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/R011540/2
负责人：
Daniele Albertazzi
金额：
$ 15.91万
依托单位：
University of Surrey
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2021
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2021 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FR011540%2F2
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.

人们经常声称，欧洲政党正在失去其弥合公民与政治精英之间差距的传统功能。尽管二十世纪见证了以地方分支机构组织的大量党员为特征的政党的兴起，但现在人们普遍认为“群众政党”的时代已经结束。例如，在一篇著名的文章中，Katz 和 Mair (1995) 认为政党正在趋向于一种新的组织模式：“卡特尔政党”。从本质上讲，这种模式意味着政党与国家的联系日益紧密，而其与基层成员或剩下的基层成员的联系则减弱。换句话说，政党成为国家而不是社会的行动者。然而，我们认为，现在谈论群众政党的终结可能还为时过早。特别是在某些挑战传统政治体制（或“卡特尔”）的政党中，这种政党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极右翼（PRR）政党，这些政党目前对主流政党构成了最严重的选举威胁，尽管有几个明显的例外，但这些政党也被证明经常采用群众组织并创建社区忠诚的游击队活动家（Heinisch 和 Mazzoleni，2016）。那么，PRR政党不仅对既定政治提出了挑战，而且对群众政党时代已经结束的理论提出了挑战。在我们的研究中，我们旨在从党员和政党精英的角度来理解为什么群众政党仍然是人民革命党中流行的模式。一方面，我们试图理解为什么不同群体的人成为这些政党的积极分子，以及不同类型的政党积极分子对其政党做出了哪些贡献。另一方面，我们想了解民粹主义政党的领导层为什么要反对竞争对手的“脱离浪潮”：在他们眼中，采用根深蒂固的政党组织模式有什么好处。至关重要的是，回答这些问题将使我们能够建立一个更细致的概念框架来评估政党发展的差异；政党可能会以最适合其目标和意识形态的方式组织政党，而不是围绕类似的组织模式。我们采用比较案例研究的方法，调查了四个经验丰富的PRR政党的“政党生活”，这些政党在其政党体系中已经建立了良好的基础：意大利北方联盟、比利时的佛兰德利益党、芬兰的芬兰人党和芬兰的芬兰人党。瑞士人民党。为了绘制政党的正式和非正式组织结构，并揭示党员和精英的动机，我们的研究结合了多种方法：包括对二手文献和政党文献的研究、对党员进行的原始调查、生活调查等。 -对政党积极分子的历史访谈，以及对政党代表和高管的半结构化精英访谈。我们已经收到了当事人愿意参与研究的确认。我们的研究首先有利于学术界：我们对党组织如何运作，特别是在党组织的作用方面的认识还存在严重差距。成员和活动家（Gauja 和 Van Haute，2015）。通过提高我们对 PRRP 内部发生的情况的了解，我们寻求解决该主题的比较政党研究的严重短缺问题。该项目还将带来学术界以外的好处，因为我们将听取民粹主义政党本身活动人士的意见，并在欧盟生活的一个高度关键的时刻详细捕捉民粹主义情绪的个人、文化、社会和组织驱动因素。因此，我们的研究结果不仅对更广泛的政党有影响，而且对对西方民主质量感兴趣的组织也有影响。