Suchergebnisse

Analyzes the functioning of the French Socialist Party since 1970 & draws some broader theoretical implications from the case study. The author criticizes the dominant 'externalist' approaches to party performance & decline that describes parties as passive or as merely reactive to factors within their social-structural or institutional environments. Strategic choices & party performance can be explained by internal & external factors such as the specific organizational form adopted by the party, the relationship between intra-party resources, & inter-party politics (Kitschelt 1989, 1994). The French Socialist Party won two victories in 1981, the election of Francois Mitterand as president & the majority of seats in the National Assembly, in part due to a series of internal changes in the party in the 1970s. But subsequent internal problems led to electoral defeats by the mid-1980s. While factionalism had contributed to the party's growth & electoral success, it became institutionalized & inflexible & could not adapt to new challenges. The same organizational feature, therefore, helped or hindered depending on the circumstances. Internal dynamics of parties as well as models of parties affect their capacity to adapt to contemporary change. This hypothesis is empirically analyzed at the national level & at two provincial branches of the party. L. A. Hoffman