Theorizing the Institutional Development of Political Parties. Italian Christian Democracy and Theories of Institutional Change

If political parties want to remain key actors in democratic polities, they will need to adapt when the social, political and economic conditions under which they compete change. Recent studies in the field of party organization have highlighted that parties’ ability to reform depended on institutional and organizational characteristics. If the latter, however, explain the level of adaptability, why do not all parties adopt the more adaptable format? Instead, parties often fail to reform their organization despite substantive pressure to do so. This paper highlights how theories of institutional change can enhance our understanding of party development. I use an extreme case of failed party reform, Italy’s formerly dominant Christian Democratic Party (DC), to establish three points. 1) Critical juncture theory provides a powerful toolkit to explain the origins of a party’s institutional format. It guides a systematic assessment of whether a party’s set of rules was endogenous to structural antecedents or the result of politics and contingency. 2) Theories of feedback e_ects and endogenous institutional change help explain parties’ organizational development over time. They help specify the resources and incentives created by a party’s institutional structure and how they drive party elites’ behavior. 3) The interplay between di_erent feedback e_ects improves our understanding of why party elites refuse to compromise on important institutional reforms. My argument is illustrated through a systematic process analysis of the Italian DC. I find that the initial choice in favor of a centralized leadership selection process initiated two interrelated feedback processes within the party which impaired its adaptability 45 years later. 1) The initially chosen rules to select the party’s leaders were not predetermined by structural factors but the result of three years of political bargaining. These rules incentivized party elites to form factions. 2) The resulting system of factions was reinforced by feeding back into the DC’s organizational structure and incentivizing party elites to strengthen their factional networks through corruption. 3) At the same time, the high level of factionalism undermined the party’s adaptability. It made internal coalitions highly instable and often resulted in gridlocks. Party elites realized that the existing level of factional competition weakened their party. Yet, they were unwilling to change patterns of internal competition because the potential costs of cooperation (i.e. loss of intra-party power) were more likely and pressing than the potential benefits (i.e. party adaptation). The party thus failed to adapt to the profound transformations in early 1990s Italian politics. In short, by bringing together the literature on party politics and on institutional change, I contribute to a more systematic framework to analyze the institutional origins, development and adaptability of political parties. Making the wrong institutional choices at the moment of party formation risks incentivizing actors to engage in patterns of internal competition for power which become reinforced over time, while undermining their party’s ability to adapt to a changing environment.