Parties Under Pressure

"Under pressure around the world, political parties have differed enormously in their ability to update their offers to voters. This variation is important. While party adaptation does not equal electoral success, parties' failure to "move with the times" has often resulted in their decline and even collapse, making room for radical and populist parties and causing widespread concern over the future of liberal democracy. Focusing on the varying fate of one of Europe's most prominent party families, Christian Democracy, Parties Under Pressure examines why some parties adapt meaningfully to social, economic, and political transformations, while others struggle to do so. Integrating party politics and institutional theory, the book emphasizes the importance of party factions in helping new groups to rise and new ideas to circulate, cautions against a too high level of factionalism, and develops a comparative framework to study the emergence and development of different levels of factionalism and party adaptation. Based on extensive archival research in Germany, Italy, and Austria and additional shadow cases from the same sample of parties as well as France and Japan, the book provides evidence on political parties' varying record of adaptive reforms over more than 75 years"--