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A review essay on a book edited by Peter Mair, Wolfgang C. Muller, & Fritz Plasser, Parteien auf komplexen Wahlermarkten. Reaktionsstrategien politischer Parteien in Westeuropa ([Parties and Complex Electorates. Reaction Strategies of Political Parties in Western Europe] Wien: Signum, 1999). This book argues that the structure of the electorate has become unclear & is marked by a rising insecurity among the relevant actors. Under these conditions, it is difficult for political parties to attract loyalty, build long-term relationships with voters, or recruit new members. The dominance of the media in conveying political tendencies is ever-present. Without mass media, a public opinion cannot be formed. Mass media form the central instrument for democratic opinion formation. The book points to the important aspects of political parties' ability to change the future of party democracy. Change within parties has three origins: change of party leadership, change of the dominant coalition within a party, or external stimuli in the form of changing party environments. As a general trend, the authors suggest that political parties have changed into centralized election campaign organizations where the party leadership has more & more autonomy. With this top-down structure, political parties are more apt to deal with aggressive competition. 16 References. E. Sanchez

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). How the concept of social democracy has been changed by the growing influence of the "Third Way" socioeconomic ideology of Anthony Giddens, advisor to Prime Minister Blair of Great Britain, as seen in the policies of Britain's New Labour Party and, to a lesser degree, of Chancellor Schröder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany. Summary in English p. 2013.

In the wake of the crisis of the Keynesian Welfare State the social democratic parties in Western Europe have been searching for new concepts to retain their image as reform parties. One way to achieve this is to democratise and renew the intra-party structures. In the 1980s and 90s, the SPD and the Labour Party have developed different patterns to implement the process of intra-party reforms. The objectives are to increase the autonomy of action for the parties' various sub-units, in particular the party elite, and to reduce the political influence of the body of delegates. On paper the individual member is to get greater rights to participate, in practice this coincides with greater influence of powerful elites. In between, there have been different problems of the intra-party reforms. In the SPD, personal controversies and the old battles between old and new left and the right wing still determine the political agenda. Its reform got stuck halfway after Rudolf Scharping took office as party chairman. His counterpart Tony Blair tries to continue the reform process initiated by Neil Kinnock. In the Labour Party, the modernisers have had some success in reducing the internal power of the unions and in strengthening individual members. But these are only a few steps in becoming a "New Labour Party". (German Politics / FUB)

Der Autor untersucht in seinem Beitrag, inwieweit die Veränderungen der Organisationsstrukturen der SPD und der britischen Labour Party den Anspruch einer innerparteilichen Reform erfüllen. Darüberhinaus werden in vergleichender Perspektive die einzelnen Elemente der Neustrukturierung der Parteiorganisation herausgearbeitet und miteinander in Beziehung gesetzt. Dabei werden Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen der einzelnen organisationspolitischen Planungen und Entwürfe der beiden Parteien deutlich gemacht. Diese Diskussion steht vor dem Hintergrund der Frage, welche Chancen die organisationsstrukturellen Veränderungen in inhaltlicher und wahltaktischer Hinsicht bieten. In Anlehnung an Herbert Kitschelt wird davon ausgegangen, daß die Transformation der Sozialdemokratie auf drei Ebenen stattfindet, die im Zusammenwirken ein einheitliches Konzept ergeben: Programmatik, Organisationsstrukturen und Wähler sind gleichermaßen betroffen. Veränderungen der einen Ebene haben Rückwirkungen auf die anderen. Insgesamt zeigt sich, daß die Labour Party bei ihren Bemühungen zur innerparteilichen Modernisierung bemerkenswerte Erfolge erzielt hat. (ICD)