Does nothing else matters? Causes of programmatic-, organizational – and personnel reforms in Belgian mainstream parties

Party systems are changing dramatically in Western Europe. Whereas mainstream parties were once almighty, they have been suffering for several decades from a decline in electoral scores and membership rates. Many West-European parties have responded by adopting party reforms. This paper seeks to investigate the causes leading to mainstream parties’ reforms from an integrated point of view, by arguing that the causes leading to party reforms are multiple and can differ according to different types of reforms. Previous research has generally examined drivers of party reforms by considering them individually. Yet the argument made in this paper following Rihoux’s (1999) inaugural work is that the phenomenon of party reforms can only be fully grasped by considering these drivers in combination with each other and by extending them to contextual and personal-related factors as well. We argued that the causes leading to such reforms are influenced by the broader context these parties operate in and are in fact multiple. In this paper we identified 5 causal conditions possibly leading to party reforms: electoral defeat, change of party leader, being in opposition, membership decline and being involved in a political crisis and/or scandal. Moreover, most scholars mainly concentrated on the causes of organizational reforms, while we argue that parties will implement multiple types of reforms in the scope of rebranding the party. Deriving from the multi-componential political product, three categories of party reforms were detected: programmatic-, organizational- and personnel reforms. We argued reforms on separate components of the political product can be caused by different (combinations of) conditions. In this study, we conducted three Qualitative Comparative Analyses investigating different combinations of causal conditions leading to three types of reforms (i.e. change in socio-economic position, leadership- and candidate selection democratization and leadership change) implemented by Belgian mainstream parties during 1987-2003. Our results showed that the three party reforms are all caused by different pathways. Moreover, party reforms are far more often the result of combination of causes instead of one.