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Journal Articles

Campaigning and the Catch-All Party: The Process of Party Transformation in Britain

Otto Kirchheimer’s well-known diagnosis of ‘catch-all’ partism in Western Europe rests on an implicit causal argument about the consequences of social change for political parties. This article takes up the causal story underlying Kirchheimer’s account and traces its implications for a specific, though central, party activity: campaigning. As Kirchheimer discerned, the transformation of advanced industrial societies radically altered the context of parties’ strategic decision-making. In the area of election campaigning, parties confronted heightened incentives to approach the electorate with ‘persuasive’ rather than more traditional ‘mobilizing’ appeals and developed a greatly increased demand for reliable information about voter preferences. These shifts, in turn, had consequences for party organization, promoting the centralization and marginalization of individual members Kirchheimer associates with the catch-all party type. Through the lens of campaign change, then, we can observe the causal processes that unite the diverse features Kirchheimer links to his catch-all party — although our attention is also drawn to ways in which party development has not conformed to Kirchheimer’s expectations. This article illustrates these intersecting processes with a discussion of Labour and Conservative campaigns in Britain.

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Detail Information
Series Title
Party Politics
Call Number
-
Publisher
Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publication.,
Collation
-
Language
English
ISBN/ISSN
13540688
Classification
-
Content Type
-
Media Type
-
Carrier Type
-
Edition
Vol. 15, No. 5, September 2009.pp. 555-572
Subject(s)
catch-all parties
Party organization
Britain
Campaign activities
Party strategy
CAMPAIGNING AND THE CATCH-ALL PARTY
Specific Detail Info
-
Statement of Responsibility
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