a drop in votes garnered and seats held in the House of Commons (959,000 votes and 35 seats), one needs to remember that its previous result (1,454,000 votes and 56 mandates) was an extraordinary success—almost the maximum of what the party could actually achieve.5 After winning nigh on every seat it competed for, it could hardly improve in the next election, i.e. it could hardly avoid a defeat, as we defined it for the purpose of this research. Similar observations can be made with regard to the third opposition party, Labour. Just like SNP and UKIP, Labour’s loss was relatively limited, since it remained in the opposition. Still, it adopted more farreaching changes than LibDem who lost their presence in government. Unlike SNP, Labour moved towards the left of the political spectrum. Here, however, a certain caveat should be made which may be an explanation for the difference among opposition parties. Though its 2015 result was actually slightly better in terms of vote percentage compared to 2010, Labour Party was included in our research as a formation that experienced

5 SNP could win a maximum of 59 mandates in the House of Commons, as this is the

number of constituencies in which it registers candidates. It did not campaign outside of Scotland. Theoretically, it could gain the role of a co-governing party, although such a scenario seems unlikely at present. Its biggest rival, both in the House of Commons and the Scottish parliament election, is the Labour Party (in 2010 they were termed ‘two big beasts’; see Kavanagh and Cowley (2010, 122).

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a defeat as it experienced the loss of mandates, which was the consequences of UK’s voting system. Consequently, even though Labour’s 2015 performance fits into our criteria of defeat, it needs to be considered a unique occurrence (see details in Chapter 2).

4.6

Conclusion

In terms of movement on the left–right wing spectrum after electoral defeats, our research has not led to clear-cut conclusions. In all three examined countries, parties relinquishing power shifted further towards the edges on their respective sides of the spectrum. Meanwhile, opposition parties varied in their behaviour: some largely maintained their positions (SLD, SNP), others radicalised their message (UKIP) and some moved towards the centre (PiS, VB). One, somewhat counterintuitive finding that proved consistent across all three party systems shows that similarly to what was visible in the large sample, parties experiencing greater loss in total relevance chose less substantial programme changes, while those suffering lower losses opted for relatively deeper evolution. The observations made on the basis of the cited data are in line with the earlier conclusion that “following a loss, major parties tend to move away from the centre” (Margalit et al. 2021, 2). Across all the cases we examined, this was true for every party that lost its (co-)governing status as a result of a defeat. At the same time, it seems somewhat surprising that the changes implemented by this group were less significant than those made by formations remaining in the opposition. Common sense would suggest the opposite pattern—a more consequential defeat should provide a stronger stimulus for change aimed at improving electoral performance (Deschouwer 1992, 9) and regaining a stronger voter base by, among other measures, modifying programmes. Such a state of affairs suggests that electoral defeat and programme change may be separated by an intervening variable that reduces the motivational impact of defeat. If one adopts the interpretive approach, clues to such a variable may be sought in how individuals create subjective meanings in their interactions with the surrounding world (Haste et al. 2018, 309). Since people constitute an indelible substratum of each organisation, including a political party, the course of cognitive processes and the resulting subjective perceptions may be treated as an important determinant behind the direction and substance of actions undertaken by the organisation. Political reasoning and processing of information may be

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biased due to one’s personal involvement and motivational goals (Taber et al. 2001). As a result, individuals’ ability to objectively and adequately identify and evaluate poor electoral results may be hindered (Pacze´sniak and Bachryj-Krzywa´znia 2019, 128–131). It is these considerations that are elaborated on in Chapter 6.

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CHAPTER 5

Abandoning a Sinking Ship (?): Party Membership Change

5.1

Introduction

When analysing contemporary political parties in terms of the membership change, the most visible tendency observed in stable democracies is the decline in the number of party members (Katz et al. 1992; Mair 1994; Scarrow 1996; Dalton and Wattenberg 2002; Heidar 2006, 2015; Mair and van Biezen 2001; van Biezen et al. 2012; Scarrow 2000; van Haute 2011; Ponce and Scarrow 2014; Gauja 2015; van Haute and Gauja 2015). This general trend of decreasing membership is common to all party families and countries. Political parties are less dependent on their members than it was in the past, both for revenue (due to the change in funding rules) and volunteer labour. This, in turn, produces less incentive to recruit them. Moreover, as campaigns rely more and more on mass advertising, online communication and social media, they are more centralised and professional than in the past. The decline of the membership base (Dalton and Wattenberg 2002; Scarrow 2000, 2015; van Biezen et. al 2012, van Biezen and Poguntke 2014), changes in intra-party democracy (Bolin et al. 2017; Cross and Katz 2013; Hazan and Rahat 2010), broader members’ rights (Gherghina and von dem Berge 2018) and the evolving model of party activism (Whiteley and Seyd 2002; Kosiara-Pedersen, Scarrow and van Haute 2017; Sandri and Seddone 2021) are just some of the issues to also

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be mentioned in this chapter, albeit here, specifically, in the context of electoral failure and its consequences. For many political formations, particularly those with longer traditions, members still constitute an important resource. Although there have been parties that showed it was possible to operate without proper membership base—vide the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) with its sole founding member, the already defunct Czech Úsvit pˇrímé demokracie with its 9 members or the early Forza Italia (Siesselberg 1996; Paolucci 2006)—most formations maintain membership in significant numbers. At the same time, demand for rank-and-file members has decreased due to evolving forms of communication, broad access to the services of external policy advisors, improvements in management processes implemented by hired clerks who run day-to-day operations, as well as the ever more specific needs of partisan organisations (Scarrow 2015). Today, professional political advertising allows parties to reach potential voters without door-to-door campaigns that would involve members. The task of collecting information for party leadership, once assigned to local structures, has been handed over to public opinion research centres. As Young pointed: “even local knowledge about which families are likely party supporters has been replaced by centrally-maintained databases tracking voting inclinations ” (Young 2013, 68–69). More and more often, public messaging is aided by volunteers loosely affiliated with parties, who are called upon in specific moments (for instance, during campaigns). Nevertheless, members continue to provide key legitimisation for party leadership or candidates. Strong grassroot organisations constitute solid foundations, invaluable in times of crisis. In addition to that, members act as harsh, yet amicable critics of their formations and, at the same time, their ambassadors to local communities—the latter is particularly true for mass parties. Members engage with the citizenry and involve them in political life. They share their awareness of politics as well as knowledge of the party and its programme with their communities. Finally, they constitute the pool from which the organisation recruits its candidates for elections. In this perspective, the concept of party membership— described by Kosiara-Pedersen, Scarrow and van Haute as a “political consumption good” (2017, 235)—is vital not only for parties themselves, but also for democracy as such (Young 2013). In line with the model for analysing the impact of electoral defeat presented in Chapter 2, we consider membership changes as unintentional. Just like decomposition, collapse or shifts in the internal balance

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of power, the post-defeat changes regarding members are among those developments that cannot be fully controlled or managed by the leadership. However, when parties bleed members or face the prospect of such decline, they can take purposeful action to reduce the disillusionment, discontent or frustration that a defeat may cause among their ranks. The aim of this chapter is to examine changes regarding membership that occur in formations experiencing electoral defeats. Our research questions here concern the nature of the connection between the defeat and the ensuing quantitative and qualitative change: (1) How do members react to an unsatisfactory result of a parliamentary election? (2) Do they abandon the sinking ship or battle through the hard times hand in hand with their organisations, actively involved in implementing corrective measures? (3) Are there any patterns in how member behave or how party elites act towards them? 4) Do the role and rights of the members change after a defeat? Our point of departure is the assumption that there is a link between electoral performance and the membership base’s reaction. However, given the unequivocal findings from earlier research in this area, we do not specify the exact nature of that connection. We begin the chapter with an overview of the said findings from various studies conducted to date. This leads to the identification of the niche which our research was designed to fill in. Subsequently, we present our methodology and the sources of data. Then, we move on to examine what happens to membership numbers within parties in the aftermath of a defeat. In that section, we take a moment to highlight some intriguing cases of political formations which actually grew in numbers after recording poor electoral results. We examine whether they share certain common features. The next section is devoted to the analysis of how defeat affects the members’ activism and rights—here, we focus on 12 parties from three different party systems: Belgium, Poland and the United Kingdom.

5.2 Changing Party Membership and Electoral Defeats---Theoretical Approach The character of the institution of membership in political parties has been in flux for many years. There is no doubt that the number of people belonging to parties has sharply decreased (Scarrow and Gezgor 2010). Although there are parties where the membership base is actually growing (e.g. some far-right formations), or where volunteers become

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more involved, the overall trend is in the opposite direction. The reasons for the decline can be found on both sides of the equation: parties are less interested in attracting new activists, while potential members perceive this traditional institutional framework for political activity as insufficient, ineffective or, quite simply, not appealing enough to warrant the effort (Scarrow 2015; Kölln 2016). Parties no longer provide their members with support and emoluments—a practice that was particularly typical of mass formations. Moreover, changing communication styles and personalisation of politics mean that voters, followers and members focus their attention not so much on their organisation as a whole, but rather on individual candidates and leaders. They are more likely to identify with personalities than structures (Balmas et al. 2014). Being permanently tied to one party hinders their freedom of choice and ability to shift their support—it becomes a burden if they happen to change their views. From the perspective of parties, the personalisation, mediatisation and professionalisation of politics, along with the introduction of state funding, mean the membership base is not the necessary foundation and resource (including monetary) it once was. Public opinion research centres provide party elites with data on social attitudes and preferences among specific segments of the electorate. Hence, members ceased to be the sole source of information about processes occurring within the society. All in all, both sides are no longer indispensable to each other. The above-mentioned processes have pushed nearly all formations with longer historical record (i.e. several dozens of years) to become embedded in state structures and adopt a professionalised management and campaigning model (van Biezen and Kopecky 2017, 88). Local structures and an extensive membership base, characteristic for the mass party (Panebianco 1988; Duverger 1954), cadre party, catch-all, electoral professional party or cartel party, is not as vital as it used to be (Katz and Mair 1995). Still, party on the ground remains, albeit in a different formula, one of the key levels of partisan activities, along with party in public office and party in central office (Katz and Mair 1993). As membership bases have shrunk, the meaning of the concept of membership itself has evolved to become broader (Kosiara-Pedersen et al. 2017). The choice between full membership and a looser formula of affiliation reflects parties’ openness to the interest expressed by citizens in their activities. At the same time, the efforts to boost identification and mobilisation among their sympathisers seems to be party leadership’s reaction to the general crisis of membership. Both processes illustrate

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contemporary trends in the evolution of the party on the ground dimension. Some formations have begun experimenting with new forms of participation that give their adherents some of the usual benefits associated with partisan affiliation, but at a lower cost—for instance without membership fees or obligations that stem from having formal ties with a party (Scarrow 2015). Apart from full members and militants, parties have started attracting groups of sympathisers, affiliates and volunteers (Fisher et al. 2014; Scarrow 2015, 2017). Certain formations have gone even further and become inclusive to the point of engaging with foreign nationals who enjoy voting rights or younger citizens who are yet to reach voting eligibility age (Hazan and Rahat 2010). These less structured forms of participation may effectively encourage otherwise passive members or followers to become more involved in political life, for instance through the use of online communication tools such as Internet forums or the party’s internal platforms. Such mechanisms create what Scarrow describes as ‘multi-speed membership’ (2015, 208, 214). By blurring the lines between a follower and a full member through broadening the privileges of the former, parties devalue the traditional, formalised forms of participation. This often sparks discontent among full members who demand new rights, as they expect their formal support and legitimisation to be reflected in a suitably significant influence over the actions of their formations (Scarrow 2015; Kosiara et al., 2017). As a result, an ever increasing number of parties across Europe include their members in a broader catalogue of decisions, such as electing party leaders (Cross and Blais 2012, Pilet and Cross 2014, Cross and Pilet 2015), nominating candidates for elections (Hazan and Rahat 2010; Sandri and Seddone 2021; Sandri, Seddone and Venturino 2015) and shaping programmes or making strategic political decisions (Scarrow 2015), for instance about entering coalitions. This move towards a more frequent use of direct democracy has also come as a reaction to the decline in membership numbers (Seyd 1999; Scarrow 1999). It should be remembered that party elites and leaders may see rankand-file members as something of a ballast that hinders the organisation in the pursuit of electoral success—this is particularly true for office-seeking parties which prioritise the goal of garnering votes (Young 2013). Moreover, if members expect their party to implement a specific programme which is not in line with the preferences of the general public, they may effectively act as unwanted brakes for party leaders’ electoral ambitions. Literature of this subject suggests party elites become agents of the

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rank and file. Similarly to all principal-agent relations, ‘delegation entails chances but also risks: the more discretion party leaders have, the more they can make use of their expertise. Yet, giving leeway to party leaders also puts the members at risk. Party leader may be more interested in gaining votes and office spoils than representing the rank-and-file’s policy preferences. Parties can counteract such ambitions by creating an intra-party structure with tight control mechanism’ (Meyer 2013, 169–170). It is hard to specify what number of members is sufficient to consider a political party democratic. As was already suggested, democracy is not always seen as the Holy Grail of partisan life. What is, however, beyond doubt is that it is hard to speak of internal democracy within a party without the membership base. A proper discussion of this subject cannot neglect the importance of ideological profile as a variable. It is, for instance, worth mentioning that green parties have, ever since their inception, openly stressed their commitment to guaranteeing their members genuine participation in internal decision-making processes. Moreover, their key goals have frequently included ensuring intra-party democracy. Such formations have been called democracy-seeking parties (Harmel and Janda 1994). Beyond the green movement, this group encompasses libertarian and many social-democratic formations, as well as the so-called new left. Successive organisational reforms have flattened their structure and introduced a broad use of direct democracy mechanisms as well as plebiscite-type participation for regular members, typically against tradition and hierarchy (Kitschelt 1988, 1993). Given the fact many of these parties have been rooted in social movements, it has been harder for them to reject calls for greater decentralisation of the decision-making process. Conversely, rightwing parties may be seen as less willing to implementing such changes because of their natural respect for tradition and tried-and-tested procedures (Chiru et al. 2015). Therefore, it seems reasonable to claim that democracy and openness to members is somehow inscribed in the nature of parties which fall into the broad category of the political left. Leftwing and green parties (for example Ecolo or Parti Socialiste in Belgium or Sozialdemokratishe Partei Deutschlands in Germany) are and have always been more inclined to listen to and cooperate with various types of organisations promoting rights of the excluded or the weaker. Today, party membership is often a temporary, rather than a permanent commitment. Citizens join a formation to use the benefits of a full member status (e.g. elect party leaders) and then let their membership

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expire. Whiteley (2010, 4–5) notes that in many countries, the number of former members exceeds that of the current ones. It is hardly surprising that people ditch parties which lose elections—having expended their time and energy to support their formation, they are disappointed with the outcome and, as a result, chose to leave. The exact scope and direction of changes in the membership depends largely on the given party’s internal situation, its position vis-à-vis its competitors, other accompanying events (e.g. political scandals) as well as intra-party factors such as the degree of internal democracy and leaders’ readiness to expand it. Even though the subject of membership is already fairly well researched, in our quest to capture the changes occurring within parties we continue to come across the question about what factors significantly affect the numbers of party members. Is a defeat bound to result in less interest in a party and a decline in its membership? Can (and, if so, under what circumstances) a party attract more members despite losing an election? In the following sections of this chapter, we try to provide some answers and, in doing so, fill a gap in the existing knowledge of the phenomenon of party membership.

5.3

Methodology and Samples

Our research encompassed 73 parties from both Western as well as Central and Eastern Europe. The formations we examined boasted a variety of ideological profiles and included formations that, prior to their defeats, had sat in government as well as those which continued to act as the opposition. The starting point for our analysis were the answers provided by national experts in surveys, where we asked about the change in membership numbers in the aftermath of electoral defeats. This quantitative information was complemented with data from three databases: Members and Activists of Political Parties (MAPP, http://www.projectma pp.eu/), Party Members Project (PMP, https://esrcpartymembersproje ct.org) and Political Parties Database (PPDB, https://www.politicalpar tydb.org). When researching the scope and character of party membership, scholars often face difficulties in the form of limited access or incomplete data. Not all political parties systematically collect information about their membership base and even if they do, they are reluctant to share it, especially when the findings of such research could be unflattering and put them in the spotlight. In addition to that, the data provided

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by parties is not always reliable. It is not uncommon for membership numbers to be intentionally inflated, as party offices fail to verify which members regularly pay their fees and, therefore, meet the formal criterion for retaining their status (Katz and Mair 1992; Scarrow 2000; van Biezen et al. 2012; Tomczak 2012, 228; van Haute and Gauja 2015; van Haute et al., 2018). Conducting a comprehensive study among party members is also fraught with difficulties (Gauja and Kosiara-Pedersen 2021, 33). Typically, research has to be limited to either a selected group of members or specific parties (or, possibly, several parties from a single country) (Pacze´sniak and Wincławska 2017). As was rightly pointed out by Gauja and Kosiara-Pedersen, broader, more comprehensive effort necessarily entails additional problems, as scholars are faced with the challenge of standardising survey forms while also accounting for country-specific elements. There is also the question of the language barrier and accessing comparable groups of members (2021, 34). While in most Western European countries open access to general data on party membership has become a standard practice at least to a certain degree, Central and Eastern Europe is yet to develop similar practices. The story of our research is no exception—we have also faced similar difficulties. For reasons indicated elsewhere in this chapter, we had to exclude seven parties from six different countries from our large sample of 73 formations. Given the insufficient access to source materials and parties’ reluctance to share detailed quantitative data, we were unable to fill these gaps on our own. Some parties literally cannot provide a clear answer even if they wanted to, since they do not keep systematic records. One interviewee from the Belgian Parti Socialiste candidly admitted: “we are not actually sure ourselves how many members we have” (PS_1). They tackled the problem by referring to other databases, using information collected during in-depth interviews with party elites as well as analysing the existing literature and other source materials. One area that could be subject to debate here is the temporal scope to be adopted for the analysis of post-defeat changes in membership. For the purpose of our research, we decided that if a party experienced a fluctuation in the number of its members, we would only look at the changes occurring within one year from the defeat—i.e. we would treat such changes as a clear consequence of that defeat. As it turned out, our sample of 73 parties included a fairly small, yet highly intriguing group of seven formations in which a defeat was followed by an increase in membership numbers. The group included: the

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Belgian Vlaams Belang (VB), the British Labout Party (LP) and Liberal Democrats (LibDems), the Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwo´sc´ (PiS), the Maltese Partit Nazzjonalista (PN), the Cypriot Dimokratikós Sinagermós (DISY) and the Norwegian Kristelig Folksparti (KrF). In a pattern analogous to other chapters of this book, the fourth section of this chapter presents a more in-depth analysis of changes within 12 selected parties representing three distinctly different party systems of Belgium, Poland and the United Kingdom. The formations we examined in details include parties that experienced a decline in membership (PS, Sp.a, Ecolo, UKIP, SNP, SLD, PO and PSL) as well as those which managed to expand their ranks (LP, LibDem, VB and PiS). When looking at these formations, we were interested in the changes to the position, rights and activity of their members in the aftermath of their electoral defeats. This called for a more careful, meticulous observation, as we needed to avoid oversimplifying our conclusions or falling for the trap of making automatic connections between the election result and the fluctuation of membership.

5.4

Post-defeat Relevance Changes vis-à-vis Membership Changes

The questions we attempt to answer in this chapter regard the nature of correlation between an electoral defeat and changes in terms of membership. In order to do so, we have examine how fluctuations of a given party’s relevance in the electoral (ER), parliamentary (PR) and governmental (GR) dimensions are reflected in the size of its membership base. We have also tried to capture the significance of two additional factors: a change of leadership and the party’s previous electoral performance (i.e. was the defeat in question preceded by more defeats, or by a success). It seems that a defeat in an elections disappoints and alienates some of the party’s members and activists, possibly prompting them to leave. Moreover, the number of sympathizers may also decrease. However, there are cases where the opposite is true (Kaczorowska 2018, 232–233). We do not claim that new members join a party because it experienced a defeat—we believe they do so instead of it. This means other factors, beside the electoral failure, are at play. Membership numbers may be affected by the context of the defeat and what happens in its aftermath—for instance, a change of leadership or broadening the scope of members’ rights. The progressing personalisation and mediatisation of

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politics become relevant to the behaviour of current and prospective members. If a defeat results in the emergence of a new leader, there may be hopes of programme changes which galvanise the party’s supporters. Parties can also convince their members to stay by giving them additional rights and, consequently, opportunities to get involved in the partisan life. New privileges may include participation in making decisions regarding the programme, selection of candidates or strategic moves (e.g. entering into a coalition with another formation). Eventually, such moves may placate current members, attract new ones or even convince some of the former ones to return. Based on data collected through expert surveys, we have grouped the examined parties into three categories. As was mentioned earlier, one group was composed of seven formations in which membership numbers increased in the aftermath of defeats. In the second group, counting 32 parties, the number of members declined. Finally, there were also 27 parties which did not record any significant fluctuation compared to their situation before the elections in question. Having established the groups, we have compared them with regard to the change in total relevance that occurred as a result of their defeats.1 As can be seen in Table 5.1, parties which grew their ranks after suffering a defeat have also experienced the lowest decline in relevance, both total (TR) and its subindexes. Conversely, formations for which the defeat bore the heaviest consequences in terms of relevance were the ones to lose most members. The same correlation is markedly less pronounced, albeit still present, when it comes to governmental relevance (GR), which suggests this particular dimension has the least bearing on membership. It seems, therefore, that an electoral defeat does not necessarily lead to the loss of members. What is more important than the fact of defeat by itself is its scale—the bigger the failure, the more likely it is to drive members away from a party. It is the resulting decline in relevance that acts as a key factor. The analysis of the seven parties which attracted more members upon suffering defeats reveals several interesting clues. As is shown in Table 5.2, five of them had already been in the opposition prior to the election 1 A detailed explanation of the total relevance index can be found in Chapter 2. Please note that the total relevance index (TRI) consists of three subindexes: electoral relevance index (ERI), parliamentary relevance index (PRI) and governmental relevance index (GRI).

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Table 5.1 Changes in membership numbers after electoral defeat and relevance change Membership change Increase No change Decrease

ER change

PR change

−0.023 −0.040 −0.094

−0.047 −0.054 −0.102

GR change −0.25 −0.27 −0.39

TR change −0.28 −0.34 −0.57

Source Own calculation, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

in question. Their defeats resulted in relatively minor losses of relevance. Their common feature is the fact they had either been absent from the government for a significant amount of time (for LP, the 2015 election was their second defeat in a row; likewise, PiS and DISY had also lost their previous contests) or never participated in cabinet formation at all (the case of VB, which simply continued to bleed support in successive elections). Even the LibDem who, unlike most parties in this group, had been a part of a governing coalition prior to their 2015 defeat are similar to the other six formations in that they had rarely enjoyed the status of a co-governing party—i.e. they are characterised by low office aspiration (Schumacher et al. 2015). The ‘hung parliament’ situation that emerged as a result of the 2010 election was an exception, as coalition cabinets certainly do not have a strong tradition in British politics. Hence, one might surmise that parties making up this group are generally used to their opposition status. Provided their electoral results only led to a fractional loss of relevance, their members were likely not to consider them defeats or, at the very least, not significant ones. Such interpretations would prevent disappointment that might push the rank and file to abandon ship. In fact, only the Maltese Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista, or PN) does not fit into this pattern. Together with the Malta Labour Party (Partit Laburista, or PL), it has dominated the country’s political scene since the 1960s, with power regularly alternating between the two formations in what has effectively become a two-party system (albeit with a single transferable vote system still in place). Secondly, it should be noted that all parties except one—the Polish PiS—represent Western European countries. Thirdly, this rather small group includes formations from a variety of party families, both from the left and the right side of the political spectrum. It seems, therefore, that

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Table 5.2 Parties where the number of members has increased after electoral defeat and relevance change No

Country

1 2

Party

Region

Party profile

Status before election

Relevance Change change of the members’ rights

Leader change

Belgium VB Cyprus DISY

WE WE

Op Op

−0.10 −0.07

No No

2 0

3

Malta

PN

WE

Gov

−1.14

Yes

2

4

Norway

KrF

WE

Op

−0.03

Yes

0

5 6

Poland UK

Op Gov

−0.04 −0.58

No No

0 2

7

UK

PiS CEE Lib WE Dem Labour WE

Nationalist Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Conservative Liberal Social Democratic

Op

−0.03

Yes

2

Source Own elaboration based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

the ideological profile is not an important variable driving the growth of membership base in the wake of a defeat. Finally, data shown in Table 5.2 does not reveal any patterns that would link the growing membership numbers with leadership change or the broadening of members’ rights. As can be seen, the group includes formations which replaced their leaders but did nothing to give members new privileges (VB), those that changed in both aspects (PN), those which retained their leaders but modified members’ rights (KrF), and those which opted not to make any of these moves (PiS).

5.5 The Impact of Electoral Defeat on Party Members and Their Activism Within Selected Belgian, British and Polish Political Parties In this section of the chapter, we describe the post-defeat developments in 12 selected political formations representing three distinctly different party systems: Belgium, the United Kingdom and Poland. The group is diverse in terms of what happened after a defeat: it includes parties in which membership numbers declined as well as those in which they

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increased. Some of the 12 formations made changes to their leadership and/or members’ rights, others chose not to. We have also tried to capture what factors, and to what extent, could have affected the evolution of membership (see Table 5.3). Using information collected through in-depth interviews, we have looked at how these formations evolved after experiencing defeats and how their evolution could have translated into the size of their respective membership bases. As was demonstrated by Anika Gauja with regard to long-standing democracies (2017, 127–129) or by other researchers with regard to a younger democracy such as Poland (Pacze´sniak and Wincławska 2017; ´ et. al. 2021, Sobolewska-My´slik et al. Wincławska et al. 2021, Jacunski 2010, 2016), members often voice their discontent and criticise the fact their opinions are hardly taken into account when their party makes political or personal decisions. In response, many of the parties that choose to grant their members new rights begin by introducing direct election mechanisms for appointing leadership or selecting candidates for public offices (Gauja 2017, 131–133; Sandri and Seddone 2021; Sandri et al. 2015). As far as Belgium is concerned, Vlaams Belang was the only formation to attract more members after being defeated in the 2014 federal parliamentary election. The remaining actors—Ecolo, Socialistische partij.anders (Sp.a) and Parti Socialiste (PS)—recorded a decline in membership numbers. The sources of the VB’s successful quest for more members can be found both in the change of leadership—as was indicated by the party’s representatives during in-depth interviews—and a fundamental overhaul of its communication with members, voters, followers and the general public (Bachryj-Krzywa´znia and Pacze´sniak 2021). One element of note here was “in particular, the use of new media” (VB_4). By appointing a new leader and investing significant resources into improving communication, VB was able to attract large numbers of new rank-and-file members. However, it made no moves whatsoever to broaden the catalogue of members’ rights or democratise the internal decision-making processes (Sijstermas 2021). It stuck with a highly centralised model, the only exception being a direct election of the leadership—a provision which had been introduced before the 2014 election and is therefore not taken into account in our analysis. VB representatives attributed their party’s poor showing in 2014 to the huge problems in communicating with members and voters alike. As one of them openly admitted, “strategy on social

Belgium Belgium Belgium Belgium Poland Poland Poland Poland UK UK UK UK

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Source Own elaboration

Country

Ecolo Sp.a PS VB PiS SLD PO PSL Lib Dem Labour SNP UKIP

Party

2014 2014 2014 2014 2011 2015 2015 2015 2015 2015 2017 2017

Year of defeat

− − − + + − − − + + − −

Membership change increase (+) decrease (−) Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes No No

Was the previous election a defeat? + + − − − + − − + + − −

Change of the members’ right

2 1 2 2 0 2 2 2 2 2 0 2

Leader change

Changing membership and members’ rights within 12 political parties from Belgium, Poland and the UK

No

Table 5.3

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media – my party didn’t have any. We were completely behind (…) the other parties ” (VB_1). Once the party elites realised that, in the words of one interviewee, “we need new people” (VB_3), they took a series of actions to focus the attention of the VB members and followers. They made efforts to more frequently engage in traditional communication with the voters, for instance by arranging meetings and debates. They also began making widespread use of online communication to also reach those sympathisers who were not formally affiliated with the party. Even before its 2014 defeat, VB had started investing to develop locally rooted organisational structures and attempted to communicate, both on- and offline, with its followers (Sijstermans 2021). The carefully cultivated ties with the citizenry allowed VB leaders to build a community of people who effectively campaigned on the party’s behalf. Through social media, VB could reach a much broader group of people, well beyond its membership base. Even though the number of registered full members remained relatively low, the growth of the support base and the infrastructure for its involvement became key elements in the party’s organisational strategy. This vertical approach to developing ties with both formal members and unaffiliated followers (some of whom become full members over time) yielded good results in the next federal parliamentary election in 2019. It also moved VB closer to the so-called digital parties, which focus their functioning (either largely or entirely) around online communication with the use of digital technologies (Barbera et al. 2021). Such formations adopt Internet-based platforms for decision-making processes—a choice that leaves numerous questions and doubts as to their democratic character as well as the technical implementation of such solutions. Issues in communication and poor contact with the membership base were also noted by Sp.a representatives. In this case, however, the need for change met with certain resistance from the party elites. As a result, reforms were made a lot later and the delay likely caused a further deterioration of commitment among members. Nonetheless, the problem was acknowledged: “If you look on social media and you need an explanation, then people start looking before the clue comes. You know, that’s what social democrats were doing all the time. And I used the image within the party, saying: ‘well, the… extreme, the right-wing parties are putting money on the Internet, convincing people with the direct message, while the left-wing parties are in the pub, discussing with each other?’” (Sp.a_2). In the case of Sp.a, the voice of the rank and file was not as important to the leadership as in other formations, as was admitted by one of our interviewees: “The

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members were not that important, (…) in my view at least, in influencing these changes. It was really like the party headquarters, deputies and everybody that was involved who were influencing the things, not, the members ” (Sp.a_3). Most decisions were made top-down, while, as the same person agreed, the party should have brought its membership base closer. The interviewee stressed that “it was still the same top-down dynamics and that’s not good. We, in the party, want different dynamics, more decisions should be made bottom-up. Party activists kept saying it had to change, it was not acceptable that a day after the election a decision is made on the spot and we simply move on. This sparked a movement of discontent within the party” (Sp.a_1). The movement referred to here is what led to the exodus of members. As another interviewee said, “change was not deep enough, insufficient; (…) there’s new people in the front now (…), the organisation and the content and the communication [have not changed much – Authors]” (Sp.a_2). Similar remedial measures were adopted by the Walloon Socialist Party (PS) which also lost a significant number of members. In PS’ case, however, that downward trend had been observed well before the 2014 defeat, so its continuation was not seen as a consequence of that particular failure. As one interviewee stated, “What we’re surely seeing is the erosion of membership. The thing we know from the past – this type of citizens’ affiliation with parties – is now becoming consigned to history books. People who once signed up to our party are getting old. Of course, they need to be respected, but we also have to address our actions at people who will never register as members. We must work with those who are unaffiliated. I can see it in my county: my co-workers do not belong to any party, they don’t care about membership one bit, they wouldn’t even consider it, but it doesn’t mean we, as a party, won’t work with them” (PS_1). This is why PS began opening itself up to unaffiliated followers and volunteers. As expressed by the same representative, “young people don’t want to be party members, but they are very interested in politics, in debates about what is currently happening. They just don’t want to hear about parties. You can engage in a dialogue with them – more than that, you can entice them to participate in some joint initiatives, but not to sign up” (PS_1). Aware of its resources, PS intended to use them to address the issue. Another interviewee explained: “We have two important advantages over other parties in Belgium. Firstly, we have the most activists, involved members. Even our rivals admit it. When we launch our campaign, we

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are unstoppable” (PS_2). When the unsatisfactory result of the 2014 election was announced, “there was no frustration among our members, so no need to channel it ” (PS_2). However, the party was still “aware that we should reach out more to our electorate. We need to consult with the citizenry. We have started an initiative called the Chantier des idées. We have opened up to topics that are new to us, for example environmental issues. We have engaged thousands of people in this exchange of opinions, it was a long process ” (PS_2). PS has also reformed the way it communicated with its members: “this change in the way of perceiving things, some issues, is permanent. Our communication with the external environment and openness to consultation also seems to have become an inherent part of our functioning. It worked well in the 2018 local election and before the 2019 election” (PS_1). After its defeat, the party carefully listened to its members: “We organised numerous conferences – more than I can count, really – where we invited high-profile speakers. The rooms were packed, a lot of people joined the discussions, primarily activists. The second level were the debates at the local level of our federation, all members could send their thoughts and participate” (PS_2). For Ecolo, the 2014 defeat led not only to the loss of some members, but also to the weakening of the activism of the remaining ones. Admittedly, this fits into a broader trend observed across Western European democracies, where evidence shows general decline in the engagement in party politics and participation in campaigns or internal elections (Siarof 2009; Whiteley 2010). The Walloon green party has never boasted a particularly strong membership base, but due to its grassroots genesis, many among its rank-and-file and affiliated members remain active, while also being involved in social movements, mostly green or pacifistic (Waveille and Pilet 2013). Each election, regardless of whether it was a success or failure, is followed by a debate of what went wrong or what contributed to a success. It is a time when party elites must face the activists who have worked hard during the campaign and draw appropriate conclusions together. In 2014, that reckoning was combined with a generational shift, but the latter referred primarily to candidates and elected politicians, while many of the rank the file remained in place. The post-election report stated the party needed to galvanise its members and improve its internal communication, particularly by employing social media. This postulate was also linked to the need for engaging with younger people. As one of our interviewees emphasised, “the idea was to get regional activists more involved, to rebuild the party’s foundations ”

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(Ecolo_3). Moreover, “as a side effect of this post-election survey, we realised we had plenty of older members, while we had pretty much lost the young ones ” (Ecolo_3). It was also noticed that “various kinds of internal undertaking gather less members, people just stop showing up. In the meetings, you keep seeing the same individuals. Participation is weaker. I think in 2014 we didn’t lose members, but they became much less active. We can treat it, in a broader context, as a decline in partisan participation” (Ecolo_2). In addition to that, the party was aware of problems in its communication with the membership base: “The party was in chaos. Activists were frustrated. We had to fire two-thirds, or even three-fourths of our staff (…) During the evaluation, we concluded that people misunderstood us, so the problem was not only with the content of our programme, our offer, but with the ability to communicate it ” (Ecolo_4). The change of leadership also infused the formation with new energy. As one of our interviewees admitted, “what was also important was the change of tack, the change of leadership, the election of new co-leaders. New co-leaders always bring changes, they have new energy and his was extremely beneficial to the party” (Ecolo_5). The same person said that “the expectation of change was visible among both professional party structures and activists. It was something of a cascade, from the federal level, through regional structures, often down to the local level ” (Ecolo_5). While a few local branches saw declining participation in discussions, the defeat generally galvanised members: “Normally, there would be 20, 30 people at a meeting, but then, the day after the election, there was around 100 of us. Any member can attend a Political Bureau meeting because the party and all its structures operate in a transparent and democratic manner. So, such meetings are open to all members ” (Ecolo_3). The Walloon party’s structure was at that time somewhat specific in its flat, horizontal character. Its members referred to it as an ‘archipelago’. “After 2014, we decided to change that – to turn Ecolo into a unified party, with one strategy and one message. And we succeeded” (Ecolo_4). Ecolo’s representatives also pointed to the important corrective, refreshing function of defeats when it comes to internal communication. As one of them explained it, “defeats have something positive to them because they make you question the point of what you’re doing; you can break out of the routine, renew your ties with the communities around the party. For green formations, this close cooperation with the civic society and presence in the field has always been indispensable” (Ecolo_5). Two of the British formations—the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats—recorded an influx of new members after their defeats. Of

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the two, Labour enjoyed the more dynamic (in fact, exceptional) growth (Audickas et al. 2019), reaching as much as 100%. As a result, in 2017 the party boasted over 550,000 registered members. The reason behind such spectacular interest was the change of leadership, as the party appointed a leftist veteran, Jeremy Corbyn (Whiteley et al. 2019; Bale, Webb and Poletti 2018). In fact, the sheer prospect of the party being headed by Corbyn—a figure known for his strong beliefs and clear-cut programme—likely sparked enthusiasm among Labour’s supporters and led to an avalanche of engagement when the leadership contest played out throughout late Summer and early Autumn of 2015. It was also at that time that new rules for selecting the leader came to the fore, as members and registered supporters were handed a key role in the decisive stage of the process. Albeit the decision to extend voting rights was made in 2014, it was only after Labour’s 2015 parliamentary disappointment that the new rules would be applied for the first time. The rapid growth of the membership base led to Corbyn’s landslide victory in the leadership contest, as newcomers overwhelmingly supported his radical leftist agenda. It seems that both the personal aspect of leadership change and the promise of a reformed programme contributed to the surge in membership numbers. Naturally, broader base enhanced Labour’s internal democratic dimension. However, as was noted by Scarrow, Poguntke and Webb (2017, 4–5), “by that measure, the more open decision-making certainly strengthened the Labour Party organization, but at least in the short term, the intra-party turmoil had the opposite effects on the party’s broader popularity and electability”. LibDem’s 2015 debacle was particularly painful in terms of votes lost in specific constituencies, the impact in regions where they had traditionally enjoyed strong support and the party’s parliamentary presence (Cutts and Russell 2015). Despite all that, in the aftermath of the defeat the ranks of LibDems quickly grew in numbers, reaching 97,000 in 2017. When, after Nick Cleggs’ resignation, the party was about to choose its next leader, there were 61,000 members eligible to vote, including 16,500 newcomers who joined in before leadership nominations were closed. This was the fastest growth of membership the party had ever recorded. Within just five days after the parliamentary defeat, the number of members grew to 55,649, although this was still far below what the Green Party, SNP, Labour or Tories boasted at that time. Paul Whiteley (2011) questioned the longevity of the trend and new members’ engagement in the party’s life. One can point to several reasons behind this

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unexpectedly quick influx of new people. The first factor was their desire to influence the choice of the party’s new leader. The second, pointed out by our interviewees, was the sentiment common among many LibDem sympathisers, who did not want to succumb to defeat-induced disappointment and instead chose to support their preferred formation at a difficult time. Their resolve was also aided by the urge to counter pro-Brexit voices that were gradually emerging in the UK. Their clearly pro-European stance pushed them to get more politically involved. One of our interviewees admitted that after the 2015 defeat, “the membership doubled. It’s a paradox – people were joining a party that’s been defeated because they thought we were the only people fighting Brexit without reservation, and it was purely idealism, or ideology of anti-Brexit. When I was the leader, we had a record number of members, we’d never had so many people, ever” (LibDem_2). In January 2015, one year before the Brexit referendum and two years before the defeat we are looking at, UKIP ranked fifth among British parties in terms of membership numbers. Its ranks peaked in May of that year at 45,000 people and have been in decline ever since. The escape of members accelerated further after the June 2017 defeat. In January 2018 (with Henry Bolton acting as the leader), UKIP only had 18,000 members. As one party representative told us, “We lost a huge amount of our traditional supporters, because they themselves got taken in (…), they didn’t want to stand against the Conservatives, they didn’t want to help this campaign because (…) they were like: ‘it’d be like World War Two and us telling British soldiers to fight the Americans when they arrived. They came to help us’. (…) And that is how our supporters felt. A huge amount of people went back to the Conservative Party or joined them all, helped them, the membership, you know” (UKIP_1). When asked about who they thought was to blame, the answer was: “Whose fault was it that they weren’t able to keep them with us? Well, the fault was (…) Brexit. And we went to give it to them. We had no way, people would say: You guys, you’re the ones who got us all into this Brexit thing and then you all disappear and don’t do anything about seeing it all the way through” (UKIP_1). Moreover, it seems that UKIP lacked sufficient resources to fight for a better result. As one of our interviewees said, “it’s hard to battle the Conservative Party and the Labour Party where they’re squeezing you, simply because you know they would be spending millions of pounds on this general election campaign. We’re spending hundreds of thousands, you know, and the Labour Party had 500.000 members. We had, I think, about 30,000 members at that time

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which was very hard to fight that squeeze when people are looking at you as a party without a cause” (UKIP_2). UKIP was yet another formation that experienced the impact of social media. In June 2018, the party was joined by four political activists known primarily thanks to their social media presence: Paul Joseph Watson, Mark Meechan, Carl Benjamin and Milo Yiannopoulos. In the immediate aftermath, UKIP gained around 500 new members. In July of that year, the party informed it registered over 3,000 new members. However, it stuck to its original structure and remained highly centralised. Members were not granted any new rights after the 2017 defeat. Even though SNP lost both votes and mandates in the House of Commons (winning 35 compared to the previously held 56) in the 2017 contest, party members did not consider the outcome to be particularly troublesome. The Scottish formation retained its status as the third power in the parliament. Our interviewees unanimously emphasised they had expected to bleed some support in comparison to the 2015 election. Some went as far as saying the party was bound for a “reality check” in Scotland, even as SNP remained the country’s dominant political force— a status it confirmed in the 2016 Scottish parliamentary election, what was for them the most important issue. “We’re still the third party in the Westminster after 2017 (…) So, it didn’t feel like a huge disaster (…) We were sorry to lose seats, but we expected to lose some seats anyway, and we’d come off the back of the 2016 Scottish parliament election, so we’re in government. Moreover, the UK parliamentary election is ‘not first-order election for us ” (SNP_3). It seems, therefore, that SNP members and leadership prioritise the Scottish parliamentary contests over the House of Commons—an observation confirmed by another interviewee: “In Scotland, what happened with the SNP, is that all of our big people, all of our really prominent people, all stood for the Scottish Parliament; didn’t really want to stand for Westminster, because standing for Westminster – we didn’t want to be there, really” (SNP_3). Some SNP members seem to have been swayed by the party’s main rival, Labour, and its new, then-exciting leadership (it was also pointed out by Jim Gallagher (2017)). As one of our interviewees admitted: “We’ve been winning that battle (…) over the last decades very convincingly, but the LP (…), when they’ve moved to the left under Corbyn, (…) for a number of our supporters did present itself as a more radical, attractive, exciting option that hadn’t been there in 2015” (SNP_2). Given that the 2017 result was not perceived strongly as a defeat and the following decrease in membership numbers was moderate,

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it is hardly surprising that SNP did not move to strengthen members’ position or rights. Three out of four examined Polish parties—SLD, PO and PSL— recorded a decline in membership in the aftermath of their defeats. The fourth one—PiS—managed a slight increase after its failure in 2011. It was reflected in the party’s income from membership fees, which almost doubled, from a little over 1 million PLN in 2011 to nearly 2 million PLN in 2012 (Biesiacki et al. 2020, 18). At that time (2012), PiS had approximately 22,000 members. After the electoral debacle, most of them remained loyal to PiS. As one party representative admitted, the formation probably benefitted from the status of the opposition: “People held on (…), but it’s also different for the opposition – sometimes easier than for the governing party. I can see it now, in hindsight, because when you’re in the opposition, it’s easier to galvanise people by making hollow promises, you can practically say anything ” (PiS_1). It also seems that the party owed some of its appeal to the sympathetic sentiments in the wake of the 2010 airplane crash which killed President Lech Kaczynski ´ and numerous other Polish politicians, including many prominent PiS figures. The party made no changes to the rights or position of rank-and-file members in its structure. In fact, when one compares the stipulation of two PiS statutes—one adopted in 2009 and the other in 2013—it becomes clear that the role of the members remained exactly the same. Even the numeration or articles referring to membership was unaltered. PiS members can elect and be elected to sit on the party’s bodies, but internal democracy is low and rather representative, than direct in its character (Kaczorowska 2021, 199–200). While members are entitled to submit policy-related proposals, the fate of such initiatives lays in the hands of party elites. Members can also stand as PiS’ candidates in elections for public offices but here, also, they require the approval and nomination of the party’s regional or central headquarters. As one interviewee explained, “the party is based on a strong, monopolistic leadership of one individual; it is devoid of internal democracy mechanisms, but instead organises a public discourse, cooperation with other partners, where open discussion is possible” (PiS_2). Another representative indicated that PiS’ defeat may have brought its members closer together and enhanced their sense of purpose in supporting the party: “In my opinion, it was shaped in 2010 and 2011, when we really struggled and had plenty of problems. We were losing regional and parliamentary election [and yet people held on - Authors]” (PiS_1).

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As far as the other three Polish parties are concerned, we looked at the aftermath of their defeats in 2015. When comparing annual income from membership fees between 2015 and 2016, we discovered that two of them—PO and SLD—lost some of their members, while PSL recorded a slight growth. PO obtained almost 1,5 million PLN in 2015, but only just under 500,000 PLN in 2016. PSL went from over 60,000 to nearly 100,000 PLN (Biesiacki et al. 2020, 18–20). For SLD, the 2015 election caused additional damage, since the party lost not only voters’ support, but also its entire parliamentary presence. As SLD representatives themselves acknowledged, the scale of the debacle came as an enormous surprise. In a telling move soon after the defeat, on 12 December 2015, SLD convention decided the party’s chairman would now be appointed through direct election (technically, such an avenue had existed from 2012 onwards but was not the only option). The change of leadership occurred soon afterwards, on 23 January 2016. At that point, the so-called barons (leaders of regional structures) held a strong position within the party. The mechanism of direct leadership election further strengthened this level of partisan structure. Meanwhile, the leader lost his or her informal, but very tangible influence over the nominations of the party’s presidential candidates. The right to formally endorse a presidential nominee was transferred expressis verbis to the SLD’s National Convention (art. 24 of the SLD statute adopted in 2016). This particular move was a reaction to the party’s recent experiences, as its bid in the 2015 presidential contest ended in a dismal failure. The candidacy of Magdalena Ogórek, a person formally unaffiliated with SLD, was strongly criticised by many in the party but promoted and endorsed by its then-leader. SLD representatives agreed in their assessment that a misguided choice of presidential candidate affected the party’s prospects in the parliamentary election as well. Communication was identified as another possible cause of defeat. Perhaps, in the heat of coalition negotiations prior to the campaign, SLD did not pay sufficient attention to the need for new methods of reaching the voters. The formation was still attached to traditional media: newspapers and television. One SLD politician acknowledged that the party’s own media had limited impact: “The Tribune doesn’t have much of a reach at the moment, let’s say 30,000 per week, three times a week. Of course, it’s down to funding etc. TV is the primary channel, after all ” (SLD_1). It should be noted the statute adopted in 2012 (and remaining in force at the time of the 2015 defeat)

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made SLD one of the most internally democratic parties among all Polish formations examined here. As a consequence of its defeat in 2015, PO lost its status as a governing party and became the biggest player of the opposition. After eight years in government, PO politicians, including our interviewees, expected it to happen. The person anointed by the previous leader to head the party in the run up to and during the campaign stepped down. Even though PO experienced a notable loss of members, disappointed with the party’s mistakes and unsatisfactory result, it did not address the issue of membership privileges. The statute in force at the time of the election was adopted on 21 November 2013 and retained nine specific points enumerating members’ rights, first introduced in the previous version of the document (dating back to 2006). It also incorporated decisions made by PO’s National Convention, which in June 2013 determined that the party’s leader would from then on be appointed through direct election, with all members eligible to vote. To win the leadership contest, a candidate had to receive an absolute majority of votes, to be cast by mail or via the Internet. The first such direct election took place in August of the same year. Technically, PO has envisioned members’ participation in the formation of the party’s governing bodies ever since it was formed in 2001, but in practice the rank and file had no part in electing nationalor regional-level leaders—until 2013. To find out how the state of regulatory affairs changed after the 2015 defeat, one needs to look at the next version of the statute, introduced in 2017. The title of the relevant section in the document now included the word “sympathisers”. Curiously, the aforementioned enumerative catalogue of members’ rights placed within that section was shorter compared to the 2013 version. Three points—the right to elect and be elected to the leadership, as well as to participate in all forms of partisan activities—were removed from the list. This, however, did not mean that all members were stripped of their role in appointing the leadership. In fact, provisions referring to full members were retained elsewhere in the document, while the limitations introduced specifically in the section on members and sympathisers only applied to those members who either were yet to attain full membership privileges or had their privileged suspended (as will be described further in this paragraph). All members would still be allowed to shape PO’s programme, submit policy or organisational initiatives to the leadership, access all resolutions and other documents adopted by the party (provided it did not go against its interests), use its name and symbols, participate

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in the meetings of local structures as well as benefit from all other privileges and institutional support envisioned in the statute. The 2017 statute introduced two new categories of affiliation: supporting members and sympathisers. This seemed in tune with the times, as the party acknowledged the need for more flexible forms of association and decided to create opportunities outside of the traditional form of membership. It sought to reach new groups of people who might be interested in cooperation, but also to prevent a premature exclusion of those current members who did not meet their formal obligations. According to art. 11 of the statute, a newly signed up member would initially be granted the status of a ‘supporting member’ which would last for six months from the day of being registered in the party’s central membership records. The same status would be applied to a full member who was overdue with payments of membership fees for a period exceeding six months. The supporting members were deprived of active voting rights as well as the right to vote on a meeting agenda, unless the National Board decided otherwise in individual cases. The introduction of the category of a sympathiser signified PO’s opening to younger people. According to art. 12, the status of the sympathiser could be granted to any person aged 16 or older. When the party chose its new leader in January 2016, only 52% of eligible members cast their votes (the winner garnered over 90% of those). The number indicates that the energy and activism in the party’s ranks dwindled after the 2015 defeat. Our interviews confirmed that PO somewhat neglected its membership base. As one party representative said, members were affected by the accumulation of two defeats in quick succession (the parliamentary contest was held a few months after a presidential election): “President Komorowski’s 2 loss was a huge blow to the mobilisation of our voters and structures (…) the elections kind of reflected the state of PO’s structures after eight years – an organism that, generally, required an overhaul ” (PO_5). Another interviewee revealed: “the tone is set, of course, by the leadership – let’s say the chairman and his or her closest associates – as well as some collective units that operate within the party, participate in governance or even manage the public messaging, deal with media appearances and, most of all, speak during party conventions ” (PO_3). Internal debates were at times tumultuous (“Well, there was some fierce infighting that led to some kind of normalisation, because a storm like that is bound to 2 Bronislaw Komorowski was PO’s candidate in the presidential election. Having been the President of Poland from 2010 to 2015, he ran for re-election in 2015.

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poke a few holes in the hull ” (PO_3)), but the crucial underlying issue was the fact “we lacked a steady hand at the wheel that would prepare the structures for the election (…) and would act as a link between the campaign staff and party on the ground; this was visible in every aspect, and it was confirmed by our deep structural analysis after the parliamentary election (…). You can put forward a completely unknown candidate and if that person is supported by a few worker bees in each of 300 constituencies, if these workers bees put up some small posters, roll up their sleeves and do the job, then this army of people is worth way more than the huge billboards on the sides of the roads ” (PO_5). It appears that PO came to understand the importance of involving the grassroots structures, activists and followers and the need to cultivate bonds with these groups. “That’s why right from the start of 2016 we put all our energy into making sure that, at this crucial moment (…), we rebuild the party, its morale, structures (…) and you can see that it’s just worked” (PO_5). While for PSL the consequences of defeat were eventually not as dire as for SLD, its parliamentary future also hung in the balance until the very last moment of vote counting. The agrarian formation barely exceeded the 5% electoral threshold set for single parties. It was the worst result in PSL’s long history of parliamentary elections. The party reacted swiftly and without hesitation by immediately changing its leader. Similarly to PO, it experienced a change at the top. However, others among the party’s most popular figures for the most part retained their influence. It should be remembered that in PSL the dominant role is traditionally held by the leadership (Tomczak 2013, 103). Still, according to the party’s statute in force at the time, its members enjoyed broad benefits of representative democracy. Their voice was held especially at the lower and middle level of partisan structures. Their agency was enhanced through their influence over local, grassroots infrastructure. Many PSL politicians stressed the democratic character of their party. In the words of one such person, “we’re such a strongly democratic party, thoroughly; there’s no other party like us in Poland” (PSL_4). Another distinguishing feature is the collective leadership. PSL members are also aware of the differences between various regions and communities. One interviewee observed: “There was this problem – and I remember it clearly – that if you compared a county in the north of my region to one in the south, it’s like two different parties, totally different perspectives. It was the same story all over Poland. The conservative South, the liberal, or I’d even say anticlerical West; completely different approaches; but this shows you what kind of party it is.

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As I said: this melting pot, these, I don’t know, thousands of conversations, voices (…) what’s also a value in PSL is that everyone can say whatever they want, and whenever they want, to the leadership, so there’s no hierarchization, no hierarchization at all ” (PSL_2). Such alleged freedom of expression strengthens the sense of agency among the membership base. Party on the ground has strong roots and is based on individual members’ activism, not just on a daily basis, but also during campaigns. This was noted by another interviewee who pointed out that excessive confidence derived from earlier, consistently solid electoral performance could have lulled PSL members into a false sense of security: “What I think had a negative impact on us was the success we had previously achieved in the regional election; it was a remarkable result and today I can see how it led most of our members and activists to take things for granted; because if we’d had twenty-something percent [of votes] in the regional assembly election,3 we would easily get ten or more in the parliamentary election, right? This meant that, first of all, we approached the campaign without proper mobilisation and, secondly, I thought the candidates weren’t as committed as they should have been” (PSL_1). After its 2015 defeat, PSL noticed a decline in its membership numbers, but still boasted by far the highest number of members among all examined parties—over 120,000, compared to PO’s 42,000 or SLD’s 36,000. The statements of our interviewees alluded to the fact the leadership made insufficient efforts to engage in regular communication with the rank and file. Leading figures and MPs did not do enough to reach out to their local structures. Lower-level members were disillusioned after eight years of constant focus on co-governing and the coalition with PO, when they actually had more opportunities to meet with representatives of their rival, PiS, than with their own MPs or cabinet members. This sense of abandonment seems relevant to our understanding of post-2015 evolution of membership in PSL. At this point, it is worth adding that a research conducted by Wincławska and Brodzinska-Mirowska ´ revealed members of SLD and PSL felt a significantly higher sense of agency than their colleagues from the other two parties. PiS came third, while PO members showed by far the lowest levels of that particular metric (2016, 196). The findings were consistent with the picture of party elites’ attitudes and willingness to 3 Regional assemblies are local government bodies appointed through general election for a 5-year term (since 2018 elections are held every 5 years; but between 1998 and 2017 the term of office of the regional assemblies lasted 4 years).

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engage with the rank and file, as well as the scope of rights enjoyed by the members. In summary to the in-depth examination of the 12 political parties discussed above, it can be said that when one considers post-defeat changes in the membership base, the national context becomes relevant. In the case of Belgium, all analysed formations realised the need to reform their communication with the members. They understood that, given the ongoing general decline in the levels of participation in partisan politics, the blurring of traditional membership status and the emergence of new affiliation forms, technology would become increasingly important for promoting their organisations—for instance, by fostering supportive communities that operate outside the formal framework of orthodox membership. This was clearly expressed by our interviewees from VB, Sp.a, Ecolo and PS alike. VB’s case looks particularly interesting in this regard, since the party managed to attract fresh following solely by employing such new channels for internal and external communication, while stopping short of granting its members broader rights. Among the British parties, changes depended largely on the particular context of each formation. UKIP and LibDem were both strongly affected by Brexit. The former did not enhance the role of its rank-and-file members, but opened itself up to new communication methods. LibDem, in turn, had long-standing traditions of strong internal democracy, as their members enjoyed broad privileges and significant agency. The Labour Party’s membership base and followers were galvanised by the prospect of a new, exciting leadership. As members were given more say in the selection process, plenty of new people joined Labour to influence the outcome and the party’s future course. Meanwhile, Polish parties were reminded of the importance of grassroots structures and membership base. This was particularly visible in the case of PSL—a party which boasts especially high numbers by Polish standards. PO changed its statute and introduced new forms of involvement in the party’s life. However, similarly to PiS and PSL, it did not grant its members any additional rights, but while the former party managed to slightly grow its ranks, the latter two lost significant portions of their members. Both PO and PSL seem to have been affected by widespread disillusionment among the lower-level activists. Meanwhile, SLD went further and broadened the scope of privileges associated with being a member in order to somewhat dampen the dramatic impact of its exclusion from the parliamentary arena.

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Conclusions

The analysis presented above proves that the sheer fact of electoral defeat is not a decisive factor behind changes in party membership numbers. Rather than a defeat itself, it is its scale that determines what happens to the membership base. Parties which experience the highest drop in relevance tend to lose more members. Conversely, those which suffer the least consequential defeats stand the best chance of actually growing their ranks. Interestingly, a moderate-scale failure often means a party is able to maintain its size. It appears that an electoral defeat does not necessarily lead to an escape of members. Admittedly, in the most common scenario, a party does go through a somewhat predictable decline, as it is abandoned by those disappointed with the unsatisfactory electoral outcome. However, for a relatively large group of parties defeats do not translate into notable changes in this regard. There are also the fortunate few formations which attract more following. Most of them share a history of long confinement to the opposition and/or rare participation in a government. Our in-depth analysis of parties from three different party systems has also yielded some interesting conclusions. In all of them, the leadership continues to consider their members a vital asset—a belief voiced by party elites during interviews and expressed particularly strongly by UKIP representatives. As it turned out, the change of leader after the defeat was not significant in relation to changes in the membership base. Only in three cases: VB, LibDems and Labour the numer of members increased after the defeat and the change of a leadership. Moreover, in the case of the Polish political party Law and Justice, there was an increase in membership base despite no chance of the leader after defeat. In the other eight political parties form Belgium, Poland and the UK, there was an exodus of members after the defeat, regardless of the change (immediate or not) in its leader or lack thereof. All Belgian parties noticed the need to introduce new methods of communication with their members, stressing the importance of new media and the task of reaching younger people. Vlaams Belang was particularly keen to implement such changes, while it also elected new leadership and reformed its programme. However, it did not introduce new rights for its members. Still, the combination proved successful, as it managed to attract more members. Its three rivals were also aware of the need for corrections in terms of communication. For the British parties, the decisive element was

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their individual context. The UK’s referendum on leaving the EU turned out to have opposing effects for two different formations. It was highly damaging for UKIP, whose members and followers were then tempted away by the Conservative Party which offered much better prospects of winning an election and finalising the Brexit process. At the same time, it helped Liberal Democrats galvanise and attract new members among the pro-European segments of the population, fearful of the spreading anti-EU sentiments. Both LibDem and the Labour managed to foster a stronger membership base by changing their leadership and offering hopes of programme reforms, albeit the former also added the incentive of new rights associated with being a member. For SNP, the slight decrease in membership numbers was largely down to the rationalisations of the party’s electoral performance. By refusing to consider its result as a notable defeat, SNP gave itself no reasons to broaden the scope of its members’ privileges or change the way it communicated internally. Three out of four examined Polish parties—PO, PSL and SLD—replaced their leaders, but only SLD introduced any meaningful changes to the role and position of its members. PO added two new categories of membership. Meanwhile, neither PSL nor PiS granted any new rights to their rank and file. The PSL leadership has remained convinced of the party’s supremely democratic character, while PiS has never tried to grow its ranks at all cost, prioritising loyalty and commitment. For the latter, the defeat actually mobilised members, boosted the sense of participation and sparked the desire to support the organisation in spite of difficult circumstances and failures. The unequivocal nature of correlation between a defeat and the ensuing changes in membership forces us to conclude that other factors are also at play. This realisation echoes the words of Legein, who noted that “party reforms ‘do not just happen’. Democratic party reforms should, above all, be seen not as the result of isolated factors, but as the consequence of a convergence of different factors pressing parties to adapt ” (2021, 21). The same principle applies to external factors which parties may skilfully exploit (Bachryj-Krzywa´znia and Pacze´sniak 2021). Defeat has not always been the sole driver of membership numbers (be it their growth or decline). Therefore, it is not the only potential game changer for political parties. Although it certainly has a notable impact on the developments within a formation, one should always account also for the influence of other elements. The evolution of membership base is determined primarily by the scale of the defeat in question.

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CHAPTER 6

The Story of Electoral Defeat—How Subjective Experience Shapes Party Change

6.1

Introduction

The primary purpose of this chapter is to examine links between a postdefeat narrative adopted by political parties and the actual change that occurs within them. If the said change depends on how party elites subjectively explain reasons for a given defeat, then we should be able to find qualitative difference between narratives leading to various types of changes. In the following sections of this chapter, we will seek to address these issues by comparing post-defeat narratives, using examples of political parties from three European countries: Poland, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The chapter begins with a presentation of narratives developed within parties in the wake of their respective electoral failures. The purpose of this review is to identify similarities and differences between the narratives and, subsequently, connect them to changes that each of the examined formations underwent later on. In the next step, the variety of narratives is juxtaposed with certain features exhibited by a given party, such as its relevance and office aspiration,1 in order to identify and explain patterns of dependencies between the types of narratives and party transformations. The concluding section identifies qualities present in a given type of narrative that may inhibit or facilitate a post-defeat change. 1 Both categories, relevance and office aspiration, were explained in the Chapter 2.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Pacze´sniak et al., Electoral Defeat and Party Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0_6

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6.2

The Structure of Post-defeat Narratives

Electoral loss, which may be presented in objective, measurable and quantifiable manner, is not itself a direct incentive for party adaptation. It is because “perception necessarily precedes response” (Mair et al. 2004, 9). The key point is that perceptions matter. In order to understand the mechanism of party change following electoral failure, we need to turn our attention to inner-party actors’ subjective perceptions, to their opinions and beliefs and not only fact and objective circumstances. The key goal of the chapter therefore is not to find out how things are but how they are being seen. Electoral defeat will become a stimulus for change only if it is acknowledged as such. The aims and scope of implemented changes will depend on how individuals, members of a party’s decisive bodies, subjectively perceive the reasons for which party failed in election. Whether the reasons are identified correctly is a secondary matter. What matters is if they are believed to be true by the people who are eligible to design and implement changes within organisation. One of the forms in which the actor’s perspective becomes empirically accessible is the narrative. The way the narrative is referred to in this book, relays primarily on psychological perspective of the cognitive processes. Individual knowledge about surrounding reality takes form of a cognitive schema. Among various types of cognitive schema, the one which structures and organises knowledge about actions of social actors—individuals, group of people, anthropomorphic objects—is so-called narrative schema. It contains beliefs about characters involved in particular action, process or event, the characters’ values and beliefs, their intentions and plans, 2002, 22–25). conditions and chances for them to be fulfilled (Trzebinski ´ To understand the reality, to understand links and connections between events, but also to understand themselves and others, people spontaneously create narratives—story-like structured mental representations of reality. They consist of beliefs about agents involved, their intentions, goals, beliefs, emotions and other psychological states, explaining course of their actions (Bruner 1986, 11–16). However, narratives are not only a mental, cognitive structures. They materialise in the substance of language when being told as stories. Therefore, narratives can be understood also as “linguistic representations that involve patterns of the individuals mental construct of reality” (Laszlo 2008, 72). Such point of view emphasises the link between cognitive processes—thinking, understanding, knowing—and language. Linguistic

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objects, in this context stories people tell about events they were involved in, are sort of a bridge through which researcher can access people’s mental constructs of these events. Studying political narratives is therefore a way to understand the meaning political actors attribute to particular events, processes or objects—in our case electoral defeats. To reconstruct the story as it experienced and told by key party figures, it is necessary to follow the main thread of the plot as well as identify the involved agents and their motivations. This kind of scrutiny is aimed at establishing how the story answers the general question: who, what, why and in what way contributed to an electoral defeat? In other words, the goal is to find out how people capable of shaping and effecting changes within the party explain electoral defeats. Table 6.1 presents classification of agents and factors potentially involved in the story of electoral defeat. The types of factor presented in the table are defined in the following way: ● ● ● ● ● ●

Internal—related to intra-party agents and processes External—related to extra-party agents and processes Personal—caused by human agents Impersonal—caused by events and/or processes Controllable—manageable by a party Uncontrollable—unmanageable by a party

Table 6.1 Explanations for electoral defeat Defeat occurred because of factors Internal Personal Individual Intended Unintended

Collective Intended

Unintended

Impersonal Controllable Inspired Uninspired

Uncontrollable Inspired Uninspired

Unintended

Impersonal Controllable Inspired Uninspired

Uncontrollable Inspired Uninspired

External Personal Individual Intended Unintended Source Own elaboration

Collective Intended

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● Inspired—triggered intentionally by a person or a group of people (no longer involved in the process) ● Uninspired—spontaneous, not triggered by any human agent (natural-like processes) ● Individual—related to a particular person (e.g. leader) ● Collective—related to a particular group of people (e.g. other party or a faction within a party) ● Intended—when person or people involved purposefully act against a party ● Unintended—when person or people involved unintentionally cause harm to a party (e.g. due to character fault or wrong decision) In the following sub-sections, we will present the reasons party decision-makers give to explain electoral defeats: whom or what they blame and how they picture causal relations between the factors and agents they believe were involved. For each party, we will try to reveal a plot and a cast of the story of its electoral defeat to see if the differences in this respect are related to the depth of the formation’s subsequent change. 6.2.1

The Case of Political Parties from Poland

6.2.1.1 Civic Platform One of the striking features in the narrative adopted by PO leaders after the 2015 election is the fact they refused to admit their result was actually a failure. Although the party lost its status as the leader of the governing coalition, it remained one of the main parliamentary forces with a relatively high level of support. Comments such as “25% - it was acceptable; in my opinion this result was relatively good” (PO_1) suggest that the outcome was perceived as a sort of consolation prize. This kind of denial also implies unwillingness to carry out a critical evaluation of the party’s shortcomings that led to the defeat. This is another reoccurring feature in PO’s approach. Whatever the reason for the result was, it was not the party, not the collective “we”, that should be blamed—a sentiment reflected in a self-absolving statement (PO_4): “I don’t think we made some drastic errors ”. Nonetheless, giving up power requires some explanations and PO’s politicians provided them by pointing out two kinds of factors which led to the defeat. They focused mostly on processes and

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events external to the party—a choice consistent with their refusal to criticise the organisation itself. In their words, the loss was a result of an uncontrollable, natural-like process that is an unavoidable element of the political cycle. People simply “needed change (PO_5); got bored” (PO_3), which was due to “the logic of democratic process ” (PO_2). Additionally, new parties, one of which was competing for the same electorate, emerged. Another contributing factor, as reported by interviewees, was the main rival, PiS, and its associated media which engaged in an unfair, biased, spiteful coverage of PO’s message and agenda. The only internally attributed reason for the defeat was the chairperson’s performance during the campaign. One of the respondents expressed this belief in a very direct way: “the main responsible person was the leader, Ewa Kopacz” (PO_3). In other words, the party as a whole was exorcised from the collective blame by shifting it onto the leader. At the same time, those who underplay her impact emphasise there was little she could do to prevent a defeat and the result did not depend on her actions: she “did not have a chance to change anything ” (PO_4). To summarise, PO’s electoral result in 2015 was explained by its politicians in terms of: – external, impersonal, uncontrollable factors (both inspired and uninspired by external agents), natural-like political cycle and the emergence of new formations; – external, personal, collective, intended factors: i.e., competition from new and old contenders; – internal, personal, individual, unintended factors: the chairperson’s errors. 6.2.1.2 Polish People’s Party The fact that PSL was PO’s junior partner in a governing coalition for eight years (two terms in a row) strongly affected its officials’ story of the electoral defeat in 2015. The common feature in PSL respondents’ narrative was a strong emphasis on two actors who, supposedly, contributed to the party’s electoral result. The first one was the chairperson, depicted as weak and inefficient, whose actions led to PSL being dominated by the senior coalition partner. Numerous comments on the topic leave no doubts about how negatively he was evaluated as a leader and how his guilt was obvious to the respondents. “I personally blame

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our then-chairman (…) the way he ran the business, it has simply taken us down”—said one of the interviewees (PSL_1). The ‘culprit’s’ failure as a leader was due to his characters faults and the lack of leadership skills. In this context, he was accused of being narcissistic and submissive at the same time; a person who speaks a lot, “although, unfortunately, he is definitely not a decision-maker” (PSL_5). The inability to maintain discipline within the party and fight for its interests were the markers of his failed leadership. Similarly to the previous case, the party itself, as an organisation and a group of people, does not appear as a collective actor which should be blamed for an unsatisfying electoral result. Respondents did not complain about the party as a whole—they only expressed their disappointment with the leader. Such personalisation of blame bears the hallmarks of scapegoating, directed at protecting a positive image of the collective. The leader’s shortcomings enabled other actors in PSL’s story to take advantage of the situation and use it to their own benefit. Because of its weak leadership, PSL “lost its agency” (PSL_4), was unable to “assert its independence and autonomy” and pursue its own political goals while locked in a PO-dominated coalition. In short, the formation could not spread its wings and present its political agenda to the electorate—“[Civic] Platform did not allow us to meet our political goals ” (PSL_5). More importantly, PO’s interference and impact was portrayed as purposeful and malicious. “[Civic] Platform was playing dirty with us; acting very brutally towards us ”. It was claimed that occasionally, the dominant coalition partner went as far as stealing PSL’s ideas: “a month later [after PSL had presented a legislative proposal], the [Civic] Platform’s proposal appears, f…k!, (…) practically a copy of ours ” (PSL_2). PSL was not only being played and prevented from implementing its own agenda, but also blamed for PO’s unpopular decisions. PSL appeared to be deprived of agency in government and, at the same time, forced to take responsibility for the cabinet’s errors. “Some faults, not ours but PO’s, have been extended on us ” (PSL_1) and in the end, “we paid the price for the coalition partner’s wrong policy” (PSL_4). In simple terms, the cost of co-ruling exceeded its benefits. In short, PSL politicians’ narrative is a story of an electoral defeat resulting from actions of an inefficient leader and an unfair partner. It focuses on:

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– internal, personal, individual, unintended factors: the chairperson’s shortcomings; – external, personal, collective, intended factors: an unfair coalition partner. 6.2.1.3 Democratic Left Alliance In the case of SLD, the picture is somewhat more complicated, as the narrative emerging from the interviews refers not only to the parliamentary election but also to the presidential campaign that had preceded it, the result of which had been far from satisfying.2 These two were depicted as inseparable elements of the same story. Similarly to the previous two cases, SLD respondents also tended to personalise blame, although they did so in a different manner and personal context. Firstly, they pointed out the faults and mistakes of the front candidates in both elections. The presidential candidate was seen as a cynical person: “a smart-arse, this is how I would call her (…) who promoted herself and did not care about the rest ” (SLD_2). In the words of our respondents, she ran for office “to gain publicity for the sake of unrelated purposes ” (SLD_6) and lacked political experience. When it comes to the SLD’s top candidate in the parliamentary election, the issue supposedly lied not so much in her character or motivations, but rather in the lack of experience and competence (“I was surprised that her knowledge of many topics was very shallow” (SLD_6)). What is important in this context is that both candidates were outsiders, not members of the party. This manner of personalising the blame, whereby defeat is attributed to actors formally not affiliated with the party, enables the denial of collective, organisational responsibility for the failure. However, the externalisation is not the only marker of SLD’s narrative. Naturally, the candidates had not appeared out of nowhere— they had been selected. In this perspective, the defeat was a consequence of the party leadership’s “wrong decisions prior to the […] presidential election” (SLD_1). According to the respondents, the presidential candidate, Magdalena Ogórek, “was imposed” (SLD_6) by SLD chairperson and her candidacy “was not discussed” (SLD_3). Her subsequent heavy loss at the polls created a sense of “decay, chaos, desperation” (SLD_3)

2 In 2015, the presidential and parliamentary elections coincided. The presidential election took place in May, whereas the parliamentary one in October.

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and “decision-making irrationalism” (SLD_6) within the party. In combination with an authoritative and untransparent decision-making process (“imposing personal decisions by the leaders ”), this led to other mistakes. One such “irrational decision” was “taking Palikot’s Movement as coalition partner”3 (SLD_6). The decisions and the situation within the party had its roots in “triumphalism, ignorance, lack of knowledge, even (…) misjudgements of the situation” (SLD_5). Additionally, one respondent pointed out leaders’ personal ambitions and fears as well as their desire to keep the power balance in the party unchanged. At a first glance, blaming the leader is not unique to SLD when compared with the previous cases. However, an important difference should be noted. Even though the chairperson is specifically mentioned by name as being personally responsible for the defeat, the respondents’ understanding of who constitutes party leadership also extends onto other, unnamed, people. Therefore, the culpability is not attributed to a single person, as other, unspecified party authorities are also held responsible. Bringing up other aspects of the formation’s inner functioning (progressing disintegration, situational and psychological atmosphere that impairs decision-making) suggests that the causes of the defeat are not limited to any particular individual, but rather lie in the malfunctioning of the party management structures. The picture of disadvantaging circumstances is a mosaic of wrong decisions, poor performance of the candidates, the atmosphere within the party, the untransparent decision-making process and the emergence of another competitor on the left side of the political scene. In the words of one respondent, the new contender “was evidently created to weaken SLD’ and ‘was supported by journalists ” (SLD_5). – In short, the factors identified by the SLD respondents may be classified as: – external, personal, individual, unintended factors: candidates’ performance; – external, personal, collective, intended factor: a new left-wing contender enjoying support from the media; – internal, personal, individual, unintended factor: chairperson;

3 The context and meaning of this decision, together with the basic information about the parties and people mentioned here, are provided in Chapter 2.

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– internal, personal, collective, unintended factors: party authorities; – internal, impersonal, controllable, uninspired factor: situation within the party. 6.2.1.4 Law and Justice PiS’s narrative displays similarities to the other parties discussed above in that it seeks explanation for the defeat outside of the party. “Unfavourable media situation, because practically all relevant media (…) were in the hands of those in power” (PiS_1) was one of the examples of such arguments. Interestingly, the media were pictured not as a passive actor, or a tool in the hands of political opponents, but as an active player with its own agenda: “media (…) are leaning towards the left, or the liberal side and, secondly, they sought economic goals and power, complete power” (PiS_5). The other external factor mentioned by the respondents was the presidential airplane’s crash in 2010 near Smolensk airport in Russia, which resulted in the death of the PiS-affiliated president, Lech Kaczynski, ´ and other notable party figures. This was a huge blow to PiS because those who died in the wreckage “were the intellectual backbone of the party” (PiS_3). The 2011 election came too soon, as the party “did not recover” (PiS_1) on time and remained “in the shadow of the Smolensk disaster” (PiS_3). However, several further comments, pointing to different aspects of PiS’ performance in the 2011 campaign, reveal certain unique features that are absent from the previous three narratives. The respondents put emphasis on the collective “we” and admitted errors without identifying a particular person, leader, group or faction within the party. “We were missing the foundations (PiS_3); we deviated from people’s expectations (PiS_4); we should never blame the voters (…) it’s up to us to convince them why they should vote for us, rather than our opponents” (PiS_3). In this respect, PiS’ post-defeat narrative was clearly different. The interviewees acknowledged collective responsibility for their defeat. The story of failure is not one of misconduct on the part of any particular person, but rather one of an insufficient collective effort. Put simply, the blame was collectively internalised, as respondents realised: “we”, as a whole, failed. In other words, the defeat was explained in terms of: – an external, impersonal, uncontrollable uninspired factor: the presidential airplane crash;

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– an external, personal, collective, intended factor: unfair media; – an internal, personal, collective, unintended factor: failure of the collective “we”. The last element seems to be a distinctive feature in PiS’s narrative. To summarise, we would like to point out several features of the abovementioned narratives that might reveal certain patterns. Firstly, the two parties which had been in office prior to their defeat (PO and PSL) were not willing to critically evaluate their own input into the electoral results. The only internal factor recognised as contributing to poor performance was strongly personalised, embodied in individual leaders. In contrast, SLD and PiS were more inclined to focus on internal factors, even though they did not shy away from externalising large portions of the blame. Among the latter two formations, PiS chose to accept collective responsibility rather than look for individual scapegoats—a fact that makes its narrative unique. 6.2.2

The Case of Political Parties from Belgium

6.2.2.1 Ecolo Our interviewees representing Ecolo had little doubt that their performance in the 2014 election was a defeat. The dominant tone of their accounts is well expressed in statements such as: “The loss was so significant that we couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen” (Ecolo_2) or “it was an extremely heavy defeat ” (Ecolo_4). Only one respondent was less blunt in her assessment: “We didn’t treat the 2014 result as some huge loss ” (Ecolo_1). The diagnosis that emerges from our conversations with Ecolo members seems rather consistent and unambiguous. They focus on the party itself, as can be deduced from the following statement: “It is very important to analyse the entire campaign and verify what was the party’s focus ”. Talking about the changes that became necessary after the 2014 election, the same respondent said: “we had to re-think the party structure” (Ecolo_2). Others stressed that “the party was not in good shape, the campaign was also far from perfect ” (Ecolo_3). “We have to analyse together where we went wrong and what lessons for the future we can draw from this ” (Ecolo_5). The issue of internal structure was a recurring theme in several interviews, as Ecolo’s representatives pointed out difficulties in managing an organisation where local units enjoyed a

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broad autonomy: “They feel independent from the leader. Moreover, they formally enjoy a far-reaching autonomy” (Ecolo_3). The structure meant “the party did not work well, it was not organised correctly” (Ecolo_3). Perhaps the disjointed structure should also be seen as relevant to another aspect of which our respondents were critical: the party’s identity and agenda. When asked about the main cause of the defeat, one person gave a very definitive answer: “adopting a position that was unclear to the voters (…) our line of argument was not coherent” (Ecolo_1). This was not an isolated opinion: “We did not present our voters with any vision” (Ecolo_3); “The previous leadership tried to push a broad front (…) but if we try to reach everybody, in the end we won’t reach anybody” (Ecolo_4); “People were asking themselves: ‘where, after all, do you stand’?” (Ecolo_1). However, the problem lied not only in “the contents of our agenda (…), but also in the way of communicating it ” (Ecolo_4). The latter aspect was, in the eyes of our respondents, a result of the party’s alienation from the society. One respondent, Ecolo’s full-time staffer, provided a telling insight into the matter: “I did not realise how diverse [in terms of opinions – Authors] our society is ” (Ecolo_5). Another one referred to the same problem in slightly different words: “We lost touch with civic organisations that used to be close to us (…) the society changed and we failed to recognise it and adjust ” (Ecolo_2). Yet another one said simply: “We identified our disconnect from the circles that we had previously been associated with as one of the reasons behind the 2014 defeat ” (Ecolo_4). The disconnection mentioned here proved to be critical when Ecolo faced the so-called photovoltaic affair which was also pointed to as a factor contributing to the poor performance in 2014. “Ecolo was associated with the photovoltaic affair. This led to the party’s defeat ” (Ecolo_2). Characteristically, even though the respondents identified communication mistakes on the part of a specific minister, his personal responsibility was then watered down and interpreted as a collective issue, in a fashion typical for Ecolo’s perception: “we had some arguments that it wasn’t our fault (…), but our minister couldn’t communicate them” and, further in the same interview, “we are a party of intellectuals; we think that if something is logical, society understands it (…), yet politics has its emotional component ” (Ecolo_2). The blame, therefore, lied with the party, not specific individuals. While the photovoltaic affair was presented as something beyond Ecolo’s influence, respondents were critical of how the crisis was handled: “this was managed very poorly by our party” (Ecolo_3). What

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is also characteristic in the attitude of Ecolo’s representatives is their reluctance to personalise a defeat (“You can’t blame a few specific individuals ” (Ecolo_5)) and tendency to see it as a consequence of collective mistakes. The party explained its loss by referring to: – internal, personal, collective, unintended factors: management and communication errors; – internal, impersonal, controllable, uninspired factors: unmanageable party structure, alienation from the voter base, lack of clarity in the agenda. In addition to that, two interviews include mentions of the impact of their competitors. However, neither respondent went on to elaborate the topic and attribute it with any significant importance for the election outcome. Nonetheless, the factor can be classified as: – external, personal, collective, intended factor: competition from PTB/PVDA (Workers’ Party of Belgium) and PS (Socialist Party). 6.2.2.2 Vlaams Belang Respondents from Vlaams Belang did not question the assertion that their result in the 2014 federal election was a loss. However, while the defeat was very much expected as a continuation of a worrying trend that had already been observed for a while, its scale seemed to overwhelm the party. “It was no big surprise that we lost, but the amount that we lost, it was a big shock for a lot of people” and, later, in the same tone, “everybody saw what is coming and everybody felt like they predicted this result” (VB_2). Another respondent said: “we knew we were going to lose” (VB_3). Yet another claimed: “I predicted it would be worse than anybody expected” (VB_1). The 2014 result was seen not as an isolated incident, but rather the latest episode in a trend that the party had fallen into some time before: “the Vlaams Belang had been losing (…) elections since, I would say, 2004” (VB_2); “we were going down for ten years ” (VB_3). Importantly, the respondents saw that process as a controllable, at least to a certain extent. One of them (VB_3) expressed that belief in the following manner: “we expected to be defeated so we could prepare for the post-defeat period” and, later, “our defeat was entirely prepared and entirely managed. So, the defeat is a part of a general, more general story”. The exact meaning

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of the “more general story” can be extracted from the words of another interviewee , for whom the party’s electoral experiences are linked to its evolution. Importantly, the process is not perceived as autonomous and entirely beyond control: “this is evolution, but not entirely independent process; organization is responsible for how it goes and to where it leads ” (VB_1). This assertion is important, since it reveals the speaker’s belief in possessing agency and being responsible for the fate of the organisation. The same conviction is even more evident in the way respondents saw the causes of their defeat. The common feature of prime importance in their diagnoses was the tendency to seek the roots of the problem within the party. They mentioned internal conflicts: “[there] was a lot fights in the party (…) there were like difference of opinion and what direction party should go” (VB_2). Another interviewee described the same issue through a metaphor: “a pub where they fight, no customers come” (VB_1). Yet another person pointed their finger at those supposedly responsible for the internal turmoil: “leadership pushed us to a trouble (…) so the leadership was in the chaos in the end” (VB_3). However, the infighting was seen not as a result of intentional, malicious actions, but rather of “bad management ” (VB_3). One respondent placed the leadership’s negative influence in a broader context, as merely one of several aspects in which Vlaams Belang outmoded: “we had a leadership that has been standing for 20 years, so people (…) just want something else (…) then, we had outdated techniques we used and, then, the issues ” (VB_4). Apart from communication, the party’s agenda and the manner in which specific talking points were presented also required an overhaul: “we had to refresh our story” (VB_3); “the message isn’t really softened, but the discourse has become more on the intellectual level ” (VB_5). In that view, Vlaams Belang fell victim to a certain routine which made it incapable of fresh wins: “I think it’s generational issue (…) people are relaying on the experience, what worked in the past will work in future” (VB_4). Although external, structural and systemic factors also featured in our respondents’ accounts, they were assigned far less importance. They were seen not as root causes, but merely elements aggravating the party’s internal problems. During the interviews, there were mentions of the following aspects: ● competition in the electoral market: “N-VA did, up until, let’s say, the 2014 election, they actually started to say the same thing as us ”

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(VB_2); “for the previous 30 years, we didn’t have any competition on the right-wing side” (VB_1); ● unfavourable media coverage: “every piece about us was negative” (VB_3); ● ostracism: “you know cordon sanitaire? That’s the biggest problem we face” (VB_1). Overall, the narrative presented by Vlaams Belang members was dominated by: – internal, personal, individual, unintended factor: an ineffective leader; – internal, personal, collective, unintended factors: outdated, old generation of leadership; factional fighting within the party; – internal, impersonal, controllable, uninspired factors: outdated agenda and technique of communication; 6.2.2.3 Socialistische Partij Anders—Sp.a Our respondents representing Sp.a did not assess their 2014 result as an unequivocal failure: “the outcome was seen more as a maintenance of status quo than a loss ” (Sp.a_2). They avoided admissions of defeat by referring to certain mechanisms of Belgian politics: “we tend not to assess results based on whether the party ends up in government or in the opposition” (Sp.a_2). Another interviewee, while acknowledging it was defeat, emphasised its narrow margin: “even though we lost not so much (…), there was certainly a sense of defeat ” (Sp.a_3). One of the people we spoke to looked further into the past and sought reasons behind the 2014 result in prior events and processes that had been external to the party: “migration (…) combined with the immense uncertainty of people after terrorist attack and the banking crisis (…) and we knew that in uncertain times the extreme parties gain” (Sp.a_1). The same respondent explained that while the party attempted to address these issues (“we were fighting against that ” (Sp.a_1)), its efforts went unnoticed and unappreciated, because “we’re part of the elite politics, part of the mainstream and so, everything on one heap” (Sp.a_1). In that person’s view, Sp.a suffered from being “guilty by association” with the ruling coalition which was blamed for the sociopolitical difficulties the country faced at that time: “we became a symbol, or one, with the government (…). We were in a lot of governments before,

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but we were never the biggest party” (Sp.a_3). The relevance of such perceptions was also noted by another interviewee: “by having been in the government a lot in the last decades, there was a distance between the voter and the party” (Sp.a_1). Another respondent thought that blaming Sp.a—typically a junior coalition partner—for various problems was somewhat unfair and an intentional effort by its political competitors: “it was all framing – and successful framing – by the right-wing and, in particular by N-VA” (Sp.a_3). In this perspective, the causes of the defeat and the party’s poor shape at that time were identified as being outside the organisation. Main contributing factors were negative attitudes and emotions that built up within the society as a consequence of processes that were entirely beyond Sp.a’s control. If one accepts such a line of argument, the resulting unfavourable perceptions of the party could easily be deemed as unjustified, based more on Sp.a’s position in the political system than on the actual effectiveness of its agenda and initiatives. At the same time, respondents spoke of intentional, malicious efforts made by their competitor, N-VA: “we got a lot of punches by the then-emerging dominant party, N-VA” (Sp.a_3), whose work was made easier by the media: “we became the favourite punching bag of the journalists in Flanders (…) everybody was talking badly about us ” (Sp.a_3). The dwindling of support for Sp.a was interpreted as a consequence of certain changes occurring in Belgian politics as well as in other European countries. Those changes were presented as an autonomous, objective process, in the face of which the party could do little but accept its fate. Given such a picture, the prospects for rebuilding a strong socialdemocratic formation appeared to one of our respondents as a fantasy: “in most European states, also here, we are seeing a progressing fragmentation of the political scene (…) large parties are not large any more” (Sp.a_2). Another external process that affected Sp.a’s diminishing support was an evolution of the party’s electorate which “is left-wing when it comes to socio-economics, but culturally is growing more conservative” (Sp.a_2). The same person added: “it’s not only our problem, all social-democratic parties are facing it ” (Sp.a_2). Another respondent seconded the notion that Sp.a’s grim prospects were a part of a broader process affecting the entire European family of social-democratic formations: “what was the case back then, certainly was that in general, social-democratic parties, socialist parties, were in decline” (Sp.a_3).

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The party’s only fault under those circumstances lied in insufficient internal cohesion which induced the inability to adopt clear-cut, comprehensible standpoints on issues that mattered to the voters. “The problem was that we were blurred and diffused on these main subjects ” (Sp.a_1) However, another respondent seemed to invalidate such diagnosis by claiming that the party’s agenda had nothing to do with its troubles at the polls: “it was certainly not an ideological question” (Sp.a_3). There was also the matter of leadership—“the party leadership was very contested” (Sp.a_3)—but it was presented more in terms of individual performance than a collective issue: “we needed new leadership, because he was too contested. He was not a bad guy per se and he had his good sides, but, yeah…” (Sp.a_3). While one respondent pointed to mistakes in how the party had communicated with its voters and failed to revitalise its ranks with more youth, that opinion remained a lone voice in an otherwise clearly defensive narrative. Consequently, the image painted by Sp.a members is one of an organisation being slowly crushed by a wave of spontaneous, external processes and events beyond its control which curtail its aspirations and electoral potential. On top of that, the party is unfairly attacked by its rivals and hostile media biased against it. The last piece of the picture is a weak leader. All in all, the narrative focuses on factors that are: – external, impersonal, uncontrollable, uninspired by external actors: socio-political processes affecting European social-democratic parties as well as the interactions specifically between Sp.a and its electorate; – external, personal, collective, intended factors: competition from NVA and biased media; – internal, personal, individual, unintended factor: weak, contested leader. 6.2.2.4 Parti Socialiste In the case of Parti Socialiste, reconstructing the post-defeat narrative is somewhat problematic, since our respondents refused to acknowledge their 2014 result as an actual defeat, regardless of the fact that the party recorded a lower support rate than in previous elections, lost several seats in the parliament and, at the federal level, was forced into opposition. PS representatives struck a defiant tone in their accounts: “How was that a defeat? This was a really good election for us ”. The same person further

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stressed: “We won the election, but we lost the cabinet-forming negotiations ” (PS_1). Another interviewee went along the same lines, saying that their move into opposition was “not a loss of support at the polls, but the consequence of us getting pushed aside from the talks on forming the government ” (PS_3). Yet another respondent presented a similar standpoint: “We didn’t see the result as a defeat – more as a moment of reckoning (…) the result itself was not so bad” (PS_2). Even in a sole response that actually referred to it being a defeat, there was an immediate counterpoint: “I personally took it as a defeat. But I must add that it was a relative defeat ” (PS_3). Given such attitudes, it was hard to extract any diagnoses of the party’s shortcomings from the respondents’ accounts—particularly since they were very consistent in their contentment with the result and were full of praise for their formation: “We have solid relations with civic organisations (…), we know how to adapt to new circumstances, we have a good grasp of new, emerging issues and our agenda still has a fresh touch to it ” (PS_1). Later during the interview, the same person said: “We have a brand of a serious party (…) we’ve proven more than once that we’re responsible” (PS_1). Another respondent asked a supposedly rhetorical question: “In general terms, what could we have done better?” (PS_2). The only statement indicating the party bore any kind of blame referred to its leader: “Our chairman headed a cabinet that was politically unbalanced (…) and that unbalanced composition produced a rather centric policy direction that was then associated with the entire party” (PS_3). However, given the same interviewee’s earlier remark (“Nobody in the party was responsible for the lower result ” (PS_3)) and their reluctance to concede it was a defeat, it was hardly a signal of a genuine, collective internalisation of responsibility. Respondents have noted increased competition on the left side of the political scene which might have stripped their party off some of its traditional electorate: “Obviously, PTB wanted to grow at our expense, take away a part of our electorate (…) its success began in 2014 after it had strongly criticised my party – a move that cost us quite a few votes ” (PS_2). Another interviewee made a similar observation, stating: “The radical left obviously picked up the issue and it cost us, socialists, rather a lot ” (PS_3). Nonetheless, the above-mentioned competition should not be considered as a reason behind a defeat because, in the minds of our respondents, the defeat never happened. Apart from an increasing pressure from the communists, Parti Socialiste seems to have suffered due to natural processes that affect parties holding power: “voters grew weary of

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Di Rupo” (PS_3) whose busy schedule as a prime minister left him little time to look after the party—a fact “which meant he was a phantom presence as a leader” (PS_3). Still, it was apparently not enough to warrant a criticism or a call for accountability: “when Di Rupo expressed his wish to reclaim the post of the chairman, everybody endorsed him” (PS_3). In summary, PS’ narrative was dominated by denial and relativisation of the 2014 result. The decrease in support was not interpreted as a defeat, while its causes were identified as: – external, personal, collective, intended factors: competition from PTB; – external, impersonal, uncontrollable, uninspired factors: a natural process of exhaustion from years of holding power and the public’s weariness of the party’s leading figure, Di Rupo. 6.2.3

The Case of Political Parties from the United Kingdom

6.2.3.1 Labour Party Our Labour respondents focused much of their attention on the party’s vague agenda which, in their opinion, led to a defensive, overly cautious campaigning. Such sentiments were expressed, for instance, in the following remark: “A lot of Labour people would say, well, we lost because we weren’t radical enough” (LP_2); “Our approach in 2015 was very cautious, I suppose. It was more about not making mistakes than it was about setting out a radical programme” (LP_1). The same person later addressed the same theme by characterising Labour’s campaign: “don’t say anything that was going to upset anybody” (LP_1). This lack of a more decisive edge had particularly heavy consequences in Scotland, where Labour’s poor result really affected its overall performance across the UK: “we have the Scottish Nationalism and the British Nationalism, and the Labour Party, my party, seeking to discuss every issue (…) And that’s not getting us anywhere in the current debate” (LP_3). Another interviewee admitted: “We didn’t address the SNP questions soon enough” (LP_1). The vagueness of the agenda led the party to neglecting and losing some of its voter base. Labour “had taken their voters for granted” (LP_3) and concentrated instead on reaching out to other segments of the society: “We could just leave them where they were and we could try to get these other people (…) we drifted away from them and suddenly they switched” (LP_1).

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An overly cautious campaign lacking a clear message was not the only cause of the 2014 defeat identified by our respondents. Another subject that was mentioned repeatedly was the person of the party’s leader: “The leadership was a problem and people didn’t want Ed Miliband” (LP_1). Compared to David Cameron, Miliband did not appear a proper statesman: “People looked at David Cameron, they looked at Ed Miliband (…) they thought that David Cameron was a better Prime Minister” (LP_2). In this context, two particular traits were pointed out as disadvantageous. Firstly, “I think Ed got painted as a bit nerdy, a bit socially awkward” (LP_1). Another respondent spoke in the same vein: “We also had Ed Miliband as leader who, you know - a very decent human being, but, er, not a particularly impressive leader and quite weak - who’s been seen as quite weak and a bit geek” (LP_3). The said weakness was Miliband’s second supposed issue—one that made his vulnerable to being dominated by SNP: “He’s going to be bullied by SNP and they’re going to tell him what to do, and he’s going to be weak and he’s going do it ” (LP_1). Hence, he was an overall inadequate candidate for the post of prime minister: “And I came across people on the doorstep who said ‘I really didn’t see Ed Miliband as a credible Prime Minister’” (LP_2). At a first glance, the picture of reasons behind Labour’s 2015 defeat, as presented by its representatives, seems fairly complex. However, the identified causes can be effectively boiled down to a common denominator. All respondents focused primarily on mistakes in campaigning and setting the agenda, wrong strategy, lack of a clear message. In this context, the issues specified here were not linked with a particular person or a faction within the party. It appears that our Labour respondents attribute responsibility to the party at large by using the plural pronoun, “we”, and perceive their 2015 performance as a failed collective effort. In addition to that, blame is personalised and pushed onto Ed Miliband. In summary, then, the factors emerging in the narrative presented by Labour’s representative can be classified as: – internal, personal, collective, unintended factors: mistakes in designing agenda and campaign; – internal, personal, individual, unintended factor: a weak and socially awkward leader.

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6.2.3.2 Liberal Democrats The tale told by the Liberal Democrats participating in our research puts little, if any, blame on the party. It is claimed that the election result was somewhat unfair in the light of the formation’s efforts. The loss is not perceived as a consequence of misguided policies, as directly expressed by one of the respondents: “We did what was positive, and we wanted to be more for the country, not for us, not for the party” (LD_1). Later on, the same person reaffirms such standpoint with another statement: “we paid the price for what we thought was the best thing to do” (LD_1). Instead, our interviewees sought reasons behind their defeat in the actions of its coalition partner, the Conservative Party, whose conduct during the campaign is portrayed almost as a betrayal: “the leader of my party, Nick Clegg (…) he was just not prepared for the Conservatives turning around us, trying to destroy us, we weren’t prepared as an organisation and we weren’t prepare psychologically for this kind of assault ” (LD_2). The negative impact of the Tories was also noticed by another respondent, who reflected on the government’s policy for tackling poverty: “one thing that we did not do well: we supported the government’s program on austerity. We were seen as being instrumental in benefit changes which led to a much worse situation for the poorest layer of society” (LD_1). According to that person, it was the only mistake made by the LibDem—a belief she made clear elsewhere in her account: “On everything else (…): the green economy, raising income tax level, free school meals, issue of social injustice (…) there were some incredible things that we directly influenced” (LD_1). Moreover, being held accountable for a misguided policy was seen as something beyond the party’s influence: “it was impossible for us to counteract ” (LD_1). Another interviewee, when asked whether it was external factors that led to the party’s defeat, replied simply: “That’s right ” (LD_2). While LibDem refused to acknowledge that their actions as part of the coalition government might have caused the decline in support, they did admit some deficiencies with regard to how they communicated with the voters. Here, again, they placed their coalition partner as a “supporting character” of their story: “we lost this support because of the coalition (…), but the main factor (…) was that the Conservatives ran a very aggressive campaign based on fear” (LD_1). Later on, the same theme recurs in the following statement: “our strategists were just not prepared for their attack that came, nor had we realized how well organized the Conservatives were in the campaign (…). We were using rather old-fashioned methods of campaigning ” (LD_2). Similar issues in communication were

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noted by another respondent: “I think it was about us not getting our message across, so we should have been better at saying that we had positive influence” (LD_1). Such language signalled conviction that the party’s policies were, basically, well designed, but poorly communicated. In other words: as a political formation and a member of the governing coalition, LibDem did a good job, but failed to make sure the society knew it. If not for the disloyal and dishonourable conduct of its coalition partner, their result in the 2015 election would have probably been different. Causes of the defeat were, therefore, attributed to an external factor. Furthermore, there were no signs of blaming the party’s leader, which is a tempting and frequent path of reasoning in the wake of a poor electoral performance. Quite to the contrary, one of interviewees explicitly said: “I think people felt that Nick Clegg had done a good job’ and, later, ‘I think people felt that he was doing his best ” (LD_1). In summary, there was a single element that dominated the common narrative: – external, personal, collective, intended factor: the actions of LibDem’s partner coalition. In the context of the above-mentioned comments, the behaviour of the Conservative Party should be understood as a major driving force which was impossible to counter, given an inefficient communication strategy. As a worthwhile side note, it should be said that one interviewee (LD_3) provided a very different explanation of the defeat, by repeatedly and directly naming Nick Clegg as being personally responsible. The respondent referred to the leader’s numerous issues and shortcomings: disconnect from both the electorate and LibDem’ rank-and-file members, poor choice of advisors, exaggerated personal ambitions, deficiencies in experience, failing to keep the promises made to the voters. There are two reasons why we should consider it an isolated opinion rather than a reflection of a broader sentiment within the party. First of all, the respondent readily acknowledged the fact it was a lone voice: “It was a huge shock to the party. The party was very, very surprised we’ve done so badly. I was somewhat less surprised” (LD_3). Secondly, that persons’ perception of the leader might have easily been affected by their erstwhile personal conflict and the fact Clegg himself had removed the interviewee from performing vital functions within the party. As the person in question was promised anonymity, we cannot provide more details on that episode.

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6.2.3.3 UK Independence Party The narrative constructed by UKIP was structured similarly to that of Liberal Democrats. The role of the primary culprit is given to the Conservative Party, with its then-leader and Prime Minister, Theresa May. When asked about what or who was responsible for UKIP’s poor showing in the 2017 election, the first respondent replied in a manner that left no doubt as their interpretation of the events: “Theresa May (…) the Conservatives has stolen our votes ” (UKIP_1). The same sentiment surfaces later during the interview: “John Humphrys described our election campaign as a suicide mission, because we knew that it was called ‘no way or anyway’ because the Conservatives has stolen our votes ’” (UKIP_1). Another respondent spoke in a similar tone: “We lost a huge amount of our traditional supporters, because they themselves got taken in by the Tories, you know, they didn’t want to stand against the Conservatives ” and, later, in a manner highly reminiscent of the previous person’s words: “They took our mental, they started using all of our words. Everything we fought for, you know (…) all the phrases, the catch phrases, that they used were our catch phrases ” (UKIP_2). The first interviewee assigned a particularly negative role in that process to Theresa May, who “gave her famous Lancaster House speech on leaving the EU (…) it was like a UKIP conference speech” (UKIP_1). There was no question as to May’s intention: “She wanted to take our voters (…), she didn’t tell the truth at Lancaster House speech” (UKIP_1). The second person also accused May of playing a part in taking votes away from UKIP: “Our supporters who would been taken in by Theresa May (…) Prime Minister saying she was going to deliver the Brexit (…) of course, none of this was true” (UKIP_2). The Tory leader was not believed to be the only external actor that contributed to UKIP’s poor result. According to one of the interviewees, the party fell victim to a “double whammy”: while the Conservatives led by Theresa May borrowed from UKIP’s agenda and narrative, the Labour Party headed by Jeremy Corbyn adopted an anti-establishment image akin to what Independence Party was known for: “Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader, he caught pretty much the anti-establishment feel (…), so in many ways we were losing to the Labour, because they were saying anti-establishment things ” (UKIP_1). Such externalisation of the causes is a central element in the stories told by UKIP representatives. Only when asked some follow-up questions, one of the respondents pointed to the impact the National Executive Committee had on Nigel Farage’s decision to leave the party: “our biggest card we had was Nigel Farage (…) one of the reasons why Nigel left was because he didn’t

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want to have to deal with NEC ever again” (UKIP_2). In the words of the same person, tensions between the Executive Committee and Farage were manifestations of a personal conflict over the composition of the party’s slate in Wales; they showed that “the party was completely ungovernable” (UKIP_2). Later on, the same interviewee asserted: “We had a bad leader, Paul Nuttall ”, who was pictured as somewhat reluctant (“he kind of wanted to be, than didn’t want to, than wanted to be the leader” (UKIP_2)). All in all, UKIP’s narrative about the defeat in the 2017 election is dominated by two factors: – external, personal, collective, intended: the Conservative Party which stole UKIP’s votes, agenda and narrative; the Labour Party which took over UKIP’s anti-establishment image and the electorate it appealed to; – external, personal, individual, intended factors: Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, as those who personified their respective formations and their hostile intentions. Additionally, there were internal issues that contributed to the loss: – internal, personal, individual, unintended factor: a weak, reluctant leader; – nternal, personal, collective, intended factor: National Executive Committee which, driven by personal ambitions, pushed Nigel Farage to leave. As can be concluded from the above considerations, UKIP’s narrative was somewhat ambiguous in that it referred to both external and internal elements. It should be stressed that the former were typically placed at the forefront and emphasised as primary reasons behind the defeat—it was a common thread across all respondents’ accounts. The Conservative Party is cast as a hostile manipulator looking to steal UKIP’s agenda and electorate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the respondent who talked about internal issues, i.e. the tussle over the names on the party’s slate in Wales, had been Farage’s close ally in UKIP and, indeed, followed him to become a prominent figure in the Brexit Party. Unfortunately, as we struggled to encourage more UKIP representatives to participate in the interviews, we

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were unable to verify if and what role did other UKIP leaders attribute to internal aspects. 6.2.3.4 Scottish National Party When SNP representatives spoke about the causes of their defeat, one recurring theme was the effectiveness of its competitors, particularly the Labour Party. However, it is important to note that their diagnoses implied that SNP’s own missteps over its agenda also played into their rivals’ hands. While one respondent said: “it was due to Labour and Jeremy Corbyn, he certainly ran a very good campaign and had attracted Labour Party a lot of people” (SNP_1), another focused more on how his party lost out to Labour’s more appealing, clear-cut, social-democratic programme that attracted left-leaning SNP voters: “we’ve always been in battle in many parts, in many working class areas in Scotland; we’ve been in battle with the LP (…) when they moved to the left under Corbyn, did for a number of our supporters, did present itself as a more radical, attractive, exciting option that hadn’t been in 2015” (SNP_2). The latter interviewee continued: “We needed a sharper offer to the electorate in terms of social economic policies, we couldn’t afford to be outperformed by the LP in these areas ” (SNP_2). Another misstep, noted by a different respondent, was the “abandoning” of the question of Scottish independence after the 2014 referendum: “there would be some people in the SNP who thought we should’ve had the other referendum straight after the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, and got annoyed that we didn’t do that ” (SNP_3). When asked about what should have been done to deliver a better result in the 2017 election, the second interviewee said: “the first thing that should have had to happen was that (…) we should centre the party’s perspective on some platform and offer the electorate the question of Scottish independence” (SNP_2). That belief was seconded by another respondent: “The other thing we could perhaps in retrospect have been more conscious of was the people who were so emotionally invested after the independence referendum” (SNP_3). The people we interviewed were also somewhat critical of how the party ran its campaign. Even the respondent who initially stated: “I think we ran a fair campaign” (SNP_1), further on in the course of the conversation appeared to have been less certain of that assertion. When questioned about what could have yielded a better outcome, the person responded: “I think, maybe.., I mean, there was use of social media that I think, maybe, looking back perhaps, there was sort of targeted campaigning

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going on, but we hadn’t been aware of it ” (SNP_1). These doubts are mirrored by another respondent: “If we’d done it better, analysis of the seats that we won in 2015, we might’ve done some better targeting ” (SNP_3). One of the SNP representatives offered a much more critical assessment: “Well, I mean, we had a bad campaign with the organisation, we had a bad campaign” (SNP_2). Interestingly, issues with the party’s agenda resurface in this context: “The important thing about policies and the political message is (…) how it resonates with your party members, because you need to motivate them” (SNP_2). The same person noted that in 2017 that motivation was missing and, hence, “in 2019 we had more and stronger message which led to people being motivated” (SNP_2). At a first glance, it may seem that SNP respondents focused on external factors (i.e. the competition from the Labour Party) as the primary causes of their low support in 2017. However, when one considers the entirety of their accounts, it becomes apparent that the decisive element were mistakes made by SNP itself—specifically, underplaying the socialdemocratic agenda and the push for independence. Deficiencies in the conduct of the campaign were also spotted and brought up. Importantly, party members did not blame the said mistakes on particular individuals or groups. To the contrary, they spoke about the issues using the plural pronoun “we”, which suggests a collective attribution of responsibility. There were no attempts at personalising the defeat and using the party leader as a scapegoat. One statement that encapsulates their reflections reads: “I don’t think the SNP did enough in 2017, I think that’s one of the lessons we’ve learnt ” (SNP 2). In summary, the post-defeat narrative about the 2017 election puts the highest emphasis on: – internal, personal, collective, unintended factors: mistakes in constructing the agenda and running the campaign, made by the party as a whole.

6.3

Narrative and Depth of Party Change---Pattern or Patterns?

At the outset of our analysis, we hypothesised about connection between the type of a post-defeat narrative adopted by a given party and the depth of changes the formation subsequently undergoes. If that hypothesis is

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to be proven correct, we should be able to link specific features of the narratives with the index of observed party change. It should be remembered, however, that our research encompasses formations functioning in three different party systems. Moreover, the parties in question varied in terms of their position within their respective systems, i.e. their relevance which, in turn, determined the likelihood of them participating in the formation of governments as well as the extent of their experience as parties in office and/or members of coalitions. Therefore, should the assumption about the importance of post-defeat narrative and its impact on later party change prove correct, one should expect the exact nature of the correlation to differ across the three party systems. Therefore, the question is: how to explain the disparities in parties’ reaction to electoral defeat? Is the post-defeat narrative linked to some of the party features? Or, in a broader perspective: are there any party features which, mediated by the post-defeat narrative, affect the depth of party change? Common sense suggests the sense of defeat is not perceived the same way by everyone. For those who lose more, or nearly everything, the meaning of failure must be much more acute in comparison to those who lose less and/or stand a chance of winning a consolation prize. One may expect that the higher the loss is, the more it stimulates towards executing changes. It needs to be emphasised that adopting this line of reasoning to parties as organisations does not anthropomorphise them. Parties obviously have no feelings, emotions or any kind of neural system that would allow them to feel or think—at least not in any literal sense, even though it may seem like an appealing metaphor. However, parties consist of people, party decisions are made by people and whenever a party loses or succeeds, the experience affects not only the organisation, but also the individuals involved in the process. That is why perceptions matter. It is also the reason for adopting the interpretive approach and focusing on actors’ perspective. 6.3.1

The Polish Case

In the case of Polish parties and their narratives about electoral defeats, several features seem to be relevant. Firstly, two parties that had been in office prior to their defeats (PO and PSL) were not willing to critically evaluate their own input into the electoral results. The only internal factor they acknowledged was strongly personalised, as they shifted the blame specifically onto party leaders. In contrast, SLD and PiS were more

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inclined to focus on the impact of internal issues, although they also resorted to externalising a part of the blame. Among the latter two formations, PiS’ narrative is unique in admitting collective responsibility for the defeat (Table 6.2). PO and PSL attributed their electoral fiasco mostly to external factors, while the only internal aspect they saw as relevant was, in both cases, the person of the party’s formal leader. Their respective indices of party change are the lowest among all four examined formations. Following the logic of the narrative, it seems that neither party effected significant changes (except for nominating new leaders) because, as our respondents concluded, there was nothing to change—it was the individuals, rather than organisations as a whole, that failed. Meanwhile, PiS and SLD score higher on the index of party change and differ from the other two parties in that they paid much more attention to internal factors. Even though, similarly to PO and PSL, SLD also personalised the blame for their dismal showing at the polls, its representatives did not isolate the chairman as the only responsible figure. Moreover, interviewees noticed certain internal malfunctions and the way in which the atmosphere within the party impaired decision-making. To put it simply, the Polish case suggests that if the post-defeat narrative does not picture a party as a whole as responsible for the electoral outcome, the party change is more superficial. If a formation admits that Table 6.2 Narrative and depth of party change—Poland

Party

Status prior to election

Internalisation of blame

PiS SLD PO

In opposition In opposition In office

PSL

In office

+ + − strongly personalised − strongly personalised

Depth of party change (0–3) 1.20 1.80 1.00

1.00

(+ ): Present: means that defeat is presented as related to intra-party factors, attributed to a party as a whole (−): absent: means that defeat is presented as related to extra-party factors and the intra-party factors (if mentioned) are attributed to a particular person Source Own elaboration based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

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its electoral failure is, at least to some extent, the consequence of organisational failures or ineffective collective effort, its post-defeat transformation is deeper. Comparing the relevance of a party prior to and after an electoral defeat allows us to quantify the loss of its political influence in terms of access to policy-shaping tools (see the definition of relevance provided in Chapter 2). The numbers calculated for the four examined Polish parties are presented in the Table 6.3. When compared with findings summarised in Table 6.3, the above data may initially look a bit puzzling and surprising. The parties which have changed relatively more (PiS and SLD) experienced similarly minimal relevance change—in both cases 0.01—and the lowest declines in total relevance. It means that their share of power in the wake of their respective defeats remained virtually unchanged. In contrast, the two parties that had been in office prior to the election—PO and PSL—experienced more extensive losses (−0.34 and −0.16, respectively), yet have undergone less changes. The common sense logic seems to falter here: the higher the loss, the lesser the motivation to change within a given formation. This result also goes against a common line of reasoning among scholars, whereby “the logic of electoral competition – the desire to improve electoral performance – is one of the primary motivators, if not the most important factor, influencing party change” (Gauja 2017, 50). Data presented in Table 6.4 may shed some light on this controversy. If one takes a close look at the above data, it emerges that there were further similarities between SLD and PiS as well as between PSL and PO. The two pairs shared office aspirations. Parties blaming external factors for their defeats had previously been in office. Hence, they had been more relevant and scored higher on office aspirations. It may be said they were more used to being in government. Even though they lost relatively more in terms of relevance, they were less likely to overhaul their functioning. The two parties more inclined to internalise the blame had prior to their defeats been in opposition. They had been less relevant and scored lower on office aspirations. It could be surmised they found the prospect of participating in government less likely. They were more open to implementing deeper changes. To summarise, the case of four Polish parties suggests the following pattern of dependencies:

2011 2015 2007 2011 2011 2015 2011 2015

PO

0.450 0.300 0.361 0.341 0.061 0.035 0.059 0.000

Parliamentary relevance

−0.059

−0.026

−0.020

−0.150

Parliamentary relevance change 0.399 0.241 0.321 0.299 0.084 0.051 0.083 0.076

Electoral relevance

−0.008

−0.032

−0.022

−0.158

Electoral relevance change 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00

Governmental relevance

Source Own elaboration, based on original data collected and processed by the authors

SLD

PSL

PiS

Year of election

Change of party relevance after electoral defeat—Poland

Party

Table 6.3

0.00

−0.50

0.00

−1.00

Governmental relevance change

1.85 0.54 0.68 0.64 0.64 0.09 0.14 0.08

Total relevance

0.53 0.19 0.20 0.18 0.19 0.03 0.04 0.03

Relative relevance

−0.01

−0.16

−0.01

−0.34

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Table 6.4 Selected factors influencing party change in political parties in Poland Party

Status prior to election

PiS SLD PO PSL

In In In In

opposition opposition office office

Office aspiration 0.20 0.25 0.57 0.56

Internalisation of blame + + − −

Party change

RR before defeat

RR change

1.20 1.80 1.00 1.00

0.20 0.04 0.53 0.19

−0.01 −0.01 −0.34 −0.16

Source Own elaboration, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

● internalisation of blame for an electoral defeat facilitates deeper party change. This correlates negatively with a party’s office aspiration and relevance change; ● externalisation of blame for an electoral defeat inhibits a deeper party change. This correlates positively with a party’s office aspiration and relevance change. 6.3.2

The Belgian Case

When it comes to Belgian formations, the level of post-defeat change is similar, regardless of whether the reasons behind a given defeat were deemed internal or external. The narrative does not seem to directly correlate with the extent of change (Table 6.5). Nonetheless, the data shown above does indicate certain patterns. Firstly, parties that had prior to their loss been in office sought reasons behind their failure in external factors. Conversely, those that had been in opposition interpreted the result as being of their own making (Table 6.6). In contrast to what can be observed in the Polish case, for Belgian parties a substantial loss of total relevance is not accompanied by an equally dramatic decline in relative relevance. It means that the lower support at the polls, the resulting loss of parliamentary mandates or even the fact of losing the status of a governing formation did not substantially alter the party’s overall position and significance in the parliamentary scene. As a result, the character of Belgium’s party system meant an electoral defeat was not as painful an experience as in the Polish case.

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Table 6.5 Narrative and depth of party change—Belgium

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Party

Status prior to election

VB PS Sp.a Ecolo

In In In In

opposition office office opposition

Internalisation of blame + − − +

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Depth of party change (0–3) 0.80 0.80 1.00 0.80

(+): present: means that defeat is presented as related to intra-party factors, attributed to a party as a whole (−): absent: means that defeat is presented as related to extra-party factors and the intra-party factors (if mentioned) are attributed to a particular person Source: own elaboration based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Therefore, Belgian formations were less inclined to undertake efforts and accept risks associated with far-reaching changes—they saw no need for dramatic overhauls, as they believed they still had a realistic chance of returning to office. Instead, they opted for more cautious modifications, well short of deep reorganisation. Data shown in Table 6.7. suggests that the post-defeat narrative hardly affects the extent of subsequent party change. However, it is worth mentioning that, similarly to what was observed in Poland, those Belgian parties that had formed cabinets in the period preceding their defeat were less likely to consider their own mistakes. At the same time, they had more experience in office. Hence, while Belgium’s political system reduces the impact of the narrative compared to Poland, it seems that the tendency to externalise the blame, visible among formations accustomed to being in power, remains similar across the two countries. The parties that exhibit consistently higher office aspirations and relevance experience higher losses of relative relevance. At the same time, their competitors who internalise responsibility for poor electoral performance show lower office aspirations and overall relevance—they had less experience in governing and, prior to their defeats, had remained in opposition. 6.3.3

The United Kingdom Case

At a first glance, the data on the United Kingdom parties, presented in the Table 6.8, does not lead to any obvious conclusions. While the two parties which scored higher on the change index (Labour and UKIP) had

2010 2014 2010 2014 2010 2014 2010 2014

PS

0.173 0.153 0.086 0.087 0.080 0.020 0.053 0.040

Parliamentary relevance

−0.013

−0.060

0.001

−0.020

Parliamentary relevance change 0.137 0.117 0.109 0.088 0.086 0.037 0.048 0.033

Electoral relevance

−0.015

−0.050

−0.020

−0.020

Electoral relevance change 1.00 0.00 0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Governmental relevance

Source Own elaboration, based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Ecolo

VB

sp.a

Year of election

Change of party relevance after electoral election—Belgium

Party

Table 6.6

0.00

0.00

−0.50

−1.00

Governmental relevance change

1.31 0.27 0.69 0.17 0.17 0.06 0.10 0.07

Toral relevance

0.24 0.06 0.12 0.04 0.03 0.01 0.02 0.02

Relative relevance

0.00

−0.02

−0.09

−0.18

Relative relevance change

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Table 6.7 Selected factors influencing party change in political parties in Belgium Party

Status prior to Office election aspiration

PS Sp.a VB Ecolo

In In In In

office office opposition opposition

0.82 0.71 0.00 0.12

Internalisation of blame − − + +

Party change

RR before defeat

RR change

0.80 1.00 0.80 0.80

0.24 0.12 0.03 0.02

−0.18 −0.09 −0.02 0.00

(+): present: means that defeat is presented as related to intra-party factors, attributed to a party as a whole (−): absent: means that defeat is presented as related to extra-party factors and the intra-party factors (if mentioned) are attributed to a particular person Source Own elaboration based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

Table 6.8 Narrative and depth of party change—United Kingdom Party

Status prior to election

LibDem Labour UKIP SNP

In In In In

office opposition opposition opposition

Internalisation of blame − + − +

Depth of party change (0–3) 0.60 1.60 1.20 0.00

(+) present: means that defeat is presented as related to intra-party factors, attributed to a party as a whole (−): absent: means that defeat is presented as related to extra-party factors and the intra-party factors (if mentioned) are attributed to a particular person Source Own elaboration based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

been in opposition, the formation that changed the least (SNP) had been in the exact same position. The latter party is, however, a unique case, as was already indicated. If one puts aside the SNP case as an isolated phenomenon, the numbers on the other three parties reveal a certain pattern. The formations that had previously been in opposition (Labour and UKIP) underwent more profound changes in the wake of their defeats than Liberal Democrats, who had been a part of the governing coalition. Similarly to what was observed in Poland and Belgium, the party in office showed more reluctance to internalise the responsibility for its defeat and implement

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substantial changes. However, the UK parties did not follow the pattern, present in the other two countries, whereby the narrative acknowledging internal deficiencies correlated with the extent of subsequent changes. UKIP took notably more significant steps than LibDem (albeit the difference between UKIP and Labour was even more pronounced), even though it refused to internalise the blame. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that among all examined parties, the one changing the most was also the one that accepted its own responsibility in its post-defeat narrative (similarly to Belgium) (Table 6.9). The data shown above indicates that, paradoxically, the formation that experienced the highest loss of total and relative relevance was not the one to implement the deepest changes—a situation similar to Poland (the cases of PO and PSL). Therefore, it can be concluded that the sole fact of losing an election was not a direct motivation to reform the organisation. This is particularly evident with Liberal Democrats: the party dropped a substantial number of votes and mandates, in the process losing its position as a co-governing actor, and yet implemented the least significant changes (with the exception of SNP). The figures presented in the tables above reveal one more (apart from SNP) set of unique circumstances that needs to be taken into account when one tries to identify patterns of dependencies. Since the Labour Party lost mandates in 2015 general election it fits our criteria though, at the same time, the party increased its electoral support. Therefore, its defeat needs to be considered as special case, different than others. More detailed analysis of this case was provided earlier in Chapter 2. For all other examined formations remaining in the opposition, the defeat meant a decrease in both the percentage of votes and the number of mandates (Table 6.10). In the case of the UK parties, it is hard to specify if and what role office aspiration plays in the equation. In contrast to Belgium and Poland, the party that scored highest in this regard (Labour) did, in fact, internalise responsibility for its poor performance. Another difference lied in the fact that, as opposed to PO and PSL in Poland or PS in Belgium, Labour had been in opposition directly prior to the election in question. It is not clear whether it is a coincidence or a consequence of the specific nature of the UK’s system—data for other British parties do not show any particular pattern.

2010 2015 2010 2015 2015 2017 2015 2017

Labour

0.397 0.357 0.088 0.012 0.086 0.054 0.002 0.000

Parliamentary relevance

0.290 0.305 0.230 0.079 0.047 0.030 0.126 0.018

−0.040

−0.002

−0.032

−0.075

Electoral relevance

Parliamentary relevance change

0.108

−0.017

−0.152

0.014

Electoral relevance change 0.00 0.00 0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Governmental relevance

Source Own elaboration based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

UKIP

SNP

LibDem

Year of election

0.00

0.00

−0.50

0.00

Governmental relevance change

Change of party relevance after electoral election—United Kingdom

Party

Table 6.9

0.69 0.66 0.82 0.09 0.13 0.08 0.13 0.04

Total relevance

0.19 0.22 0.23 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.04 0.01

Relative relevance

−0.03

−0.01

−0.20

0.03

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Table 6.10 Selected factors influencing party change in political parties in United Kingdom Party

Status prior to election

Office aspiration

LibDem Labour UKIP SNP

In In In In

0.15 0.28 0.00 0.00

office opposition opposition opposition

Internalisation of blame − + − +

Party change

RR before defeat

RR change

0.60 1,60 1,20 0.00

0.23 0.19 0.04 0.04

−0.20 0.03 −0.03 −0.01

( +): present: means that defeat is presented as related to intra-party factors, attributed to a party as a whole. (−): absent: means that defeat is presented as related to extra-party factors and the intra-party factors (if mentioned) are attributed to a particular person Source Own elaboration based on original data collected, coded and processed by the authors

6.4

Conclusion: Narrative as a Catalyst and Inhibitor of Party Change

The analysis of political parties functioning in three different party systems leads to several conclusions as to the link between the post-defeat narrative and subsequent party change. First of all, the sole fact of losing an election is not necessarily a catalyst for change. This is particularly striking when one looks at parties such as PO, PSL, Sp.a., PS or LibDem. They experienced relatively highest losses in terms of electoral support and parliamentary presence. Moreover, the election outcomes cost them their status as members of governing coalitions. These findings seem to confirm the model presented in Chapter 2, whereby it is not the objective scale of the defeat, but rather its subjective experience that drives parties to embrace or reject meaningful change. In other words, narratives expressing feelings and beliefs about what and why happened are crucial to further evolution (or lack thereof). Although the above-mentioned formations objectively lost more, the sheer fact did not induce change. In the perspective adopted here, changes are implemented only if they are seen as necessary and, in these examples, this was not the case, as party elites were convinced their losses were a consequence of some external factors. The Belgian PS constitutes an extreme case, whereby party leaders were not even willing to admit they actually suffered a defeat. The above pattern seems paradoxical: those who lose the most tend to change the least. It contradicts an assumption that desire to improve

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electoral performance is one of the primary motivators for a party to change (Gauja 2017, 50). There are two possible ways to explain this apparent controversy. Firstly, parties that had proven effective competitors in the past tend to be averse to change and unwilling to abandon the old ways of functioning that had already paid off for them. Being accustomed to winning and ruling could, perhaps, lead to a belief that change, inevitably involving some level of risk, it not desirable. Additionally, at the individual, personal level, certain psychological defence mechanism (Pacze´sniak and Bachryj-Krzywa´znia 2019) could distort politicians’ assessment of the situation. Self-serving attributions and cognitive dissonance induced by electoral failure may prompt them to exaggerate the role of external factors, while underestimating the importance of their own input. A well-constructed narrative pointing to an unfriendly environment and/or malicious behaviour of other actors can absolve from collective and/or individual sense of responsibility for the failure. At the same time, unwillingness to acknowledge one’s own negative individual or collective impact prevents from implementing corrective actions. Secondly, it may be concluded (albeit with certain reservations) that narratives focusing on internal issues and accepting responsibility are conducive to introducing a more profound change. Conversely, externalising blame and/or denying failure inhibits future corrections. This pattern is clearly visible in the case of Polish parties and, to a lesser extent, British parties, although the attitudes exhibited by SNP and Labour need to be treated as something of a special instance. UKIP constitutes an ambiguous case. Importantly, the same pattern is not visible in Belgium, where the depth of change is similar across all examined parties, regardless of whether or not they internalised the responsibility for their unsatisfactory electoral performance. Compared to Poland and the UK, Belgium’s party system is far more fragmented, while the method of translating votes into mandates introduces less distortion—the mechanical impact of the electoral law is not as pronounced. Consequently, an objective decline in support, number of mandates and the ability to participate in governing has less influence on the party’s relative relevance. This means a party may retain a fairly similar power in the parliament even if it loses an election. A defeat is a less traumatic experience than in Poland or the UK. Therefore, it appears that the correlation between the post-defeat narrative and the depth of party change does not apply to highly pluralised party systems. It could be postulated—albeit such

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hypothesis would surely require a separate verification—that the said correlation depends on the fractionalisation of a given party system.4 Thirdly, the reconstruction and analysis of the narratives reveals one more interesting difference among the examined parties—one that seems to apply across all three party systems. Formations for which a defeat came after a period in office and which are characterised by higher relevance, substantial loss of relative relevance as well as stronger office aspirations (PO, PSL, PS, Sp.a., LibDem) clearly tend to externalise the responsibility for their poor performances at the polls. Conversely, those parties that had been confined to the opposition and exhibited lower office aspirations, relevance and loss of relative relevance are more willing to seek internal causes behind their defeats (PiS, SLD, Ecolo, VB). The only exception to the latter rule is the Labour Party, which scored the second-highest relevance and the highest office aspiration among all four examined UK parties. As was, however, already pointed out, Labour constitutes a unique example of a party which experienced defeat in formal terms (the number of its seats decreased), but actually garnered a slightly higher percentage of votes.

References Bruner, J. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Gauja, A. 2017. Party Reform. New York: Oxford University Press. Laszlo J. (2008). The Science of Stories. An Introduction to Narrative Psychology. London & New York: Routledge. Mair, P., W.C. Müller, and F. Plasser. 2004. Introduction: Electoral Challenges and Party Responses, London. In Political Parties Electoral Change, ed. P. Mair, W.C. Müller, and F. Plasser, 1–19. Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Pacze´sniak, A., and M. Bachryj-Krzywa´znia. 2019. Electoral Defeat As ‘Mother of Party Change’: Towards Subjective-Objective Approach. Czech Journal of Political Science 26 (2): 122–134. Trzebinski, ´ J. (2002). Narracyjne konstruowanie rzeczywisto´sci. In: J. Trzebinski ´ (Ed.), Narracja jako sposób rozumienia ´swiata (17–42). Gdansk: ´ Gdanskie ´ Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne.

4 The value calculated for the Belgian system (on average 0.88 for the period from 2010 to 2019) is substantially higher than for Poland (0.65, 2007 to 2015) and the UK (0.60, 2010 to 2017). Hence, the hypothesis does not appear groundless.

CHAPTER 7

Political Parties After a Defeat: Retouch Instead of Makeover—Conclusions

The purpose of our research was to identify patterns in post-defeat party changes that would apply beyond singular cases and enable the formulation of broader conclusions. To that end, we have examined the situation in over 70 European parties which between 2011 and 2017 suffered a defeat, i.e. compared to the previous election garnered less votes and won less parliamentary mandates. Importantly, we only considered formations which after the defeat in question were not in office. Our work focused on the impact of the defeat on the continuity of party leadership as well as the shape of the party’s programme and membership base. A distinctive feature of our analysis was the inclusion of subjective factors that might affect subsequent changes. We conducted an in-depth examination of the narrative constructed around their defeats by party elites in selected formations from Belgium, the UK and Poland. In doing so, we sought to identify connections between the perception and interpretation of election results and the depth of strategic, tactical, structural and programme change. As we embarked on a research which included a vital qualitative component encompassing parties from three European countries representing different party systems, we were acutely aware of potential methodological and organisational difficulties. In terms of methodology, we faced the challenge of finding a common narrative denominator for countries characterised by different political cultures and traditions, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Pacze´sniak et al., Electoral Defeat and Party Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0_7

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adhering to different patterns of political activity and shaped by various institutional determinants. The debates and political rivalries are fuelled by country-specific (and, therefore, somewhat unique) issues that are hardly, if at all, relevant to concepts and phenomena of interest to citizens and politicians in another state. This is why when searching for narrative patterns that could correspond to various party features and changes, we focused on similarities in terms of structure, rather than content of the narrative. This way, our examination of subjective determinants affecting post-defeat change allowed us to formulate conclusions that are valid beyond the specific national context of any particular case. By doing so, we were able to build a taxonomy of how party elites use narratives to organise and comprehend their experiences related to defeats—one that can be applied in different systemic contexts. The biggest organisational challenge lied in finding representatives of party elites from the examined Belgian, British and Polish formations who would agree to participate in our research. Convincing prospective interviewees from this group is never an easy task, as the researcher must ask party leaders, MPs and other individuals holding public offices for the gift of the one resource such people are always short of time. In our case, the additional hurdle was the topic of the study. In order to talk about an electoral defeat and its consequences, interviewees needed to break out of their usual tendency to only show an idealised image of their parties. The number of potential participants who either ignored or rejected our request for an interview was much higher than our previous experiences with similar studies would lead us to expect. In the end, we consider the nearly 50 conducted interviews to be a very satisfactory number— even more so, given the several hundreds of other approaches that were shunned. Not everything went exactly as it was intended. Originally, we planned for face-to-face interviews, but the pandemic-induced restrictions prevented us for a good while from travelling. Therefore, some of the interviews were conducted via online messaging applications—a change which, luckily, did not degrade the quality of the collected material. Interestingly, as the early stages of the pandemic disrupted everyone’s (including politicians’) daily routines, for e period of time we found convincing potential interviewees to be a bit easier. All in all, we gathered a unique empirical material that we could use to recreate parties’ internal interpretations of their failures and the impact of these perceptions on further decisions.

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The analysis of the subjective factor—perceptions and interpretations of events we operationalised as electoral defeats—is a novelty that we would particularly like highlight to the readers. We assumed this element was relevant to the depth of subsequent changes. In adopting such a perspective, we were forced to look at a party not only as an abstract, cybernetic system which mechanically reacts to inputs from the environment, but also as an organism in which the human element contributes to the way these inputs are processed, metabolised and turned into reactions (outputs). This more comprehensive approach was reflected in the analytical model we propose in Chapter 2. The particular definition of electoral defeat we adopted for our research enabled us to look at the subject more broadly than it is done in most of the literature published to date. In our understanding, defeat is connected not only to the loss of government presence. Hence, the analysis includes parties which had not been in office prior to their defeats, but nonetheless lost voters’ support and parliamentary seats. This way, we could capture defeat as a multi-aspect, heterogeneous, gradable phenomenon, the importance and impact of which may vary depending on the party’s position and status within a given party system. In order to do that, we constructed a tool for measuring the strength of the stimulus provided by defeat. Thus, the scale of defeat became, alongside subjective interpretations, yet another variable potentially relevant to the extent of subsequent party change. We devised the category of relevance, including its constituent elements referring to the electoral, parliamentary and governmental aspect, to measure the objective scale of defeat. Our findings are partly in line with the conclusions from previous studies conducted by other scholars. First of all, parties tend to be conservative organisations and are reluctant to implement far-reaching reforms. Even when bleeding support and losing mandates, they are not always inclined to effect institutional change, for instance with regard to the programme, structure, leadership or party rules. Secondly, the equivocal nature of the correlation between defeat and subsequent changes confirms our suspicions that reforms are driven by more than one (even very significant) factor. Thirdly, it turns out that defeats rarely spark comprehensive, fundamental, intentional reforms at every level of the party’s functioning (leadership, policies, structure, rules, membership tactics, etc.). Instead, political formations often lean towards changes which, from their perspective, are less risky, require less work, yet are clearly noticeable to the external audiences. This is what the book title

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alludes to: what we usually get is a retouch, rather than a makeover. This means that the evocative metaphor describing defeat as the “mother of party change” has not proven fully accurate. Just as we posited in Chapter 2, not every electoral defeat triggers changes of similar depth in political parties. As far as leadership is concerned, the sole fact of defeat is not enough for parties to replace their leaders in an emergency fashion, ahead of regular schedule. Formations that lost their (co-)governing status but recorded only a slight decline in support typically did not seek to put the blame squarely on their leaders. They preferred to avoid the internal turmoil that usually accompanies leadership change and instead focused on reforming their programmes, structures, communication and/or tactics. We have not been able to discern any statistically significant variables that would link defeat with the leadership change. Neither the party’s status prior to the election, nor its position on the left–right spectrum, nor its geographical region proved relevant. The only correlation we found was with a notable loss of electoral relevance compared to the situation before the election. This confirms observations that point to the progressing personalisation of election campaigns and a trend to attribute responsibility for a party’s failure to its leaders. The qualitative part of our research proved that leadership change (or lack thereof) depends largely on the context, primarily the character of the party system, subjective interpretations of the election result and internal circumstances specific to a given formation. Chapter 4 covers our analysis of programme change. We reached a somewhat counterintuitive conclusion that political parties which experience more painful defeats (as expressed by total relevance loss) tend to reform their programmes less than formations which objectively lose less, be it in the electoral, parliamentary or governmental dimension. In other words, the larger the scale of the defeat, the less significant programme changes that follow it. This trend is particularly visible in the juxtaposition of parties which, prior to the election, were in office with those that merely continued to operate in the opposition. The parties losing governmental presence are more conservative in their steps than their rivals who were deprived of that key asset all along. These findings are corroborated by the outcomes of the qualitative analysis encompassing parties from three different systems—a fact which suggests that the pattern is not dependent on systemic factors. The examination of change in membership numbers, presented in Chapter 5, also confirmed our original assumption that it is the scale

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of the defeat, rather than the sole fact of losing, that acts as a key determinant for subsequent processes within the party. As opposed to leadership or programme changes, the loss of disillusioned members is an unwanted, uncontrollable process. Additionally, this possible, unintended consequence of defeat is compounded by a broader decline in party membership—a tendency observed all over Europe. One general conclusion is that the parties most likely to lose members in significant numbers are those which experience the heaviest defeats. We were intrigued by a few instances, whereby a party was able to attract more members despite losing an election. They go against not just intuition, but also our previous conclusions regarding the dependence between the scale of defeat and the depth of change. Perhaps they support our theoretical assumption that both types of changes (intentional and unintentional) can interact to strengthen or weaken the effect of electoral defeat. Some interesting conclusions were drawn from the in-depth analysis of membership changes within parties from three different countries boasting different party systems. The sample encompassed 12 formations with a variety of experiences: some of them maintained membership levels, some grew in numbers, while others shrank. The systemic factor proved irrelevant, as did the impact of leadership change on the number and position of members. What seems to have been decisive were intervening variables which differed across states or even individual formations. For instance, all Belgian parties became aware of the need to reform their communication with the membership base and employ online digital tools to encourage greater involvement in their functioning. The strongly centralised character of most of the examined Polish parties was hardly conducive to granting members broader rights. However, by externalising the causes of electoral defeat and tapping into the increasing polarisation, one formation was able to attract more members. Respondents from the British parties pointed to the impact of Brexit—a topic which dominated the public debate and affected processes occurring within political parties. The analysis and comparison of post-defeat narrative confirmed (albeit with certain reservations) our assumption as to the influence of the subjective factor. Representatives of a single party’s elite tend to generally agree as to the reasons for the defeat in question—they present consistent stories and perceptions. More importantly, it turns out that some types of narratives are more likely to spark change, while others tend to inhibit it. Of key importance is the way party elites attribute responsibility for the

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defeat. Formations which described their results in terms of a failed collective effort and internalised the blame would typically introduce more profound changes compared to those which concentrated on external factors or personalised responsibility. However, it should be noted that our analysis of cases from three different party systems showed the pattern did not apply to all of them—it was absent in Belgium, where the party system is more fragmented than in Poland or the UK. Therefore, one can surmise that subjective interpretations of election results carry different weight depending on the character of the systemic environment. When conducting our analyses, we identified certain premises that limited our ability to draw broader, generalised conclusions and signalled the need for further, in-depth comparative research. First of all, language barrier, in addition to limited time and funding, prevented us from analysing more cases. Such larger comparative research would require a bigger team, boasting scholars fluent in mother tongues of the respondents. While the modern lingua franca that is English can help to an extent, it should be assumed that many potentially valuable interviewees do not speak it well enough to be able to adequately and precisely convey their reflections, assessments and experiences. Moreover, even if such a multinational research team was actually formed, translating all answers into a single, even most commonly used language is bound to result in the loss of some nuances. Secondly, such an effort would be extremely time-consuming—not just because of the need to conduct all the interview, but also because of how much time would be needed to find enough willing respondents who meet the common established selection criteria (i.e. hold positions within party structures that give them sufficient insight into the examined events). Most certainly, this kind of broad comparative study if subjective interpretations would require far more time, funds and manpower than we, as a small research team, had at our disposal. The challenges we faced when collecting and analysing the data left us with several problems which gave rise to our recommendations for the possible directions of further research. The method we employed to collect qualitative data (expert surveys and IDIs) forced us to limit the sample to such a size that we could rely solely on interviewees’ and experts’ knowledge and experiences, without the need to reach for memoirs or history books. We would have struggled to reach those who participated in the events of a more distant past. Even if we succeeded, we could hardly rely on their recollections—these may not only fade over

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time, but also be affected and reinterpreted through the lens of later experiences, unrelated to the events in question. It seems, therefore, that there is a need for tools and methods that would allow scholars to analyse cases in greater numbers and across a wider time span so as to achieve stronger statistical corroboration of the conclusions we presented in this book. The expert survey method, the pros and cons of which we describe in Chapter 2, revealed some less obvious challenges. Regardless of our theoretical preparation, when designing the survey, we failed to predict some of the unique, contextual factors present in a given country, to which our interviewees pointed during our talks. We believe that the combination of the quantitative and the qualitative method has worked well and confirmed the benefits of methodological triangulation. The results presented in this book can be relevant in several aspects. By referring to the interpretive approach and examining the role of the subjective factor, we signal the usefulness of some theoretical instruments that are not typically applied in research on political parties. We are convinced that our findings in this regard may contribute to improving the predictive power of future studies. The comprehensive relevance index constructed for the purpose of our research may be used to study other aspects of political parties’ functioning and, thus, help us better understand the mechanisms of partisan politics, coalition bargaining or the dynamics of parliamentary processes. Finally, for political parties and their elites, our conclusions may be helpful in understanding their organisations’ internal processes and spotting barriers that inhibit vital changes necessary to achieve better electoral results in the future.

Appendix

Table A.1

List of national experts

Country

Expert name

University

1

Austria

Anton Pelinka

2 3 4 5 6 7

Belgium Bulgaria Switzerland Czech Republic Cyprus Germany

Emilie van Haute Petia Gueorguieva Jan Fivaz Michel Perottino Giorgos Charalambous Piotr Kocyba

8 9 10

Denmark Estonia Greece

Karina Kosiara-Pedersen Tõnis Saarts Maro Pantelidou Maloutas

11 12 13

Spain Finland France

Fernando Casal Bertoa Maria Bäck Cédric Pellen

Central European University Budapest Université libre de Bruxelles New University Sofia Université de Lausanne Charles University University of Nicosia University of Technology in Chemnitz University of Copenhagen Tallinn University National and Kapodistrain University of Athens University of Nottingham Abo Akademi University Université de Strasbourg

(continued) © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Pacze´sniak et al., Electoral Defeat and Party Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0

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166

APPENDIX

Table A.1

(continued)

Country

Expert name

University

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Croatia Hungary Ireland Italy Lithuania Latvia Malta Netherlands Norway Poland

ˇ Dario Niki´c Cakar Zsolt Boda Theresa Reidy Luca Tomini Raimondas Ibenskas Ivars ¯Ijabs Valentina Cassar André Krouwel Elisabeth Bakke Maria Wincławska

24

Poland

Arkadiusz Indraszczyk

25 26 27 28 29

Poland Portugal Romania Sweden Slovakia

Krzysztof Kowalczyk Marco Lisi Sorina Soare Niklas Bolin Karen Henderson

30

United Kingdom

Tim Bale

University of Zagreb Hungarian Academy of Science University College Cork Université libre de Bruxelles University of Bergen Univeristy of Latvia University of Malta Vrje Universteit Amsterdam University of Oslo Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu Uniwersytet Przyrodniczo-Humanistyczny w Siedlcach Uniwersytet Szczecinski ´ Universidade Nova de Lisboa University of Florence Södertörn University Comenius University in Bratislava Queen Mary University of London

Table A.2

Poland

List of individual in-depth interviews No. of interview

Role of interviewee

Date of interview

PO_1 PO_2 PO_3 PO_4

MP MP MP member of leadership member of leadership member of leadership member of leadership

party

January 7, 2019 January 9, 2019 January 28, 2019 February 4, 2019

party

March 5, 2019

party

March 7, 2019

party

January 11, 2019

PO_5 PO_6 PSL_1

(continued)

APPENDIX

Table A.2

(continued) No. of interview

Role of interviewee

Date of interview

PSL_2 PSL_3

MP member of party leadership MP and former chairperson MP former MP former chairperson member of party leadership MEP former MP member of party leadership MP MEP member of party leadership member of party leadership MP MEP and member of former party board MP member of party leadership member of party leadership MP member of party leadership member of party leadership MEP member of party leadership former chairperson member of party leadership

January 16, 2019 February 12, 2019

PSL_4 PSL_5 SLD_1 SLD_2 SLD_3 SLD_4 SLD_5 SLD_6 PiS_1 PiS_2 PiS_3 PiS_4

Belgium

167

PiS_5 VB_1 VB_2 VB_3 VB_4 VB_5 PS_1 PS_2 PS_3 Sp.a_1 Sp.a_2 Sp.a_3

March 7, 2019 November 26, 2019 December 1, 2018 January 14, 2019 January 22, 2019 January 29, 2019 February 1, 2019 February 6, 2019 January 7, 2019 January 29, 2019 January 29, 2019 March 4, 2019 June 26, 2019 September 24, 2019 September 24, 2019 September 24, 2019 September 25, 2019 September 26, 2019 September 26, 2019 April 8, 2020 April 9, 2020 April 18, 2019 April 23, 2020 October 14, 2021

(continued)

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APPENDIX

Table A.2

(continued) No. of interview

Role of interviewee

Date of interview

Ecolo_1

member of party leadership former chairperson former member of party leadership member of party leadership MEP MP MP MP member of party leadership Former chairperson Former member of party leadership MP MP and member of party leadership MP MEP former member of party leadership

April 2, 2019

Ecolo_2 Ecolo_3 Ecolo_4

United Kingdom

Ecolo_5 LP_1 LP_2 LP_3 LD_1 LD_2 LD_3 SNP_1 SNP_2 SNP_3 UKIP_1 UKIP_2

April 5, 2019 September 26, 2019 September 26, 2019 October 24, 2019 July 13, 2020 March 31, 2021 April 21, 2021 July 4, 2020 April 16, 2021 June 24, 2021 July 17, 2020 August 3, 2020 April 6, 2021 September 26, 2019 October 28, 2019

Index

C Change depth of programme change, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74 intentional party change, 4, 10, 24, 161 leadership change, 2, 5, 42–45, 47, 50–53, 55, 58–60, 94, 101, 160, 161 membership change, 83, 84, 91, 161 post-defeat change, 14, 18, 22, 67, 68, 85, 90, 110, 119, 148, 158 programme change, 26, 64–66, 68–73, 75, 77, 79, 92, 157, 160, 161 unintentional party change, 4, 10, 24, 161 Coalition co-ruling, 12, 25, 124 junior coalition partner, 14, 55, 133 senior coalition partner, 15, 123

D Defeat consequence of defeat, 45, 161 electoral defeat, 2–5, 9–15, 18, 20–26, 31, 34, 36, 42–44, 47, 51, 53–56, 60, 63–76, 79, 84, 85, 89, 91–94, 111, 121–124, 144, 146–148, 158–161 electoral failure, 1, 5, 84, 91, 119, 120, 146, 155 electoral loss, 5, 11, 15, 30, 120 loss of governmental status, 15 loss of seats, 34 E Election campaign door-to-door campaign, 84 media performance, 10, 12 Electoral performance, 10, 25, 50, 53, 57, 59, 65, 66, 79, 85, 91, 109, 112, 146, 155 Electoral system majoritarian system, 15, 34 proportional system, 15

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Pacze´sniak et al., Electoral Defeat and Party Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04032-0

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INDEX

single-transferable vote system, 93 I Index of total change, 29, 67 Internal rules bottom-up decision-making process, 98 decision-making process, 88, 95 intra-party democracy, 55, 83, 88 mechanisms of direct democracy, 88 top-down decision-making process, 98 Interpretation blaming for a defeat, 146, 162 collective factors, 123, 125, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143 external factors, 123, 125, 126, 128, 134, 136, 139, 141 impersonal factors, 123, 127, 130, 132, 134, 136 natural-like political cycle, 123 personal factors, 123, 125, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143 uncontrollable factors, 123, 127, 134, 136

decline of membership, 87, 91, 95, 104 grassroots activists, 23 increase of membership, 90 loss of members, 13, 24, 92, 106 membership base, 2, 5, 36, 85, 88, 98, 100, 109, 110, 157, 161 militants, 87 party supporters, 84 rank and file members, 56, 139 registered activists, 101 registered members, 53, 97, 101, 103, 107 N Narrative common narrative, 139, 157 externalisation of responsibility, 125 internalisation of responsibility, 135 party elites’ narrative, 109 party members’ narrative, 53, 58 post-defeat narrative, 5, 11, 119, 127, 134, 143–145, 149, 152, 154, 155, 161

L Leadership chairperson, 57, 123, 126 charismatic leader, 57, 58 depersonalised leadership model, 56, 58 dominant leader, 57 ineffective leader, 132 leader-oriented formation, 57, 58 two-person leadership, 59

O Objective factors institutionalisation phase, 14 office aspiration, 5, 14, 93, 119, 146, 149, 156 political goals, 13, 14, 124 Opposition, 12–15, 18, 20, 25, 32–35, 43, 44, 49, 51, 53, 55, 64–67, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 77–79, 89, 92, 93, 104, 106, 111, 132, 134, 135, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154, 156, 160

M Membership in parties

P Party change

INDEX

metamorphosis, 160 modification, 149 retouching, 160 transformation, 3 Party elites mid-level elites, 23 party authorities, 126, 127 party leaders, 30, 87 party presidents, 25, 32, 104 Party goals democracy-seeking political parties, 88 integrated theory of party goals, 21 office aspiration, 14 office-seeking political parties, 14, 42, 87 Party members activists, 2, 13, 91 rank and file members, 23, 65, 84, 87, 95 registered sympathizers, 91, 106, 107 sympathizers, 91, 107 Party models cadre party, 86 cartel party, 86 catch-all party, 86 electoral professional party, 86 mass party, 86 Party organization party in central office, 22, 86 party in public office, 22, 86 party on the ground, 22, 86, 87, 109 Party reform, 9, 12 Party system extremely polarised multi-party system, 29, 31, 75, 77 moderately polarised multi-party system, 29, 75 multi-party system, 20, 21, 44, 75 two-party system, 20, 29, 44, 75

171

Personalization personalisation of politics, 41, 58, 86 Policies electoral platforms, 142 party agenda, 26, 36, 63, 65 party programmes, 2, 36, 63, 66, 68 platform shift, 74 Political party activist-dominated party, 65 change of internal party balance, 13 ‘niche’ parties;niche, 65 mainstream party, 65 membership-based organisations, 36 party collapse, 13, 84 party decomposition, 13, 26, 84 party self-dissolution, 23, 24 party’s profile, 14 position on the left-right axis, 45 region of party origin, 45

R Relevance electoral relevance (ER), 15, 50, 60, 160 governmental relevance (GR), 14, 15, 50, 92 parliamentary position, 15, 57 parliamentary relevance (PR), 15 relative relevance, 18, 148, 149, 152, 155 total relevance (TR), 15, 18, 20, 45, 50, 70, 92, 146 Research methods expert survey, 36, 67, 163 in-depth analyses, 11 in-depth qualitative analysis, 14, 18 individual in-depth interviews (IDIs), 30, 51 Resources

172

INDEX

mass-organisational resources, 66 party resources, 1, 13

S Status before election parties in office, 45 parties in opposition, 45 Subjective factors perception, 10, 24

T Tactics consequence of organisational failures, 146 ineffective collective effort, 146 post-defeat transformation, 146 Total relevance index electoral relevance index (ERI), 25, 45 governmental relevance index (GRI), 25, 45 parliamentary relevance index (PRI), 25, 45