The Transformation of the Party Congress

• In Event: How Do Political Parties Adapt Their Communication and Representation?

Abstract

Echoing Michels’ ‘iron law of oligarchy’, much of the party organization literature has assumed a gradual hollowing-out of intra-party democracy. However, this and other established assumptions on the workings of intra-party democracy have rarely been tested systematically. In particular, we know very little about how intra-party actors’ actual use of the institutions of intra-party democracy has developed over time (‘the real story’), typically due to a lack of comprehensive long-term data. We engage with this gap in the literature by exploring change in intra-party actors’ behavior in the core arena of intra-party democracy: the party congress. Utilizing original coded text and numerical data from the party congress proceedings of all major Austrian parties (1945–2023; N=247), we examine the behavior of intra-party actors at party congress (e.g. debates, motions, intra-party elections). We use the interactions between rank-and-file and party elite actors to test key empirical implications of established theories (e.g. party models, party stratarchy, party change) on the long-term trends and short-term dynamics in intra-party decision-making.

Authors

• Matthias Kaltenegger, University of Vienna

• Wolfgang Mueller