Intra-Party Distribution of Staff Resources in Europe: Convergence Towards New Ideal, Maintenance of Old Ideal – Or No Shared Ideal at All?

Evolutionary party models suggest that shared operating context pushes parties towards organizational convergence as they seek to maximize their chances of survival. For this reason, parties are expected to organize rather similarly under similar societal conditions. But what constitutes a similar operating context? Arguably, contemporary European parties share various functional dilemmas stemming from the common media environment and the general policymaking system of the European Union. However, in addition to various socio-economic and cultural-political factors national level party competition can be affected by nuanced institutional mechanisms like those relating to the electoral system, form of government or executive-legislative relations. A more general question is how easy it is for parties to adjust to changing societal demands. As is well known, party models highlight rational adaptation and commonalities while organizational conservatism and heterogeneity prevail in the real world. This study examines current party adaptation and organization through an updated analytic framework that considers along with traditional extra-parliamentary party organization (EPO) and parliamentary party group (PPG) also the governmental party (cabinet ministers and their supportive staffs). Due to its non-permanent and delegatory nature this organizational facet has often been excluded from intra-organizational analysis. In this study it is recognized as an integral sphere of party activity with distinct functions and resources, not least due to its role in parties’ policy and publicity work that has strengthened considerably along with the ‘governmentalization’ and ‘technocratization’ of politics. However, as noted above, this does not mean that government party is automatically favored in intra-party resourcing which depends on several organizational motivations. To study the latest trends in the resourcing of European parties, this study extends the information provided by the Political Party Database on the resources of EPOs and PPGs with information on the resources of governmental parties. To enable inter-country comparison, the study focuses on the relative proportions of salaried staffs of the different party arenas. A general question that motivates and directs the study is: do current parties favor the government arena like their operating environment suggests them to do – or do they still invest significantly in societal linkages that started to erode decades ago? While a functional-rational theory of party adaptation might suggest such transformation, party activists can still be formally empowered in intra- party matters, and the MPs, too, can be more dependent on societal linkages than parties’ governing competence. As most parties in Western democracies are strongly dependent on public subsidies and other state-provided resources, the resourcing of parties is also tied to the ideals of public administration which might very well conform more to the old ideals of party democracy whose vitality and legitimacy is strongly connected to democratic linkage.