The survival of the mass party: Evaluating activism and participation among populist radical right parties (PRRPs) in Europe.

群众政党的生存：评估欧洲民粹主义激进右翼政党（PRRP）的激进主义和参与。

基本信息

批准号：
ES/R011540/1
负责人：
Daniele Albertazzi
金额：
$ 92.67万
依托单位：
University of Birmingham
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2019 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FR011540%2F1
关键词：
survival mass party Evaluating activism

项目摘要

It is often claimed that political parties in Europe are losing their traditional function of bridging the gap between citizens and the political elites. Whereas the 20th century saw the rise of political parties characterised by large memberships organised in local branches, it is now widely assumed that the era of the 'mass parties' is over. In a well-known article, for instance, Katz and Mair (1995) argued that political parties are converging towards a new organisational model: the 'cartel party'. In essence, this model entails that parties become increasingly intertwined with the state, whilst ties with their grass-root membership, or what is left of it, weaken. Parties, in other words, become actors of the state rather than society.We argue, however, that it may be too soon to speak of the end of the mass party. Particularly among certain parties challenging the traditional political establishment (or 'cartel'), this party model is ostensibly still popular. In our study we focus in particular on parties of the populist radical right (PRR), which currently pose the most serious electoral threat to mainstream parties and which, despite several prominent exceptions, have also been shown to often adopt mass organisations and create communities of loyal partisans activists (Heinisch and Mazzoleni, 2016). PRR parties, then, do not only pose a challenge to established politics, but also to the theory that the age of mass parties is over. In our research we aim to understand why the mass party is still a popular model among the PRR, from the perspective of both the party members and party elites. On the one hand, we seek to understand why different groups of people become activists of these parties and what different typologies of party activists contribute to their parties. On the other, we want to understand why the leaderships of populist parties go against the 'tide of disengagement' characterising their competitors: what are, in their eyes, the advantages of adopting rooted models of party organisation. Crucially, answering these questions will allow us to build a more nuanced conceptual framework for assessing differential party development; rather than converging around a similar model of organisation, political parties are likely to organise their party in a way that best suits their aims and ideology. We take a comparative case study approach, and investigate the 'life of the party' within four seasoned PRR parties which are well established within their party systems: the Italian Northern League, the Flemish Interest in Belgium, The Finns Party in Finland, and the Swiss People's Party. To map the parties' formal and informal organisational structures, and shed light on party members' and elites' motivations, our study combines a variety of methods: it involves a study of secondary and party literature, an original survey conducted among party members, life-history interviews with party activists, and semi-structured elite interviews with party representatives and executives. We have received confirmation from the parties that they are willing to participate in the research.Our research, first of all, benefits the academic community: there is still a serious gap in our knowledge of how party organisations operate, in particular regarding the role of members and activists (Gauja and Van Haute, 2015). By advancing our knowledge of what happens inside PRRPs, we seek to address the serious shortage of comparative party research on this topic. The project will also have benefits beyond academia, as we will listen to the activists of populist parties themselves, and capture in detail the individual, cultural, social and organisational drivers of populist sentiment at a highly critical juncture in the life of the EU. Our findings thus have implications not only for political parties more generally, but also for organisations interested in the quality of Western democracy.

人们通常认为，欧洲的政党失去了弥合公民与政治精英之间差距的传统功能。虽然20世纪的政党的崛起是在当地分支机构中组织的大型会员，但现在被广泛认为“大众政党”的时代已经结束。例如，Katz和Mair（1995）在一篇著名的文章中指出，政党正在朝着新的组织模式聚集：“卡特尔政党”。从本质上讲，这种模式需要当事方越来越与国家交织在一起，同时与他们的基层会员资格或剩下的东西联系在一起，削弱了各方。换句话说，政党成为国家的演员而不是社会。但是，我们认为说大规模党的终结可能为时过早。特别是在某些挑战传统政治机构（或“卡特尔”）的政党中，这种党的模式表面上仍然很受欢迎。在我们的研究中，我们特别关注民粹主义激进权利（PRR）的政党，该政党目前对主流政党构成了最严重的选举威胁，尽管有几个突出的例外，但也已证明经常会采用大众组织并创建忠实的游击队激进主义者（Heinisch和Mazzoleni，2016年）的社区。因此，PRR政党不仅对既定的政治构成了挑战，而且对大众时代结束的理论构成了挑战。在我们的研究中，我们旨在了解为什么从党员和党员的角度来看，为什么大众党仍然是PRR中的流行模式。一方面，我们试图理解为什么不同的人群成为这些政党的激进主义者，以及党派活动家对政党做出贡献的不同类型。另一方面，我们想了解为什么民粹政党的领导人与竞争对手表征的“脱离接触潮流”背道而驰：在他们眼中，采用党派组织扎根的模型的优势是什么。至关重要的是，回答这些问题将使我们能够建立一个更细微的概念框架来评估差异方的发展；政党没有围绕类似的组织模式汇聚，而是以最适合其目标和意识形态的方式组织他们的政党。我们采用了一种比较的案例研究方法，并调查了四个经验丰富的PRR政党中的“党的生活”，这些党派在其政党体系中良好建立：意大利北方联盟，佛兰德对比利时的兴趣，芬兰的芬兰党和瑞士人民党。为了绘制各方的正式和非正式的组织结构，并阐明了党员和精英的动机，我们的研究结合了各种方法：它涉及对二级和党派文学的研究，这是一项对党员之间的原始调查，对党派活动家的生活历史访谈，对党派活动家以及半结构化的精英访谈，与党代表和执行人员进行了访谈。我们已经从各方获得了他们愿意参与研究的确认。首先，我们的研究受益于学术界：我们对党组组织如何运作的知识仍然存在严重的差距，特别是关于成员和激进主义者的作用（Gauja and van Haute，2015年）。通过促进我们对PRRP内部发生的事情的了解，我们试图解决有关该主题的比较党研究的严重短缺。该项目还将获得学术界的好处，因为我们将倾听民粹主义政党的激进主义者本身，并在欧盟一生中详细捕捉民粹主义情绪的个人，文化，社会和组织驱动力。因此，我们的发现不仅对政党有影响，而且对对西方民主质量感兴趣的组织也有影响。