Inside the personal party: Leader-owners, light organizations and limited lifespans
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117750819 |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117750819
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2018, Vol. 20(2) 379 –394
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117750819
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Inside the personal party:
Leader-owners, light
organizations and limited
lifespans
Glenn Kefford1 and Duncan McDonnell2
Abstract
Scholars in recent decades have discussed the emergence of a new leader-dominated party type,
variously described as ‘personal’, ‘personalistic’ and ‘personalist’. However, there has been no
original comparative research examining whether (and how) such parties resemble one another
organizationally and whether they constitute a distinct organizational type. This article does so
by comparing the parties of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Clive Palmer in Australia. Based on
interviews with those in the parties and party documents, we find our cases share two distinctive
organizational features: (1) the founder-leader’s dominance of the party and perceived centrality
to its survival and (2) the relationship between the party and members saw active members
discouraged and organization at the local level was extremely limited/non-existent. Building on
this analysis, we then propose three criteria for identifying other personal parties and point to the
existence of a possible subtype. We conclude that the emergence of personal parties requires us
to reconsider our understanding of contemporary party organizations in advanced democracies.
Keywords
cartel parties, party membership, party organization, personal parties, political leaders, political
parties
Notwithstanding personalization and presidentialization trends (McAllister, 2007;
Poguntke and Webb, 2005), mainstream party leaders in parliamentary democracies
remain expressions of parties and their leadership depends on the party’s continued sup-
port. In recent decades, however, we have seen new and electorally successful parties
which appear to be the exact opposite. Not only are they the expressions of a dominant
founder-leader but their very survival seems to depend on the continued support and
1 Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University, North Ryde,
NSW, Australia
2
School of Government and International Relations, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Nathan,
QLD, Australia
Corresponding author:
Glenn Kefford, Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University,
North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia.
Email: Glenn.Kefford@mq.edu.au
750819BPI0010.1177/1369148117750819The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsKefford and McDonnell
research-article2018
Original Article
380 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(2)
presence of that founder-leader. Examples include the parties of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy,
Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Jean-Marie Dedecker in Belgium, Andrej Babiš in the
Czech Republic, Janusz Palikot in Poland, Frank Stronach in Austria, and Clive Palmer in
Australia. This type of party has been variously termed by scholars as ‘personal’, ‘person-
alistic’ and ‘personalist’ (Calise, 2015; Gunther and Diamond, 2003; Kostadinova and
Levitt, 2014). However, the internal workings of these parties remain largely ‘black
boxes’ and there has been no empirical comparative research that gets inside them.
Focusing on the parties founded by Berlusconi and Palmer, this study does precisely that
in order to answer the following question: Do apparently personal party organizations
resemble one another in ways that clearly distinguish them from other party types?
The article proceeds as follows. First, we discuss the theoretical background to the
study and outline our approach to identifying whether the characteristics of the personal/
personalist/personalistic party organization constitute a specific type.1 We then present
our cases: Palmer’s Palmer United Party (PUP) and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) and
Popolo della Libertà (PDL—People of Freedom).2 Thereafter, we assess whether FI/
PDL and PUP resemble one another organizationally in ways that are distinct. Our anal-
ysis is based on the responses from interviews conducted with over 60 FI/PDL and PUP
elected representatives, officials, candidates and grassroots members, along with an
examination of relevant party documents such as statutes and rules. We find that our
cases share two main organizational features that distinguish them from other party
types. First, the relationship between the party and its members is one in which members
are actively discouraged from being involved and ‘the party on the ground’ is either
dormant or very limited (especially outside campaign time). Second, the leader’s domi-
nance of the party and centrality to its existence and future is evident and accepted by
those involved in these parties. Building on this analysis, we then set out three condi-
tions for classifying personal parties that can be used (and refined) by researchers for
other potential cases. Finally, in the conclusions, we discuss how the emergence of per-
sonal parties requires us to reconsider our assumptions about the genesis, organization
and lifespans of contemporary parties.
Personal, personalistic and personalist parties
Parties created and dominated by their founder-leaders are not entirely new phenomena
in advanced democracies. For example, Kostadinova and Levitt (2014) note the case of
Charles De Gaulle in France as a historical instance of personalist party leadership.
Nonetheless, parties like this have been far more common in other areas of the world.
There are numerous references to them in the literature on third-wave democracies or new
and emerging democracies (Conaghan and Espinal, 1990; Resnick, 2012; Roberts, 2002).
It is the rise however of such parties in both emerging and established democracies that
has inspired the literature on ‘personal’, ‘personalistic’ and ‘personalist’ parties. One of
the key scholars of this phenomenon over the past two decades, Mauro Calise (2015:
303), describes the ‘personal party’ as ‘the most extreme case of party personalization,
consisting in the full control by an individual leader of the party he has himself created’.3
The defining characteristic of these parties, of which Calise (2015: 304) says Berlusconi’s
FI is the archetype, is that ‘a combination of charismatic and patrimonial resources
replace the collective and legal-rational original party structure’. Gunther and Diamond
(2003: 187) adopt a similar definition of FI, including it in their ‘personalistic party’ cat-
egory, which they term the purest type of a wider set of ‘electoralist parties’. As regards
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