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.
