Factionalism and Party Adaptability. In Defense of Moderate Factionalism.

This paper investigates the effects of different levels of factionalism on political parties’ ability to adapt to social and political change. While factions and factionalism have had a bad reputation in the field of party politics for a long time, recent work has theorized that the absence of factions can also hurt a party. Both perspectives, however, have not been tested comparatively. My paper aims to remedy this gap. Starting from a conceptualization of what faction and factionalism mean, I argue that a party’s adaptability depends on factionalism in a non-linear way. Highly factionalized parties are likely to struggle to maintain an appearance of unity when voting in parliament and making public statements. They are also likely to agonize over who should be leading the party and which groups of voters to target. In turn, a lack of factions risks preventing the integration of important intra-party and social groups. It undermines the possibility of new leaders to emerge and a party’s ability to attract new constituencies. In contrast, a moderate level of factionalism helps overcome the organizational rigidity characterizing parties with no or only a few factions, while not giving way to the centrifugal forces that undermine highly factionalized parties. The trajectory of Western European Christian Democracy provides an important and, from a comparative perspective, understudied set of cases to test this argument. Based on a rich record of original primary data, I find support for a curvilinear effect of factionalism on party adaptability through a structured focused comparison of the Italian DC, German CDU and Austrian ÖVP. 1) While these parties brought together a diversity of social and political groups, they have differed markedly in their organizational response to such intra-party heterogeneity. 2) Their respective levels of factionalism explain their varying ability to adapt to profound social and political transformations. The almost constantly forming, arranging and re-arranging factions and factional coalitions undermined the DC’s capacity to renew its leadership, remain united in parliament and ultimately prevent splits and to update its electoral appeal. In turn, my results show, contrary to previous studies, that the ÖVP has been characterized by the absence of factions. Its organizational rigidity thereby limited the extent of change entailed by replacing the party leader, excluded important groups from the internal decision-making process, and, finally, undermined the party’s ability to respond to changes in the social composition of the electorate. In contrast, its moderate level of factionalism is essential to explaining why the CDU has been less affected by such problems. Alternative accounts that, for instance, focus on characteristics of the party system and party organization, are addressed through case selection and systematic process analysis. In sum, this paper presents evidence that factionalism has a curvilinear effect on parties’ ability to renew their leadership, hold their organization together and appeal to new constituencies. Future empirical research would therefore benefit from using non-linear models when studying the link between factionalism and party adaptability.