New party organization in Western Europe: Of party hierarchies, stratarchies and federations

Abstract

Scholarly work on models of party organization tends to treat stratarchy and hierarchy as analytical opposites. Based on two different visions of stratarchy that co-exist in the literature, this article presents a threefold typology locating party stratarchy as a model between party hierarchy, as one counter-image, and party federation, as the other. The types differ in the extent to which core competences and resources (e.g. selection of parliamentary candidates, mechanisms for conflict resolution, finances) are centralized, and in the extent to which interest representation in national party organs follows territorial lines. The typology is applied to durable yet organizationally new parties (founded since 1978) that maintained a national presence across eight West European democracies. With few exceptions, each of these parties fits neatly within one of the categories, and in-depth analysis suggests that the three models help us systematically capture party dynamics.