Conceptualising movement party formation through the notion of ‘core strategic change’

Over the last decade, the literature on left-wing movement parties has provided new insights into movement parties’ organisational structure, action repertoire, and framing. However, research on cognitive processes and mechanisms that motivate some left-wing social movements to transform into political parties, remains scarce. Instead of observing a social movement’s decision to form a political party as a straightforward strategic adaptation, in this paper, I analyse movement party formation through the notion of ‘core strategic change’. Different from usual changes in strategy, ‘core strategic change’ exposes movements to the liability of reconstituting themselves into new actors. Based on two longitudinal case studies of left-wing movement party formation in Slovenia and Serbia, I show how both long-term and short-term processes of cognitive change within social movements explain how movement activists move from non-electoral or even anti-electoral strategy towards entering the electoral competition.