Political parties and their communities in the digital age: How new and established parties organise, mobilise, connect and appeal

Traditionally, parties have been analysed as the institution to link citizens. They build different kinds of communities around their programs, values and routines, and organize internal party decision-making in different ways (Harmel/Svåsand/Mjelde 2019). They connect citizens with each other, with the nation-state and beyond. Some would even argue that parties themselves are fully-fledged societies or communities (Débie 2012). Parties mobilize the electorate, provide channels for citizen participation and engage in the descriptive, substantive and emotional representation of voters. Two (if not even more) societal changes challenge – and inspire – the "community building" -role of established political parties in contemporary democracies: a.) In the last decade we observe a wave of new parties entering parliaments – and governments – on different state levels or new movements providing alternative forms for citizen engagement. These parties and movements differ not only regarding their position on the political spectrum, but also in terms of their genetic model, their organization, their financing or the way they appeal and are perceived. b.) While we observe the emergence of new parties on the meso-level, on the micro-level we also see activists with new demands and expectations appear who bring a new understanding of community to the world of party politics. Interaction among activists, networked and horizontal ways of getting engaged are organised by new parties, movements or their support groups (Shea and Green 2010) and online communities (Beyer 2014). Starting out from these observations, this section welcomes panels and papers that assess how new and established parties organize, mobilize, communicate and institutionalize in long-standing as well as young democracies. We are interested in panels and papers that seek to understand the effect of the changing nature of party organization, communication tools and party appeals on party-internal dynamics, party competition or even the quality of representative democracy. We also encourage panels and papers that question whether certain parties are better equipped to adjust to societal and political changes. Furthermore, we welcome panels and papers that include the demand side of political participation in and beyond the boundaries of parties. Our section aims to bring together different approaches and methodologies, including conceptual, comparative and case study analyses as well as the employment of both qualitative and quantitative methods and innovative methodologies like citizen science approaches. This section endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Political Parties welcomes panels and papers at the intersection of research on new parties, party organization, movements, citizen engagement and offline and online communities on topics like: ▪️ Parties as the institution to build communities on different levels in representative democracies. ▪️ Parties as communities of voters: what mobilizes them? ▪️ Parties as communities of members: what holds them together? ▪️ Parties as communities beyond the core group of members and activists. ▪️ Under what circumstances do online communities become party communities? ▪️ Established and new parties as communities for minorities. ▪️ Established and new parties as expad-communities ▪️ Parties as communities of values and routines ▪️ Under which circumstances are political parties stable and institutionalized communities – when do they break apart?