Party Organization in a Multi-level System: Party Organizational Change in Spain and the UK

Abstract

This article investigates the link between regionalization of the structure of government, regional elections and regionalism on the one hand, and the organization of state-wide political parties in Spain and the UK on the other. It particularly looks at two aspects of the relations between the central and regional levels of party organization: integration of the regional branches in central decision making and autonomy of the regional branches. It argues that the party factors are the most crucial elements explaining party change and that party leaders mediate between environmental changes and party organization. The parties' history and beliefs and the strength of the central leadership condition their ability or willingness to facilitate the emergence of meso-level elites. The institutional and electoral factors are facilitating factors that constitute additional motives for or against internal party decentralization.

Keywords:

• Political parties
• party organization
• multi-level systems
• regionalization

Acknowledgement

This research was made possible by a doctoral grant from the Flemish Fund for Research FWO and the participation in the research group ‘Federal parties and regional party competition’ funded by the FWO and the University of Leuven Research Council. The author would like to thank Bart Maddens, Wilfried Swenden and Liselotte Libbrecht for their numerous comments on earlier versions of this article. Responsibility for interpretation remains solely with the author.

Notes

This article refers to the pre-2006 period and does not take into account changes in the statutes of autonomy that have taken place in Andalusia, Catalonia and the Valencian Community in 2006 and 2007 and that are proposed in a number of other autonomous communities.

The change in the Welsh devolution arrangement need not concern us here as its provisions were implemented only after the 2007 election.

This section draws heavily on the author's PhD dissertation. For a more detailed account of the vertical organization of the Spanish and British parties, see Fabre (2008: chs 5, 7).

Other factors that contributed to Maragall's downfall were his problems with the rest of the direction of the PSC and his poor relations with one of the coalition partners of the PSC, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. The author thanks Mónica Méndez Lago for this information. Any error or misinterpretation is, of course, the author's.