Political Parties: Learning From Social Movements

Abstract

The fragile, or ‘failed’, linkage between citizens and the political sphere is a key issue in political sociology. Scholars provide several attempts to explain this phenomenon, pointing out the critical situation of “mainstream” parties, especially those coming from a mass party legacy, whose organizations were, among other things, instruments of social integration and which are nowadays increasingly focused on vote and office-seeking activities. On the contrary, a widespread opinion represents social movements as agents of civic and democratic mobilization in alternative to political parties. Nevertheless, as some scholars argued differences between parties and social movements should be considered in a less taken-for-granted perspective. According to a dynamic and relational approach, this panel wants to explore this kind of intersection between party “arenas” and the “sector” of social movements. Of course, there are all sorts of parties and of social movements. Parties can be less or more established, and social movements can be more or less institutionalized. Considering these differences, how much political parties learn from social movements? How much social movements interact with political parties? Did they set up, even if without negotiating it, some sort of division of labor? To what extent and under which conditions party organizations adopt tools and repertories of actions of social movements, or how much do they recruit political personnel coming (or expected to come) from social movements? And which are the consequences (for instance, salience of electoral arenas in party strategy, etc.) of such form of hybridization? Case-studies and comparative analyses (both on “new” and “old” party organizations) are very welcome.

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