Entering the Electoral Arena: Moral Dilemmas and Emotion Work of Activists in Movement Parties

While social movement scholarship has traditionally interpreted the transformation of social movements into political parties as a strategic choice, this perspective has tended to overlook the individual emotional costs and moral dilemmas involved in such transformations. These aspects are particulary salient for liminal and hybrid actors such as movement parties. Despite the increasing prominence of these actors in contemporary political research, there remains limited understanding of how activists who primarily identify with non-party, non-electoral activism decide to engage in party politics and electoral competition. This study seeks to advance the knowledge of the moral and emotional dilemmas experienced by social movement activists when deciding to engage in electoral politics through party membership. Whereas existing scholarship typically conceptualizes the transition from movement to party as a predominantly strategic shift, this article adopts a moral-sociological perspective, examining the emotion and moral work through which activists navigate the tensions and contradictions associated with entering the institutional political arena. Empirically, the paper draws on 28 in-depth interviews with activists involved in movement parties in Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia.