Political parties seem to be an actor that must be addressed to understand the representation of social cleavages and socials groups, as Lipset and Rokkan demonstrated. The French UMP and German CDU, the two main right-wing parties, have been developing relationships with particular social groups that should be analyzed. To study this relation, we can go through two processes. First, we could lead interviews and observations within these parties among party leaders and members in order to understand how and why some social groups try and success (or fail) to be represented in and by the party. So, we could directly observe and analyze how these processes of representation are built and how party members, on the different level of the institution, try in different ways to establish their interest. The second way consists in a more macro-social approach and intends to analyze how the party is structured by these cleavages and, as a result, how these two organizations, publicize the groups and the interest that their defend. My contribution intends to propose a combination of these two approaches by using on one hand an empirical protocol (interviews, observation, life stories) in order to understand how social cleavages are concretely transposed in the UMP and the CDU parties, and on the other hand a more programmatic study of websites, schemes, structures and the histories of both parties. Based on a work in progress, I would like to propose a first analysis of the influence of social groups’ representation by studying their formation and consequences on the party’s life. Entrepreneurs, farmers, pensioners, landlords are some of the groups that intends to be represented by these parties. By analyzing the formation, the struggles, the social characteristics and the representation of these groups in the parties, we can try to understand how these parties are structured.
