Mass Party Advantage under Party-Centered Local Governance

• In Event: Historical Political Economy

Abstract

Who benefit from the party politicization of local governance? This paper argues that mass parties, which rely on members and branches as their main electoral strategy, uniquely benefit from introducing party-centered electoral institutions at the local level. To test this hypothesis, I take advantage of a local governance reform in early 20th century Sweden. The reform resulted in the local governance type being decided by a population threshold. I find that municipalities that used a traditional type of local governance, community meetings, had higher support for the conservatives in national elections. In contrast, municipalities that used elections and representatives for local governance had higher support for the communists and social democrats. A crucial difference between these parties was the way that they were organized: the conservatives were a typical elite party, while the social democrats and communists were organized as mass parties.

Author

• Tine N Paulsen, University of Southern California