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AbstractPolitical parties share a very bad reputation in most European countries. This paper provides an interpretation of this sentiment, reconstructing the downfall of the esteem in which parties were held and their fall since the post-war years up to present. In particular, the paper focuses on the abandonment of the parties' founding 'logic of appropriateness' based, on the one hand, on the ethics for collective engagement in collective environments for collective aims and, on the other hand, on the full commitment of party officials. The abandonment of these two aspects has led to a crisis of legitimacy that mainstream parties have tried to counteract in ways that have proven ineffective, as membership still declines and confidence still languishes. Finally, the paper investigates whether the new challenger parties in France, Italy and Spain have introduced organizational and behavioural changes that could eventually reverse disaffection with the political partyper se.

This article discusses the state of agony parties are experiencing today. In a nutshell, I argue that parties are now at pains to retain their linkages with society, and that the compensation they envisaged has further damaged them. To respond to sociocultural and economic changes which had weakened parties both in their organizational standing and in their public reputation, parties took a dual route: They went to the state to acquire financial resources and profit in other ways; and they introduced direct democracy practices inside the parties themselves. After discussing how parties have reacted to the changing environment, the article concentrates on intra-party organizational modifications and deals with three basic questions: (a) Why did parties attempt to democratize? (b) What outcome did the democratization, in terms of members' direct intervention, produce? (c) Is democracy at stake because of the negative impact of the parties' change and their consequent, persisting, crisis of legitimacy?

This article presents an interpretation of the present malaise that afflicts the political party in established democracies. Today, parties are not only seen as inefficient or unscrupulous instruments, they are increasingly being labelled as illegitimate. The basic reason for this bad reputation lies in their detachment from society and their encroachment on the state. Parties tried to counteract the difficulties they faced in extracting resources from society (members, party identifiers, militants, money) by turning toward the state, which offered financial support, paid personnel, physical structures and patronage benefits. This shift reinvigorated the parties, which are now richer and more powerful, but it has further diminished citizens' confidence in the parties themselves. In order to recover their dwindling legitimacy, parties have recently introduced changes, giving members more say in the decision-making process and in the selection of candidates and leaders. However, these innovations have not succeeded in revitalizing them, nor improved their image. Thus, parties continue to be unbalanced: powerful and yet distrusted. In this sense, they resemble a sort of mighty but unsteady Leviathan.