Conceptualizing the Black Box: A Conceptual-theoretical Analysis of Intra-party Groups and its Implications for Comparative Studies

Political parties are strange animals. While comparative politics has moved beyond the notion of political parties as unitary actors, the opening of the black box has not entailed systematic conceptual work. When bringing together diverse actors with often divergent preferences, party elites are required to make organizational choices in order to translate this heterogeneity into a single platform. Yet, the organizational diversity of this translation has not been adequately researched. Terms, such as factions, tendencies, and single-issue groups, have often been used interchangeably. Moreover, intra-party groups have mainly been defined for the purpose of country-specific case analyses. Aiming to address this lack of conceptual distinctiveness and comparability, I conceptualize intra-party groups along five dimensions. I apply my categorization to previous studies on party politics to illustrate the analytical leverage of conceptualizing the black box of party organization.