Response of European Political Parties to Electoral Defeat: Character and Outcomes of Changes

The aim of this proposal is to identify factors influencing the character, depth, scope and the results of changes in political parties following electoral defeat. We put forward a series of questions: what factors determine the impact of electoral defeat on political parties? Why for some parties a defeat ends with a complete downfall, while for other it provides a boost to regroup and solidify their positions in the party system? Under what circumstances do such events lead to true transformations, and when is their influence limited to minor efforts at strengthening and stabilizing the organisation? To what degree does the process of formulating and implementing adaptive strategies depend on objective, measurable aspects, and to what extent is it a consequence of the subjective perception of the situation by party’ elites and leadership? The impact of objective variables, such as the party's development phase, the level of institutionalization, the political status of the party (ruling/co-ruling- party/opposition party), as well as subjective ones, i.e. the perception and interpretation of the reasons for the electoral defeat by the party decision-making bodies, will be analyzed. The proposed study bases on the two types of sources: the existing sources (scientific literature, documents produced by political parties) and the induced data (expert poll among political scientists from 30 European countries and narrative in-depth individual interviews with members of the party decision-making bodies and MP made in Poland, Belgium and Great Britain) . The adoption of a comparative perspective allows to work out general conclusions that go beyond the narrowly understood analysis of party structures and case study analysis, while the use of elements of system analysis allows to observe how the parties as microsystems react to the environmental demands, adopting specific adaptive strategy.