From Birth to Relevance into Government: Party Institutionalization as Concept to Understand Practices of Routinization

In party institutionalization literature the quality of rule-guided processes within the party organisation („routinization“) is discussed as one of the most important internal indicators of an institutionalized political party (Panebianco 1988; Randall/Svåsand 2002; Bolleyer 2013; Lefkofridi/Weissenbach 2016; Harmel/Mjelde/Svåsand 2017). We argue that on a party’s way from birth to relevance (in parliament) into government we can observe different ‘practices of routinization’ – meaning the rule-guided behaviour of party elite as well as on the ground. At the intersection to Party leadership research we learn about how differing political circumstances (e.g. opposition vs. government) affect leadership behaviour, strategies and skills within the governing party (Stein 1971; Katz 1973; Harmel & Svåsand 1993; Hartley 2011; Loxbo 2013). The proposed paper aims at connecting both strands - party institutionalization and party leadership literature – to develop a typology of “practices of routinization”. Having developed this analytical framework, the paper addresses the empirical research question: „(How) does the routinization of (1) the party leadership and (2) the party base change, when a political party becomes the ruling party?” As we assume that a party’s origin matters (Harmel/Svåsand 1993; Panebianco 1988) for its ability to adjust its regularized processes and its ‘intra-party linkage function’ to the new challenges of governing we then present case studies of different origins – the German CDU (during the time 1969-1982) and the German Green Party (1983-1998). These time periods were chosen because both investigated parties were in opposition – the CDU after having led government and the Green Party newly entering parliament. The paper builds on a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative content analysis (statutes, protocols of party meetings, biographies) with a social network analysis of member lists of the executive committees of the party, biographies and interviews with representatives of the party leadership as well as the party base.