The Contours of Divisions Within Political Parties: Hierarchy or Factions?

• In Event: Intra-Party Politics and Decision-Making

Abstract

A large body of party politics research shows the importance of internal unity, but there is substantial disagreement about the specific contours of the ideological divisions within parties. Many scholars work from the premise that the big intra-party divide is between the party elite (party leaders/candidates), the mid-level elite (party members) and the non-elite (party activists). However, an alternative view, more commonly found in literature on party manifestoes and party organisations, suggests that the major divisions within parties are between ideological factions, which form clusters in themselves but do not coincide with any hierarchy. In this paper, we test these two alternative views against each other to investigate what constitutes ideological divisions within parties and with what consequences. Drawing on party membership surveys from two countries (United Kingdom and Sweden), we employ a mix of unsupervised and supervised learning techniques. Our results show that internal divisions based on hierarchy are less consequential than those based on ideological factions. This suggests that intra-party hierarchy carries less of a danger to a party than the relative size and position of an ideological faction.

Authors

• Ann-Kristin Koelln, Aarhus University

• Jonathan Polk, University of Gothenburg