Vanguard or business-as-usual? ‘New’ movement parties in comparative perspective
| Author | Davide Vittori |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211026648 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211026648
International Political Science Review
2022, Vol. 43(4) 595 –610
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/01925121211026648
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Vanguard or business-as-usual?
‘New’ movement parties in
comparative perspective
Davide Vittori
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Abstract
The recent success of new movement parties in Europe brought the attention of party politics scholars to
this hybrid party type. There are still many under-analysed theoretical and empirical aspects related to their
organization and this article aims to show that despite sharing older movement parties’ traits, these ‘new’
movement parties introduce for the first time a unique combination of plebiscitarian intra-party democracy
and party leadership empowerment. The implications of these findings are twofold: first, despite promoting
intra-party democracy mainly through new digital tools, the main function of party membership is that of
cheerleading; second, the leadership exercises strict control over the organization, thus restricting bottom-
up ‘voice’ from the rank-and-file.
Keywords
Party organization, movement parties, intra-party democracy, direct-democracy, digital technologies
Introduction
The electoral success of parties such as Podemos (We Can) in Spain, Movimento Cinque Stelle
(M5S, Five Star Movement) in Italy, Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás (SYRIZA, Coalition of
the Radical Left) in Greece, La France Insoumise (LFI, Unbowed France) in France and other
genuinely new parties represented a huge challenge for consolidated national systems and main-
stream parties. Yet, albeit defined as movement parties, the literature has not investigated whether
these new movement parties represent an organizational novelty or, rather, whether they adapted to
consolidated parties’ organization. The main aim of this article is to show what differentiates ‘new’
movement parties from ‘older’ movement parties through a) a four-case comparison of new move-
ment parties, and b) a comparison between new movement parties and older movement families,
be they more recent in time (e.g. Greens, left-libertarian and Radical-right) or much older and now
part of the mainstream (e.g. social-democratic parties).
Corresponding author:
Davide Vittori, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Cevipol - entre d’Etude de la Vie Politique, Avenue Jeanne, 44, Bruxelles,
1050, Belgium.
Email: Davide.Vittori@ulb.be
1026648IPS0010.1177/01925121211026648International Political Science ReviewVittori
research-article2022
Original Research Article
596 International Political Science Review 43(4)
These new movement parties stand as an exception to the general trend of new parties failing to
enter the national parliament at their first election (Bolleyer, 2013) (Table 1). More importantly, these
parties challenged both mainstream and older movement parties, such as Greens and left-libertarian
parties, proposing a new disintermediated conception of internal party democracy (IPD), based on the
pre-eminence of the ‘people’, that is, the membership over bureaucratic structures (Vittori and
Deseriis, 2019). Adopting Lucardie’s (2000) schematization, these parties fall into the ‘purifier’ cat-
egory, as their aim is to innovate the ideology and the organization of traditional movement parties.
Urbinati (2019) considers the rise of ‘liquid’ populist parties, that is, parties without organization, a
threat to electoral democracy; other authors point to the democratizing effect of populist grassroots
movement (Aslanidis, 2018). Nonetheless, ‘liquid’ parties are nothing new in European political
systems, as weak organizations were typical of an uncommon, yet successful party type, for example,
movement parties. The definition of movement party provided by Kitschelt (1988, 2006) revolved
around the cases of by-then new party families, such as left-libertarian, Green and radical right parties
(RRPs). It is now time to assess whether this definition applies to these new parties as well.
The article proceeds as follows: the first part presents the theoretical background. Second, the
article considers the organizational structure of the new movement parties (their genesis, the role
of the party on the ground, executive bodies and the role of the leadership). Third, it compares three
crucial organizational aspects, that is, party membership, party organization and internal party
democracy. The article concludes by arguing that it would be more appropriate to define these par-
ties as ‘new’ movement parties, since they present a new combination of important organizational
aspects.
Movement parties: an analytic framework
Definitions of movement parties are scarce in the literature (Goldstone, 2003; Hanagan, 1998;
Kitschelt, 2006) but the most notable works define these parties as an uncommon hybrid organiza-
tion, which aims at both structuring itself as a movement, while competing in elections. Yet social
movements and political parties are inextricably linked: on the one hand, social movements might
adopt different strategies to influence political parties (McAdam and Tarrow, 2010); on the other
hand, social movements might also heavily affect political systems, without competing in elections
(Kriesi, 2014).
Post-World War II, movement parties emerged outside traditional party families as innovative
actors capable of (a) questioning representative democracy, (b) representing the new issues
Table 1. Political parties under analysis.
Political party Social
movement close
to the party*
Foundation Party
predecessor
EP group
(2014–2019)
First electoral
results**
(year)
Last electoral
results
(year)
Podemos Indignados 2014 N.A. GUE/NGL 13.7% (with
allies) (2015)
12.8% (with
allies) (2019)
SYRIZA Aganaktismenoi 2013*** SYN GUE/NGL 36.3% (2014) 31.5% (2019)
FSM N.A. 2009 N.A. EFDD 25.6% (2013) 32.7% (2018)
LFI Nuit Debout 2016 PDG GUE/NGL 11.0% (2017) -
*This column indicates the social movements that the party endorsed or whose members actively supported.
**Refers to the legislative elections.
***SYRIZA became a unified party in 2013, but has existed as an electoral alliance since 2004.
For further information see Appendix – Table 1A.
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