The New Sociology of the Organization
The Ascendancy of the Salaried Middle Classes
The trend towards social diversification is more sharply pronounced among social-democratic members and activists than among voters. Sociological change seems to deliver a hard blow to the party’s internal social and cultural cohesion and, more specifically, to its ‘working-class mainspring’. The ‘de-proletarianization’ of the social-democratic membership base is spectacular (but not surprising), while the weight of the new salaried strata, especially their higher echelons, becomes very important, even central.
Indeed, in a majority of countries the social structure of social-democratic membership conveys an impression clearly marked by the dominant presence of non-manual salaried strata. Their imprint on the membership far exceeds their salience in the social-democratic electorate (where working-class/popular representation remains strong), affecting the social and cultural identity, and fundamental structure, of socialist organizations. The cases of the SPD, the SPÖ and the Danish SD offer an exemplary illustration of this general trend. In 1952, 56 per cent of SPD members were workers and 23 per cent were employees and executives. By 1966 the proportion of workers had fallen to 49 per cent, by 1977 to 37 per cent, and by 1991 and 1996 to 34 per cent and 35 per cent respectively; whereas the participation of white-collar strata increased from 23 per cent (1952) to 42 per cent in 1966, to 45 per cent in 1977, reaching 49 per cent in 1991 and approaching 60 per cent in 1996 (salaried employees and civil servants). The analogous sociological trajectory of Austrian social democracy makes it possible to measure the irresistible rise of the salaried middle classes in social-democratic organizations. Whereas workers constituted the great majority of the SPÖ in the 1950s and 1960s, relaying the party’s working-class/popular entrenchment, the salaried middle classes have since invaded the socialist organization en masse, progressively establishing their domination. A strong swing towards them has occurred, deepening from one decade to the next (31 per cent in 1955, 38 per cent in 1970, 44 per cent in 1978, 54 per cent in 1990), and gradually assuming the character of a veritable mutation in inner-party power relations (in the same period, the proportion of workers declined appreciably: 59 per cent in 1955, 54 per cent in 1970, 42 per cent in 1978, 42 per cent in 1990).1 In a clear majority in the Danish SD in 1971 (76 per cent), workers had dropped to 34 per cent by 1990, while the salaried middle strata spectacularly increased their representation, which rose from 22 per cent in 1971 to 58 per cent in 1990.2
The same picture emerges in Great Britain, where a sharp contrast in social profile was established between Labour’s electorate and its membership. Whereas in 1987, 64 per cent of Labour’s electorate belonged to the working class in the broad sense (workers, foremen, technicians), and only 14 per cent to the category of senior managers, teachers and liberal professions, the relationship within Labour’s organization was reversed. The arithmetical weight of privileged and educated strata becomes imposing (49 per cent), while working class representation falls to 31 per cent (of which 26 per cent belong to the working-class in the strict sense and 5 per cent to the category of foremen and technicians). At the same time, we should emphasize the impact of the sectoral factor on the social composition of Labour’s organization, which was far from negligible: out of the entire party membership, two-thirds work, directly or indirectly, in the public sector of the economy – central and local government, public services and industries.3 The trend is not very different in Sweden. There, too, while the weight of workers within the membership body remains significant, it also decreases significantly: 80 per cent in 1960, 79 per cent in 1970, 65 per cent in 1985, and only 49 per cent in 1994. And the weight of the salaried middle strata progresses steadily: from 15 per cent in 1960 to 21 per cent in 1970, 30 per cent in 1985, and 44 per cent in 1994.4
The picture that emerges from these data is of an organization progressively gravitating into the orbit of the salaried middle classes. Yet given the cultural ascendancy of these strata, usually recruited from public service and the ‘educated bourgeoisie’, as well as their considerable individual and collective mobilizing potential, we are witnessing a much greater decline in the influence of working-class culture than the strictly arithmetical relations of force disclose.
The extent of this cultural ascendancy reinforces the position of those associated with it and, consequently, the ‘aristocratic’ character of social-democratic organization. A cultural quota is operative within it5 – as in society – which weakens the political engagement and role of workers and the most disadvantaged strata.
The Declining Influence of Working-Class Culture
The effects of the rise of salaried middle strata, and especially their most educated fraction, are felt in most aspects of organizational life with the production of new codes, new signs, new habitus. Once carried out primarily by workers turned ‘full-timers’, leadership tasks are increasingly taken over by these new categories, privileged possessors of the ‘power of speech’. Thus, a new cultural and sociological framework has gradually and imperceptibly been established, whose main consequence is a reduction in the role and power of the working-class component of the party. The significance of this infiltration of the social-democratic organization and apparatus by the new middle classes should not be underestimated: the party’s identity is affected, and its overall balance is disturbed. It leads to a redefinition of the ‘nature’ of the social-democratic membership body and a challenge to the party’s role as a structure ‘intermediate’, and ‘mediating’, between the state and the working class.
As the figures demonstrate, the working-class presence is obviously not residual; it is not – as Aragon put it – a ‘scrap of tarnished metal’ in an organizational edifice constructed by others, dominated by others, and serving others. But this presence – and influence – becomes increasingly indirect; it is down to the trade unions (and trade-union activists in the social-democratic organization), and hence to institutions that are, after all, ‘external’ to the political organization (and themselves weakened). Socialist organization is no longer – or is not sufficiently so any more – a site of social integration and sociability; neither is it a site for the attainment of individual material and symbolic recompense (elected posts, responsibilities, prestige) by workers and ordinary people.
Basically, it as if this loss of influence, and relegation to a secondary status, prompt an acceleration of the working-class ‘exodus’ through a mechanism of cumulative defection. Indeed, it would appear that a ‘tradeoff’ has operated within social-democratic organizations between working-class recruitment and participation and the recruitment and participation of the ‘middle classes’; and this has weighed heavily on the social character of social-democratic organization. By the terms of this trade-off, increased participation by the salaried middle strata seems to accentuate working-class defection, which in turn reinforces middle-class predominance. All the available statistics indicate that the reduction in the density of social-democratic membership derives from reduced participation by workers (as well as the young). The demographic weakening of the working class, as well as the mutation in its culture and way of life, underlie this phenomenon. But the desertion is also explained by social democracy’s adoption of liberal economic ideas and methods in government, which is often experienced as traumatic. The entry of well-educated strata – teachers, technicians, administrators – into the party in force seems to lead, via a kind of ‘spiral of silence’, to the passivity of working-class members, even to their exit, and sometimes – as in the case of the PvdA – to their marginalization pure and simple.6
‘Silence without departure’7 on the part of workers is often followed by their departure in silence, confirming inner-party relations of domination that are disadvantageous to its popular element. If this is correct, we can anticipate that the working class, which today is letting go of the reins, will in future increasingly desert social-democratic organizations.
The Redistribution of Power in Social-Democratic Organization
Leaders, Members, Bureaucrats and Experts
Since the second half of the 1960s, observers of ‘modern’ electoral competition, particularly the election campaigns of the great political parties, have highlighted three novel phenomena characterizing the means and methods employed: (a) the central role of television, ‘the most universal campaigning method’; (b) the quasi-systematic use of communications professionals and ‘experts’ of every sort; and (c) the use of scientific methods of opinion polling.
These changes could not leave the socialist and social-democratic parties adopting them untouched. With the renewal of their ‘communication’ and working methods, the endo-organizational distribution of power, the political rhetoric, even the traditional mode of existence of these parties has been affected.
Four changes, presented here in ‘ideal-typical’ fashion, assume a particular importance.
The first relates to the elevation of the party leader. As the political importance of television increases, the leader’s role in the election campaign and party operation is enhanced. Leaders find themselves projected to the centre of the public stage and the party stage, while intermediate structures, like the membership body, fade.8 Much more so than in the past, today the leader is both a team leader and an important issue in the election.
What ensues is a centralization of the main decisions, with decision-making becoming the privilege of a small group revolving around the party leader. Within this group, the role of specialists and professionals with multiple qualifications expands, the ‘modern’ kind of centralization differing in that respect from ‘old-style’ centralization. Moreover, particularly during election campaigns, this modern group of custodes novellarum (‘guardians of information’) often appeals to independent advertising agency advisers, sometimes even involving them in its work by more formal links. In the ‘latent conflict’ between ‘organizers’ and ‘experts’, which takes place in every political party, it is the latter who emerge strengthened. Whether it takes an institutionalized and publicly recognized form or an unofficial form (belonging to the leader’s entourage, making decisions in ‘kitchen cabinets’), this influence is limited to certain questions, invariably exercised on an occasional basis, and always under the supervision of the party leadership or leader in person. This does not make a real power the real power. But whether institutionalized or not, enduring or precarious, the enlistment of experts into – or alongside – the party’s decision-making bodies is liable to reduce the influence of members and the traditional bureaucracy over management of the party’s ideological and programmatic identity.
The third change consists in the significance accorded to opinion research, which plays a role of paramount importance in the party’s strategic and tactical positioning. In the same way as (and sometimes more than) members, the body of qualitative and quantitative research produced seems to play a key role in the formulation and reformulation of the political/programmatic options of the great political parties, both right-and left-wing.9 It creates a ‘surrogate electorate’ alongside the real electorate, one whose expectations are given maximum priority in socialist headquarters.10
From this set of changes, especially the preponderance of television, a fourth results: a new inner-party culture. The logic of ‘televisual appeal’, emphasizing leadership and debate between elites rather than the ‘abstract mediocrity’ (Max Weber) of programmes and ideologies, contributes to the emergence of a new intra-partisan spirit. This is more focused on personalities and their rivalries, more ‘fragmented’ and less ‘collective’. The underlying cohesion – and fundamental divergences – entailed by intensive programmatic/ideological work lose their former value. The modern social-democratic spirit, the soul of the organization – to tès psuchès èthos, as the Ancient Greeks put it – is no longer based on an ethic of strong integrating bonds of programme, ideology or class.
These developments tend progressively to short-circuit the traditional sites of social-democratic endo-organizational power. The systematic utilization of television strengthens the role of the leadership at the expense of the organization and its ‘internal’ leaders. The systematic employment of opinion research is carried on regardless not only of the organization, but also – a dimension largely underestimated by analysts – of the media as a relay of opinion to party elites.11 The upshot is a reduction in the importance of the membership. It is doubly weakened, as a structure serving to transmit the party’s policy to voters and voters’ expectations and reactions to the party, to the advantage of ‘direct’, unmediated contact – direct but ‘from afar’ – between the leader and the electorate. The role of mass socialist organizations as institutions buttressed by trade-union power and a strong associational presence – associations constructed specifically to produce, and benefit from, the effect of proximity (by their strong presence and work on the social ground) – is significantly reduced.
Conceived as a hierarchical network that was extended, dense and active, classical social-democratic organization is giving way; and, with it, the traditional bureaucracy that represented the pillar on which party cohesion, mobilization and solidity were built. The increase in the number of ‘full-time’ personnel surrounding the party leadership12 is merely a symptom of the gradual – and partial – displacement of the organizational centre of gravity towards the leadership circle. What follows, especially at election time, is a diminution in the operational autonomy of intermediate and local bodies, which find themselves more subordinate to the ‘centre’ than they were in the past. A characteristic of the ‘postmodern’ electoral campaign is precisely the fact that even ‘decentralized’ actions are frequently ‘nationally co-ordinated’.13
But it is not only new technologies and new methods of electoral campaigning and doing politics that underlie and sustain reinforcement of the leadership’s status. Other powerful factors, possibly more concealed, tend in the same direction.
In current circumstances, a deep uncertainty about identity on the one hand, and doubts about electability and increased electoral instability on the other, enhance the importance of leaders as essential and sometimes irreplaceable links between the organization and the electorate. A leader with celebrity status and greater freedom of manoeuvre presents himself as a palliative for the identity deficit, but also the competitive deficit, of the contemporary social-democratic parties.14 The ongoing slackening of the ties between socialist parties and trade unions tends in the same direction. As soon as the union stops ‘identifying’ with the party and the party with the union, once the link is loosened without being broken, the margin of freedom of the party – and of the leader who imposes himself in it – widens.15
Finally, a redistribution of power and roles has occurred within social-democratic organizations. It can be summarized as follows:
(a)strengthening of the role of the party leader vis-à-vis the rest of the organization, party elites included;
(b)strengthening of the role of the ‘minority’ (of elites), and especially the leadership group, vis-à-vis the mass membership;
(c)strengthening of ‘experts’ vis-à-vis the ‘representative bureaucracy’ of the party.
Are Members Insignificant?
The New Complexity of Social-Democratic Organizations
‘What has a party to do with so many members?’ The political scientist M.N. Pedersen’s question is provocative. And his response is cut and dried: the epoch of the great mass parties, parties of social integration, is irrevocably over. Formerly the expression par excellence of modernity in political organization, these parties have no option, according to a widely held view, but to become ‘media parties’ led by a group of professionals resolutely and almost exclusively orientated towards the electoral market.
Pedersen poses the same basic question raised by Otto Kirchheimer (1966) and Angelo Panebianco (1988) in different terms: that of the transformation of mass bureaucratic parties into ‘catch-all’ parties (according to the former), or ‘electoral-professional’ parties (according to the latter). Now, a noteworthy aspect – at once condition and consequence – of this transformation is the diminished role of the mass membership within the party organization. The changes we have just inventoried certainly point in that direction.
But what is actually going on? Can we assign an unequivocal meaning to the reduction in the mass membership’s influence in social-democratic organizations? Nothing is less certain. Everything points to believing that ‘activists count’. First of all, they count because they continue to play a significant role in the process of deciding and formulating policies. Next, they count because they contribute to the smooth operation and effectiveness of the organization, as well as to divisions, splits and crises. They thus count as a source of strength, but also – and this is scarcely surprising – as a nuisance factor.
To illustrate this thesis, I shall restrict myself to a brief examination of three examples, which demonstrate the complexity and ambivalence of organizational change, obliging me to qualify the conclusions set out above.
1.The British Labour Party, a formation with an indirect structure, was never a genuinely mass party – without, for all that, being a cadre party. Initially developed almost exclusively through territorial diffusion, it has never known the robust and strongly hierarchized bureaucracy of continental parties – for example, the SPD or SPÖ. Moreover, it was characterized by a dual internal power structure. On one side was its apparatus, directed by the National Executive Committee (NEC) and dominated by non-parliamentary components (union leaderships, local constituencies), which defined the party’s policy. On the other were the leader and the parliamentary group, which in reality possessed autonomous power and were disinclined to attach much importance to Conference resolutions and the NEC. This badly ‘integrated’ and scarcely coherent structure was the vector of an inherent fragility. Labour had a tendency to display its divisions in public at the slightest opportunity, and – much more seriously – to be destabilized every time it found itself in government (with the exception of the Attlee administration of 1945–51). In this complex, largely ‘confederal’ arrangement, the trade unions traditionally represented the crossing point and quasi-obligatory partner for any tendency or group aspiring to lead the party. At the same time, the institutionalized presence of the unions within the organization contributed indirectly to Labour’s membership crisis, some trade unionists and working-class activists judging it unnecessary to join the party on an individual basis given their collective affiliation.
Thus, the success of the offensive launched by the Labour left against the moderate leadership of the party towards the end of the 1970s was conditional first, on supremacy within the local constituencies and second, on an alliance with the unions. Now, the traditional weakness in membership rendered the constituency parties more vulnerable to this offensive; and the failure of the 1974–79 Labour government, unable to create a minimum of co-ordination between the economic and financial policy of the state and the incomes policy of the unions – what Fritz Scharpf has called ‘the drama of incomes policy’ in Great Britain – encouraged the alliance between the unions, which had shifted to the left, and the radical wing of the party.
Once this supremacy and alliance were established, following a reinforcement of its positions throughout the 1970s and a battle of ‘unprecedented ferocity’,16 the left won a great victory at the special Wembley Conference of January 1981. At the price of a split, it was thus able to ‘resolve’, in its own fashion, the bundle of contradictions in British Labourism, though this resolution proved temporary and largely illusory. The electoral disaster of 1983, and Neil Kinnock’s arrival at the head of the party the same year, marked the beginning of a period of ideological and programmatic reorientation at the left’s expense.17 In the 1990s, on the initiative of the moderate leadership, an organizational reform of the party was undertaken. The increase in individual membership, as well as in the rights of individual members, sharply reduced the importance of ‘activists’ (in reality, the active membership), who tended to be on the left, and of affiliated unions, which (according to some) tended to adopt ‘vote-losing policy commitments’. New Labour has thus become ‘a mass party of largely inactive individual members having a plebiscitary, rather than any organic, relationship with a leadership cadre of professional politicians’.18 Finally, under the auspices of ‘democratization’ and ‘modernization’, the role of the leadership circle, and the leader personally, was once again strongly enhanced.
2.While the major mobilization of ‘new left’ militants in the SPD in the 1970s did not allow them to capture the party’s local constituencies – privileged site of confrontation between ‘right’ and ‘left’ – and, thereby, the whole of an extremely centralized organization, it did geatly destabilize the oldest socialist party in Europe. As some searched for a position that would be more in tune with the working class and the moderate segment of the electorate, and others for one that would be more in touch with the new middle classes and youth, the SPD almost lost its bearings. Claus Offe wrote of the German social democrats in 1981: ‘For years now … on all politically contentious issues (peace, building policies, environmental protection, nuclear energy, steel crisis, unemployment) there are social democrats on both sides of the front-lines, and in the long run not even the strongest organization can take this strain.’19
Of course, the left lost. But at the end of a battle in which the methods employed on both sides might have made Machiavelli blush, the party found itself destabilized. Its cohesion and traditional profile had been challenged. The invasion of the organization by the middle classes and the new left, and its gradual conversion to ecological themes – accelerated by the consolidation of the Green pole in the Germany party system – led to the ‘Balkanization’ of one of the historically most centralized and working-class parties in Europe.20 Over recent years, the SPD has presented the image of a ‘decentralized’ party, its structure even being described – doubtless with some exaggeration – as ‘loosely coupled anarchy’.21 The ‘new politics’ culture is noticeably stronger within it, and leadership autonomy has been considerably reduced.22 Under the influence of the Greens, a participatory mechanism has been initiated that favoured the installation of a more ‘anti-authoritarian’ model of internal democracy in German social democracy, as in other socialist parties.23 However, the selection of Gerhard Schröder as social-democratic candidate for chancellor in 1998, which took a quasi-plebiscitary form, has once again enhanced the importance of the leadership. Moreover, his selection is indicative of the organizational ambivalence of the German social democrats, who proceeded to a subtle and perilous division of roles, as formerly between Helmut Schmidt and Willy Brandt. This sharing of roles between a candidate elected by plebiscite because he had a winning profile (and who subsequently became chancellor) and a leader of the organization (Oskar Lafontaine) closer to the party’s actual ideology, proved short-lived. Lafontaine’s resignation in 1999 and Schröder’s accession to the post of party president will strengthen – at least temporarily – the SPD’s unity, as well as the plebiscitary character of its leadership.
3.From the point of view that concerns us here, the case of the Dutch PvdA is typical. From the second half of the 1960s onwards, a group of young militants identifying with the ‘new left’ (Nieuw Links) challenged the traditional paternalism reigning in the party. The ‘wave of democratization’ that shook the PvdA (end of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s) contributed significantly to the decentralization of the system of decision-making, as well as the radicalization of the party’s programmatic choices. This decentralization – particularly on the crucial question of the selection of candidates for elected positions – which in the main was to prove enduring, despite some constitutional amendments in 1992, reduced the national leadership’s freedom of action and decision-making.24 Within an ‘unstable equilibrium between different power centres’, the intermediate elite played a crucial role in the decision-making process.25 It should be added that the influence of the new left, bringing in its wake recruitment of members from the middle classes and the ‘exodus’ and marginalization of the working-class element, changed the party’s internal culture. The PvdA lost its ‘communitarian character’. Since 1966, suspicion and conflict have become the norm, signalling the emergence of an important deficit in internal cohesion.26 Thus, in the ‘new’ organizational system, in which the internal game became more complex and subtle, the role of representatives of the militant base was once again enhanced, contrary to the expectations of Kirchheimer and Panebianco. Since 1992, however, the party executive has been substantially strengthened,27 and the PvdA has become a more centralized party in which ‘the political power of the regional bodies as well as the political influence of the local branches were restricted’.28 This development is no cause for surprise.
These three examples indicate that the presence of the membership body, even as a disruptive factor, is too important to be reduced to a mere complement, without any real weight in the normal course of party life, or a by-product of an organizational apparatus of an electoral-professional variety.
The cases of Labour, the SPD and the PvdA clearly signal that the ideological and programmatic positioning of a party, as well as its political credibility, are not – or not always – a matter for ‘professionals’ and ‘spin doctors’.
But if these examples demonstrate that members ‘count’, they also indicate that the gap between assertion of their power and submission to the leadership’s power can turn out to be very narrow. Such is the meaning of developments in the relevant parties during the 1990s: ultimately, despite more democratic constitutional norms, the swing of the pendulum of power has not favoured the mass membership. Indeed, the influence of the latter within the ‘elite-dominated associations’ represented by the parties proved to be unstable, fluctuating, and unduly dependent on electoral and intra-organizational circumstances. This does not make it any the less real.
More specifically, in Labour and the SPD (and, albeit less spectacularly, the PvdA as well), the 1990s were marked by a ‘turn to the leader’. Following the tumult and fracas of protracted internal struggles, a general trend to reinforcement of the leadership – described above – prevailed.29 Indeed, the influential membership base of these two historic parties, long confined to opposition and obsessed by the fear of failure, finally accepted a leader with virtually unlimited power (in the first case), and a chancellor largely solitary in the exercise of his duties (in the second). From this perspective, Tony Blair is a ‘textbook case’. Having become the leader of a Labour Party traumatized by a long series of electoral defeats, he has disciplined the party, reduced the weight of the left and the unions, imposed ‘tight political control over all policy pronouncements’, and abandoned or modified political commitments without prior decision by the party’s collective bodies.30
The cases of Blair and Schroder clearly indicate that political circumstances, and the ‘personal equation’ of the men and women who are leaders (notably their ‘winning profile’), play a very important role in the distribution and redistribution of internal organizational power. Consequently, it is unwise to overestimate the importance of organizational and sociological factors. These two cases also show that, regardless of the constitutional arrangements, the frontier between weak and strong leadership – or between influential and marginal membership base – is extremely porous; and that the same organization can rapidly pass from a distribution of power that is unfavourable to the leader to one that is highly favourable. At root, this ‘porous’ frontier and these redistributions of power attest to the antagonistic tendencies traversing – and governing – the internal modus operandi of contemporary social-democratic organizations.
Here it is worth noting that bit by bit, a novel trend has recently emerged within all social-democratic organizations: the reassertion – or a certain reassertion, at least – of the value of mass membership, conceived as a source both of political legitimation for the leadership and of electoral strength. In Europe, classical models of political and electoral mobilization, largely based on the mobilizing capacity of the party’s membership network, have persisted, even though they have been weakened. And nowhere has ‘the centralized use of new communications technologies entirely extinguished the local component of national campaign strategies’.31 Indeed, it is now firmly established that elections ‘are not won or lost solely at the national level’;32 and that the membership – not only the active membership, but also the passive membership – is a source of electoral effectiveness. Moreover, several parties, facing competing political appeals at the local level, have been obliged to strengthen their implantation and presence on the ground.33 In fact, confronted with the greater discredit of political parties, the appearance of new protest parties, and the participatory ambitions of members or potential members, leaders again tend to value the mass membership increasingly, and to encourage participation in the organization. Thus, in order to involve individual members in the party’s work, they change the party rules to allow members to exercise ‘direct influence in selecting candidates and determining party policies’.34 A potential aspect of these new structures is ‘the development of a new, plebiscitarian type of party in which vertical, internal communications … replace horizontal communications within areas, regions and constituencies’.35 More members, more participation in the decision-making process, more influence in the selection of candidates and the leader, more decentralizaton. And more power for the leader! Such is the content of organizational change in a great number of socialist and social-democratic parties today. These parties oscillate and hesitate between recourse to the leader and a more democratic, participatory internal regime. And they play on both registers at once!
The Middle Classes, ‘New Politics’ and Leadership
Change in inner-party power relations is equally linked to the new sociology of socialist and social-democratic organizations. Their new ‘social structure’ leads to the ‘emergence’ of a membership body that is culturally more ‘autonomous’ and less subject to the ‘centre’.
The massive entry of educated strata creates a new type of member. More individualist, less docile, often ‘polemical’ in style, and ‘cognitively mobilized’, she or he demands respect for her or his opinions, and wants more influence on the party’s ‘public’ affairs.36 More so than in the past, the party’s modern bureaucracy is the product of the middle classes. Full-timers issuing from this social group are characterized by a higher level of education and a ‘network of relations’, personal or familial, attributable to their social origin, which affords them greater autonomy and less conformism vis-à-vis the party leadership.37 This sociological change affects the organization’s identity and modus operandi. Cohesion becomes less strong, disobedience – even dissidence – more frequent, and internal conflict is perceived less negatively.
It turns out, moreover, that the salaried middle strata, especially their young and educated elements, are principally concerned with the ‘change in value priorities’ among the populations of Europe. Those in favour of the ‘new politics’ are orientated towards a normative conception of participation very different from the one described by Robert Michels, which traditionally obtains within great mass organizations. ‘Cognitive mobilization’ and ‘post-materialism’ significantly increase the anti-authoritarian and anti-oligarchical propensity, and strengthen tendencies conducive to the adoption of less centralized and more flexible organizational schemas, which take greater account of the aspirations of the membership base. Thus, ‘emancipatory distance’, or the possibility of speaking and contradicting,38 is extended within socialist organizations. ‘A high level of cognitive mobilization’, Ronald Inglehart has written, ‘virtually quadruples the propensity of an individual to want to direct the elites.’39 Regardless of their organizational structure, socialist parties attract supporters of the new politics in far greater numbers than their conservative and liberal opponents, because of their ‘egalitarian’ political culture.40 The consequences for the operation and constitution of the organization are important. The intermediate elites of socialist organizations affiliated to the ‘new politics’ – the majority hailing from the educated middle classes, and particularly the public sector – are more orientated to the ‘base’ and ‘constituency’ than the centre in cases of conflict; they are ‘constituency oriented’. By contrast, supporters of the values of ‘old politics’ are more sensitive to the line laid down by the centre; they are ‘leadership oriented’. According to Robert Rohrschneider’s data, this general trend involves all the socialist formations – with the exception of the British Labour Party – and primarily the SPD, PvdA (see above), and PSOE.41
Hence a proportion of these intermediate elites operates, in a sense, as the elite of the majority, restricting the scope of the iron law of oligarchy. The partial turn of the intermediate strata of the socialist and social-democratic parties to the ‘base’ acts more as a counterweight to the new intraorganizational centralization than as a vehicle of a new balance that is disadvantageous to the leadership circle. Nevertheless, the distribution of power roles is affected, and the content of old hierarchies is blurred. The leadership is less self-assured. This is certainly not the ‘soft’ law of democracy, as Rohrschneider maintains, but it is not the classical type of iron law of oligarchy dear to Michels, either. The membership base, actual or potential, is no longer as he described it: incompetent, immature, malleable, and submissive. Today’s social-democratic elites have to confront a different membership. This membership is, of course, less ‘necessary’ for the effective performance of the party machine, and probably less active and motivated. But it is increasingly educated, informed, mistrustful, and ‘anti-authoritarian’. Accordingly, party elites sometimes have to retreat, sidestep issues, and compromise with it.
And the Unions?
The battle between ‘left’ and ‘right’ in the British Labour Party and German SPD during the 1970s and 1980s unquestionably highlighted the importance of the ‘membership base’ as a factor. It also highlighted the significance of the structures (indirect structure in Great Britain, centralized apparatus in the FRG) and actors (trade unions) forming part of the genetic code of socialist organizations. Indeed – to return to these two examples – the impossibility of the German new left allying with trade-unionists strongly conditioned its strategy, its political options and its defeat; whereas the establishment of this alliance was the prelude to the Labour left’s victory.42
There is no doubt that a ubiquitous and progressive loosening of the links between socialist parties and trade unions is currently in progress. ‘Disinvestment of the political field by the trade unions’,43 and relaxation of these ties, as well as the erosion of trade-union power, naturally reduce union influence within parties of the social-democratic type. However, reduced influence does not mean absence of influence.
This became evident in the second half of the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s, in the course of the debate on ‘programmatic renewal’ within European social democracy (see Chapter 9). The last refuge of a social-democratic ideology abandoned by social democracy itself, the unions have often been (in Padgett’s words) ‘the revisionists’ major target, since they symbolised traditional party orthodoxy’.44 In a sense – according to Andrew Taylor – ‘what emerges so strongly from the politics of programmatic renewal is the unions’ relative powerlessness and quiescence’.45 The unions displayed pragmatism not only in the Scandinavian countries but also in countries like Germany, and even Great Britain. They neither wanted, nor were they able, to block the process of renewal; but they were unable to inflect it in accordance with their objectives and wishes either. This pragmatic attitude is explained by their weakened position and their ‘electoralism’: ‘they had no political option other than social democracy’.46
Nevertheless, it should be added that the unions, despite being weakened, were capable of exerting a far from negligible political influence. The result of their participation in the debate was ‘to tone down proposals and arguments generating disagreement within the labour movement’. While they appeared to be ‘flexible’ and ‘open’, union leaders were able to impose significant modifications on the SPD, DNA and SAP – parties in which union representation is important – and to attenuate the new neoliberal orientation of programmatic documents.47 Moreover, it is no accident if British Labour and the German SPD required a long spell in opposition for the radical revisionism of Blair and Schröder, as well as the reduction of union weight in Labour, to take effect. In addition, the minor inflection to the left of Schroder’s electoral strategy, in the last stage of his campaign in the 1998 German election, is a good example of union influence (and the influence of the party membership). Likewise, the reanchorage of the French PS on the left would have been inconceivable without the great union movement of December 1995.
More generally, the varied reception of neoliberalism and the values of the ‘new politics’ in different parties was linked, inter alia, to the unions’ position in the party hierarchy. In southern European parties, characterized by a weak trade-union presence, a marginalized membership network, and a strong leadership (PSOE, PASOK, French PS, Portuguese PS), the turn towards ‘moderation’ and liberal economic management in the 1980s was more rapid and marked (PASOK being a partial exception here) than it was in most central and northern European parties. This ‘accelerated’ neoliberalization occurred despite ideological positions that were initially noticeably to the left.48 In the 1980s and 1990s, when changes in economic rhetoric and the emergence of ‘post-materialist’ values prompted socialist leaders to redefine their objectives and sever connections with their parties’ Keynesian past, the unions frequently assumed the function of an intra- or extra-organizational counter-power (in Kitschelt’s term, they were a ‘conservative force’).49 And in cases where the tradition of co-operation between party and unions was relatively strong, and inner-party union positions were relatively assured, the unions influenced the content and rhythm of the programmatic reforms adopted, without ultimately blocking the process of renewal.50
In sum, the unions have not proved capable of decisively fixing their stamp on the current political profile of parties of a social-democratic type. But – albeit markedly less so than in the past – they continue to influence the political and ideological equilibrium, and internal power struggles, of social-democratic organizations. Without any optical illusion, these are the two incontestable lessons that can be drawn from the process of programmatic renewal within social democracy in the 1980s and 1990s.
The brief analysis above indicates that the role of the leader and party elite is less central than is usually assumed. With the recomposition of communications and technology, the weakening of the unions, the new sociology of organizations, the diffusion of anti-authoritarian values – with all these, the modalities of the exercise of power by the few, as well as the modalities of participation, submission and ‘rebellion’ by the many, have certainly altered. Today’s leaders are obliged to take account of the interests, aspirations, expectations or prejudices of members, the intermediate bodies of the party, and the unions linked to it. This amounts to saying that these ‘actors’ retain a significant proportion of their influence, even though it has diminished (sometimes severely). The social-democratic organization remains a structure of co-operation and compromise, a ‘system of reciprocal expectations’ between party elites, various centres of influence, and the membership base.
Obviously, the disparity in influence and strength between elites and ‘base’ is, as ever, great: like the one between David and Goliath. And ‘History’ teaches us that David won. Ordinary members and minorities in contemporary socialist organizations make their voices heard, perhaps a little more strongly and a little more frequently than they did in the past. ‘David did overcome Goliath,’ Ralph Miliband once wrote: ‘But the point of the story is that David was smaller than Goliath and that the odds were heavily against him.’51 In organizational terms, this means that today’s leadership plays a central role, more central than previously, but that minorities occasionally prevail52 – or, better: leadership centrality is currently reinforced, but minorities win less rarely than they did in the past. This situation is unique, and no doubt it will please lovers of paradox. For in fact, today, the adhesion of the ‘many’ to hierarchical systems dominated by elites and leaders turns out to be largely ‘instrumental’. It is limited in character and duration. Let us examine the data.
Socialist Leadership: ‘Holding a wolf by the ears’
Weakening
Does the fact that the leader currently holds centre-stage – does this ‘blaze of power’ – create, or correspond to, a more durable and enduring authority? This is far from certain. Socialist leaders today both enjoy and suffer a paradoxical status. While they benefit from exhaustive media coverage, and while they increasingly go it alone (or seem to), they nevertheless find it more difficult than in the past to establish themselves in the long term. The data in Tables 8.1 and 8.2 are unambiguous: in the long run (1945–99), despite the new ‘centrality’ of the leader in the party apparatus and public debate, the position of the socialist leaders is being destabilized. Indeed, since the 1970s their term of office has been considerably shorter, and their power more fleeting, than in the initial postwar period. While this trend is not uniform, it is general (with the significant exceptions of the SAP and Danish SD), conveying the impression of a more fragile leadership.
Socialist leaders no longer break records of longevity at the head of their parties, as did Erlander in Sweden, Gerhardsen in Norway, Norton and Corish in Ireland, Mollet in France or, to a lesser extent, Wilson in Great Britain, Schärf in Austria, or Buset (1945–59) in Belgium.53 The times are thus not so kind to the ‘sovereigns’ of contemporary socialism, testing their term of office. Socialist leaders are more vulnerable today than before. Staying put becomes hard.
Nevertheless, it is important to qualify the degree of vulnerability. The cases of Bruntland (DNA), Carlsson (SAP), Vranitsky (SPÖ), Jörgenson (Danish SD), Spring (Irish Labour Party), Spitaels (PSB), Papandreou (PASOK) and Gonzales (PSOE) – as well as the extraordinary terms of Bruno Kreisky and Olof Palme, the two great ‘overlords’ of European socialism in the 1970s and 1980s – demonstrate that an incontestable weakening relative to the initial postwar period does not amount to enfeeblement. The change is important, but it is a matter of degree rather than kind.
Weakening and the ‘Organizational System’
The weakening of socialist leadership, which crystallized very clearly during the difficult years of the economic crisis, largely reflects the structural erosion of social-democratic hegemony within European societies. Let me nevertheless make it clear that it is not a uniform trend: Tables 8.1 and 8.2 display some significant differences depending on the party considered. The leadership of parties that are distinguished by the density of their organizational network (very great density in the cases of the SAP and SPÖ; average in the DNA, PSB, SD);54 a high degree of bureaucratization (SAP, SPÖ, PSB); and high leadership autonomy (SAP, DNA, PSB), or comparatively high autonomy (SPÖ) – this leadership, while weakened, is more resilient. By contrast, weakened leadership is much more evident in the case of parties with an organizational network that is weak (British Labour Party, French PS), or rather weak (SPD); a meagre bureaucratic structure (British Labour Party, French PS, PSP) or one that has recently been weakened (SPD); and less leadership autonomy (British Labour Party before Blair, SPD in recent years,55 French PS after Mitterrand).
Obviously, successive electoral reverses for the German social democrats and British Labour, as well as the French socialists after 1988, contributed significantly to the destabilization of their leaderships. But the period 1973 to 1999 was also a phase of significant electoral retreat and, in some cases, very severe defeats for most of the formations in the first group, without this entailing excessive destabilization of their leadership. The differentiated weakening of socialist leaders seems to be bound up as much with the differentiated electoral weakening of national parties as with variation in their organizational structures. And everything suggests that the vulnerability of the leader’s position is less pronounced in the case of parties that remain close to the traditional social-democratic organizational model than in those whose organizational pattern historically deviated from it, or has done so recently. Nevertheless, notwithstanding these distinctions and nuances, the trend towards leadership weakening is the ‘preponderant’ tendency of the last three decades. This explains why leadership destabilization is not confined to a type of ‘organizational system’, even though it varies according to the type of ‘system’.
If destabilization is not restricted to a type of ‘organizational system’, neither is stability. Formations with such distinct organizational structures as the SAP, SPÖ, PASOK or PSOE exhibit relatively stable (SPÖ) or very stable (PSOE, PASOK, SAP) leadership. This similarity against a background of contrasts is sufficiently curious to warrant further attention.
The parties in the socialist family with greatest leadership autonomy are those of southern Europe (PASOK, PSOE, French PS, PSI), where the role of leaders and (re)founding fathers was fundamental.56 This autonomy, which has facilitated great tactical and strategic flexibility, was doubtless bound up, inter alia, with the ‘primal scene’ of these parties, the conjuncture of their formation or re-formation, when the leader’s position was of the utmost importance.57 The leaders of the parties in question established themselves as veritable autonomous power centres. Their status was that of ‘primus solus’ rather than ‘primus inter pares’.58
The organization of the Greek socialists in the 1970s and early 1980s differed from formations of a social-democratic type in its interclassist character, its weak links with the trade-union world, its lack of a ‘coherent’ profile, its tendency to clientelism, its nationalist accents, and in the extraordinary personalized power of Andreas Papandreou (and weakness of the party apparatus). PASOK was unquestionably constituted as a party all on its own in the European socialist/social-democratic family.59 However, by gradually reinforcing its social anchorage, it was able to create an original – and effective – organization composed of elements from two different ‘logics’ of party-building. First, it was a mass structure relatively well entrenched in popular and rural milieux, and – particularly since the end of the 1980s – in the trade-union environment as well. This structure supported (and in part still supports), and was sustained by (and in part still is), a vast clientelistic network. Second, it was a structure that was highly personalized and centralized, rendering institutional operation of the bureaucratic type obsolete, with all the ‘democratic’ and ‘oligarchic’ ambivalence that involves. The clientelistic mass structure was a stabilizing factor, permitting a better insertion of the party into the political and social field. So was personalized centralization, for all that it might prove an important factor of potential weakness. The dynamic of its construction conferred on PASOK ‘the character of a charismatic-clientelistic mass party’.60
Table 8.1 Socialist leaders (1945–99)
| DNA | |
| E. Gerhardsen | 1945–1965 |
| T. Bratteli | 1965–1975 |
| S. Reiulf | 1975–1981 |
| G.H. Brundtland | 1981–1992 |
| T. Jagland | 1992– |
| SPÖ | |
| A. Schärf | 1945–1957 |
| B. Pittermann | 1957–1967 |
| B. Kreisky | 1967–1983 |
| F. Sinowatz | 1983–1987 |
| F. Vranitsky | 1987–1997 |
| V. Klima | 1997– |
| Danish SD | |
| H. Hedtoft | 1939–1955 |
| H.C. Hansen | 1955–1960 |
| V. Kampmann | 1960–1962 |
| J·-O· Krag | 1962–1972 |
| E. Dinesen | 1972–1973 |
| A. Jørgenson | 1973–1987 |
| S. Auken | 1987–1992 |
| P.N. Rasmussen | 1992– |
| PSP | |
| M. Soares | 1973–1986 |
| V. Constancio | 1986–1989 |
| J. Sampaio | 1989–1992 |
| A. Guterres | 1992– |
| SAP | |
| T. Erlander | 1946–1969 |
| O. Palme | 1969–1986 |
| I. Carlsson | 1986–1996 |
| G. Persson | 1996– |
| British Labour Party | |
| C. Attlee | 1935–1955 |
| H. Gaitskell | 1955–1963 |
| H. Wilson | 1963–1976 |
| J. Callaghan | 1976–1980 |
| M. Foot | 1980–1983 |
| N. Kinnock | 1983–1992 |
| J. Smith | 1992–1994 |
| T. Blair | 1994– |
| SPD | |
| K. Schumacher | 1946–1952 |
| E. Ollenhauer | 1952–1964 |
| W. Brandt | 1964–1987 |
| H.-J.Vogel | 1987–1991 |
| B. Engholm | 1991–1993 |
| R. Scharping | 1993–1995 |
| O. Lafontaine | 1995–1999 |
| G. Schröder | 1999– |
| SFIO/PS | |
| G. Mollet | 1946–1969 |
| A. Savary | 1969–1971 |
| F. Mitterrand | 1971–1981 |
| L. Jospin | 1981–1988 |
| P. Mauroy | 1988–1992 |
| L. Fabius | 1992–1993 |
| M. Rocard | 1993–1994 |
| H. Emmanueli | 1994–1995 |
| L. Jospin | 1995–1997 |
| F. Hollande | 1997– |
| PASOK | |
| A. Papandreou | 1974–1996 |
| K. Simitis | 1996– |
| PSOE | |
| F. Gonzales | 1974–1997 |
| J. Almunia | 1997– |
Sources: For 1945–92, and the DNA, Labour Party, and SFIO/PS, see European Journal of Political Research, vol. 24, no. 3, 1993, pp. 324–5, 258, 296, and 279 respectively. For 1992–99, the sources are various; for the SAP, SPD, Danish SD, and PSP, the international sections of the parties concerned; for the SPÖ, Wolfgang Muller and D. Meth-Cohn, ‘The Selection of Party Chairmen in Austria: A Study in Intra-Party Decision-Making’, EJPR, vol. 20, no. 1, 1991, p. 45.
Table 8.2 Socialist parties and leaders (1945–99): average duration*
| Period | No. of years | No. of leaders | Average duration | ||
| DNA | 1945–1975 | 30 | 2 | 15 | |
| 1975–1999 | 24 | 3 | 8.5 | (2) | |
| British Labour | 1945–1976 | 31 | 3 | 10.3 | |
| 1976–1999 | 23 | 5 | 4.5 | (4) | |
| SAP | 1946–1986 | 40 | 2 | 20 | |
| 1986–1999 | 13 | 2 | 10 | (1) | |
| SPÖ | 1945–1983 | 38 | 3 | 12.7 | |
| 1983–1999 | 16 | 3 | 7 | (2) | |
| SPD | 1946–1987 | 41 | 3 | 13.7 | |
| 1987–1999 | 12 | 5 | 3 | (4) | |
| SD | 1946–1972 | 26 | 4 | 6.5 | |
| 1972–1999 | 27 | 4 | 6.7 | (3) | |
| SFIO/PS | 1946–1971 | 25 | 2 | 12.5 | |
| 1971–1999 | 28 | 8 | 3.7 | (7) | |
| PSP | 1974–1999 | 25 | 4 | 6 | (3) |
| PASOK | 1974–1999 | 25 | 2 | 22 | (1) |
| PSOE | 1974–1999 | 25 | 2 | 23 | (1) |
Sources: See Table 8.1; calculations by the author.
* To establish average duration, I have obviously not included the present incumbent (the figure in brackets indicates the number of leaders that forms the basis of my calculations). The complexity of the situations that give rise to the replacement of a leader (e.g. death or illness) means that average duration possesses a merely indicative value.
PSOE was a party with a remarkable electoral performance, which for many years after 1982 defied ‘the law of electoral gravity’.61 After the neutralization of the influence of the membership base (late 1970s), PSOE was marked by the centrality of its charismatic leader. Indeed, rare are the political personalities in western Europe who have been able to dominate the political life of their country as comprehensively as Felipe Gonzales.62 However, the internal structure of PSOE, which is the southern European party least distant from the social-democratic model, meant that unlike that of Andreas Papandreou, his exceptional reign was not an undivided one.63
A federal structure crowned by a strong central organization, PSOE (like PASOK) has considerably strengthened its organization since the second half of the 1980s by widely relying on clientelistic practices. Today, PSOE is a party well anchored in society. That said, great leadership stability in PSOE and PASOK is due not to the structure of the respective organizations but to the charismatic personalities around which they were built.
The converse of PASOK and PSOE are the SAP and SPÖ, vast, complex organizations with large memberships, possessing a remarkable capacity for mobilization and orientation of their social base. The development of a well-delineated and politically coherent bureaucracy – while doubtless raising the issue of ‘oligarchic’ domination by the leadership group – contributed significantly to the effectiveness and robustness of these parties. In addition, the internal politics of the SAP and SPÖ are characterized by a remarkable consensus, despite the self-assertion of a ‘libertarian left’ sector in the former, and a certain decentralization of power since Kreisky in the latter.64 Their mass structure, as well as the important role of internal leaders and full-timers, does not expose these parties to ‘entryism’, in the noble and less noble senses of the term, by activists with an ‘iconoclastic’ ideology. This strongly differentiates them from formations like the British Labour Party, the PvdA, or the SPD in the 1970s, when a limited number of new members – a small ‘stage army’ as Robert McKenzie would say – could politically unbalance a large number of constituency or regional parties.65 Moreover, better career prospects for the elites (in the organization or the state) weakened the potential for dissidence within these parties, complicating the formation of counter-elites capable of challenging the leadership.66 All these factors contributed to leadership stability. This remarkable stability was thus bound up both with the good electoral performance of the Swedish and Austrian socialists and with strong organizational cohesion, while we should not underestimate the weight of such important personalities as Palme, Kreisky, or Franz Vranitsky. The example of the SAP in 1991 is revealing: the very severe – almost humiliating – defeat of the Swedish social democrats, who achieved their lowest electoral score since 1928, did not provoke a challenge to Ingvar Carlsson. The ‘organizational system’ of these parties – parties that could be characterized as the ‘bedrock’ within the European socialist family (given their strong internal cohesion, stability and resistance, at least until recently, to the dynamic of ‘demassification’ and fratricidal struggles) – functions as a structure that stabilizes their leadership.
The secret of the long terms of Gonzales and Papandreou – but also of François Mitterrand, Bettino Craxi and, to a lesser extent, Mario Soares – lies in their personal prestige and their ability, frequently demonstrated, to win elections. Unlike the SAP or SPÖ, it was not the structure of a mass organization, with strong cohesion and discipline, that determined their longevity at the head of their parties, but this longevity that brought with it cohesion and discipline. Yet when strong leadership stability is not based on the substratum of an organization that is stable, institutionalized and well anchored in society, it can turn into its opposite – very great instability. The weakening of the French PS’s leadership, particularly after 1988, is a good indication of this.
The future of the PSOE after Gonzales and PASOK after Papandreou – parties that are, anyway, better inserted into their respective societies than their French or Portuguese counterparts – seems fairly well guaranteed today. However, the influence of these parties, which once prided themselves on their power, is currently reduced and becoming ‘commonplace’. But the Spanish and Greek socialists, certainly the latter, seem successfully to have passed the test of the ‘routinization of charisma’.67
Compared with the SAP or SPÖ, the southern parties lack density and depth. They lack a tenaciously nurtured sense of destiny and the slow progress that goes with solidity. They lack the stabilizing principle represented by deep organizational and social anchorage. Yet PSOE and PASOK are two separate cases in southern European socialism. In various respects, the leadership of Gonzales and Papandreou was cataclysmic – and double-edged. But both, in their way, were able to construct relatively strong organizations, which are well rooted in society. A strong, durable and effective organization becomes such through a successful intermixture of collective histories and individual destinies. The Spanish and Greek socialists must prove that the foundation of the stability of their leadership – if not their entire organization – is something more than the ‘charisma’ of a founding leader (in the case of PASOK), or a refounding leader (PSOE). They must prove that the ‘substance of the foundation’ is not weak.
Factors of Weakness: ‘The earth moves about, I can have no confidence in it’68
(i)Extra-organizational factors
When the Emperor Tiberius, one of the strangest figures in the history of power, was asked how he bore the burden, he invariably replied that he had the impression of ‘holding a wolf by the ears’ [lupum se auribus tenere].69 My analysis has shown that the ‘sovereigns’ of contemporary socialism frequently convey the same impression. Behind the scenes, some profound changes are weakening the role of leadership. And the question that directly comes to mind is simple: why?
The electoral deficit: The ‘ideal’ leadership is one that is able to combine the imperative of maximizing votes in the electoral arena with that of maximizing support, and hence cohesion, inside the party.70 But this ideal combination proves difficult to achieve. At a time when party apparatuses are more discredited, the leader most suited to winning on the electoral level is not always the person most identified with the organization and its internal affairs. In cases of latent or overt conflict between imperatives that are both attributes of effective leadership, the criterion of electoral ‘success’ tends to become – but is not always – paramount.
Since the second half of the 1970s, the ‘breakdown’ of the Keynesian equation – and the fiscal, managerial and legitimation crisis of the welfare state, which was the jewel in the crown of a culturally strong and electorally victorious social democracy – have deprived socialists of an electorally effective economic and social strategy. Now, in parties where pursuit of electoral success predominates, leaders risk being strong in so far, and only in so far, as they are successful. Hence their current insecurity, which is inherent in the notion and function of competitive ‘palliative’ evoked above. In an ‘electoralist’ party, those elected in the name of effectiveness will be replaced in the name of effectiveness. Those who live by the sword die by the sword: such is the law of ‘proof’ by performance.
The power deficit: Today, the internationalization of markets and economic constraints calls into question both the role of the nation-state and the historic social gains of the working-class movement. Within the European Union more particularly, the national state, as both economic actor and law-maker, is growing weaker. A set of ‘systemic constraints’, both external and internal, deprives all political formations of some of their power and impact – especially social-democratic formations that have ‘traditionally made national public power the principal lever of [their] political and economic action’.71 National parties have not managed to make up for the ground lost at a national level by occupying the European arena (which does not – or not yet – constitute a suitable framework for the exercise of democracy and authority). The reduction in national space remains without real compensation – or at least, without equivalent compensation – at the supranational level. This only serves to underscore the power – and credibility – deficit of parties in general, and socialist parties in particular. Now, it is scarcely necessary to enumerate the repercussions of this power deficit (in the state and parties) on the power of leaders, for the core of their strength is affected or bypassed: the party-institution they lead and the instrument (the state) by means of which their power is translated into deeds.
The novelty – and seeming paradox – of the current status of socialist leaders consists in the following fact: their ‘internal’ political capacity – or ability to operate effectively and influence intra-party decisions – increases, whereas their ‘external’ political capacity (their ability to influence social developments and inflect them in line with their designs) decreases. Leaders are strengthened within an institution that is itself weakened. They extend – or seem to extend – their ascendancy over an organization that is losing some of its ascendancy over its environment. The personalization of power they submit to (which is not simply impressionistic, or a mere artefact) has the effect of masking the weakening of the structure of the party and the nation-state on which leaders depend, since they are expected to sustain their action and supply mechanisms for effective action.
Thus, the synergetic fusion of the power deficit – bound up with the crisis of the nation-state – and the electoral deficit weakens socialist leadership.
Those who flaunt themselves do not always hold power, and those who hold power are not always strong. In reality, the ‘personalism’ that is in vogue is all the stronger, more immoderate and more ironic in that it is accompanied – and complemented – by a growing lack of power. More visible and more exposed, stronger and more disarmed than the ‘erstwhile leader’, the current socialist leader is charged with a mission that is beyond his or her means.72 Frequently possessing an ‘enormous collective authority’ that they are not in a position fully to accept, today’s leaders therewith run the risk of becoming the ideal scapegoat. And as the figures indicate, they frequently do become just that.
(ii)Intra-organizational factors: What is happening to the ‘party soul’?
The factors I have just cited do not provide an exhaustive explanation, although their impact is not negligible. If the ‘earth’ around the party ‘moves’, so does the ‘earth’ of the organization, the party intra-muros, contributing to the destabilization of socialist leaders. Socialist organizations become structures that destabilize their own leadership.
If socialist organizations, like every organization, are constructed as a ‘system of reciprocal expectations’ between party elites and ordinary members, this system has changed profoundly today in comparison with its own past. The massive entry of the middle classes, the growing anti-authoritarian ambiance and, more generally, individualism, which naturally extends even to left-wing organizations, affect the core of these collective entities. The loosening of the common ideological and sociological ‘cement’, as well as the ‘increasing autonomization of the private life from the militant life’,73 call into question the identity function – ideological and ‘associational’ – of the organization.
To encourage participation and strengthen active membership, the ‘old-style’ social-democratic organization combined two types of incentive. The first was what is conventionally called the ‘realization of objectives’ (‘recompense’ for participation is bound up with attainment of the organization’s goals, implementation of its ideological and programmatic objectives). The second was what Peter Lange calls ‘incentives of identity’, in which he distinguishes two components: an ideological component (identification with the ideology and symbols of the party) and an associative component (identification with the group, creation of interpersonal bonds that derive from sociocultural affinities linked with membership of the organization/collectivity).74 This involves ideological satisfaction and socioaffective gratification attaching to the privilege of identifying, and being identified, with an ideological system (‘ideological’ component) and a solidaristic group (‘associative’ component). In this respect, the mass socialist organization was a community of solidarity, an affective community that bound ‘the member to party over and above politics’: it provided members with the self-assurance of an identity (ideological, associative).
Now, parties as sites of integration through ideology and sites of integration in the basic sense of the term (‘a will to break with solitude, to broaden too limited a network of individual relations’) find themselves devalued today.75
The reduction – not complete disappearance – of such rewards, which has been evident since the 1950s and accelerated since the second half of the 1960s, influences the character of participation in mass organizations and, as a consequence, the way in which organizations become organizations. The new system of incentives offered by socialist and social-democratic parties to their adherents is principally focused on the ‘attainment of objectives’ and ‘material’ stimuli (tangible rewards and benefits, including jobs and favours).76 Pursuit of the party’s programmatic aims, or of individual reward, now represents the essential motivating force of adhesion.77
In such parties, a trade-off prevails: trade-off in the noble sense, bound up with ideological and programmatic motives (achieving power in order to translate party policy into deeds); and trade-off in the less noble sense, linked with ‘self-interested’ motives (patronage, elective functions, etc.). Now, the alteration of expectations in a more utilitarian direction – is not an organization a system of reciprocal ‘expectations’? – is not without its effects on the leadership’s security. More so than in the past, its success and stability depend on a set of exogenous factors (economic constraints, possible alliances with other parties, circumstances of party competition, etc.), over which, by definition, control proves less easy. As a result, it is weakened, particularly in a period marked by the reduced effectiveness of the left’s economic policies and the fiscal crisis of the state (and a consequent scarcity of posts and favours to distribute). At present, success, in its various dimensions and facets, is a more important criterion of leadership selection and evaluation than the fact of serving, defending and embodying a common ‘cause’. But success is not always available. Basically, an implicit pact of effectiveness links the leader to the party-organization and the party-in-the-electorate. Ineffective leaders break this pact, and hence become weak. They mobilize the will of the party – which, in the interests of effectiveness, was initially with them – against them. In a sense, the party retrospectively ‘recovers’ the power – ‘the enormous collective authority’ – it had vouchsafed them to begin with.
As a result, contemporary parties and their leaders cannot respond as effectively as in the past either to the requirements of a utilitarian rationality (which encourages participation on the basis of realizing collective goals and distributing individual rewards) or to the requirements of an ‘affective’ rationality of human relations, of ‘identity’, which (itself ‘utilitarian’, according to some) likewise strengthens members’ commitment.
In the past, a high level of participation on the basis of ‘identity’ or ‘solidarity’ facilitated greater leadership flexibility in the direction of the party’s internal affairs. Members whose commitment revolved around ‘identity’ (particularly of an associative type) not only did not expect a ‘trade-off’ for their activity, but simultaneously – and above all – in some sense ‘protected’ the leadership from the demands of other members, whether politically interested or simply ‘interested’.78 This protective screen has largely disintegrated today. The arithmetical reduction and departure of members motivated by the incentives of solidarity (above all, workers), whose great loyalty was in large measure based on habit, leaves the leadership facing members mobilized by ‘incentives of exchange’. We have thus passed from a system of delegation of power – resting on what Pierre Bourdieu, in connection with the PCF, has called a ‘fides implicita’ – to a situation of permanent transaction.79 Ulrich Beck expresses the same idea in a different idiom: ‘Individualization destabilizes the system of mass parties from the inside, because it deprives party commitments of tradition, making them dependent on decision-making or, seen from the party perspective, dependent upon construction.’80 Thus, once an organization’s esprit de corps is weakened, the ‘generous’ (if not unlimited) confidence in the leadership diminishes, and internal tensions mount.81 As a result, contemporary leaders are less capable of establishing their power, their status as leader, on an ethic of strong bonds of integration, on a spirit of discipline in a solidaristic and culturally and sociologically relatively homogeneous organization.82 They are no longer the ‘head’ and representative of a fused community, or the living symbol of its values. They are therefore more fragile.
With the decline of the party-community and the model of authority flowing from it, with the new sociology of the organization, with the diffusion of post-materialist and anti-authoritarian values, an important pillar of leadership stability disappears. By dint of becoming different, the organization creates a different (and, in part, indifferent) membership,83 and a less solid leadership. The organization has, in a sense, become a structure that destabilizes its own leadership.
To conclude, we could say that the highly singular position of contemporary socialist leadership, composed jointly of strength and vulnerability, results from alterations affecting the means of communication, the effectiveness of the nation-state and economic policies, the organizational universe. Some aspects of the internal organizational modifications (weakening of the membership, reduced role of the bureaucracy, systematic recourse to experts) contribute to strengthening the status of the leader; others (end of the party-community, new sociology of membership, internal issues connected with the new politics) to weakening it. Once the complex of factors pointing in one direction or the other is partially clarified, an analogy comes to mind that will serve as a conclusion: in their relationship with their leadership, modern socialist and social-democratic organizations much resemble Herman Hesse’s ‘wolf-man’, who ‘was always recognizing and affirming with one half of himself … what with the other half he fought against and denied’.84
Concluding Remarks
1.Thanks to a network of collateral organizations, historical social democracy impinged on numerous spheres of social life. It offered its members the prospect of ‘integration’, particularly as regards education, political information, social security, and leisure. Today, the bases of this type of recruitment are profoundly – and possibly irremediably – eroded. Hence the reduction in membership density, and the marginal mobilization and habitual lethargy of current day-to-day organizational life. In the light of this new state of affairs, to detect a ‘crisis’ in social-democratic organizational development is to judge the present on the basis of traditional criteria. It is to ignore the new social, institutional and cultural influences that engender a novel reality and a novel organizational ethos. What appears to be a ‘crisis’ of activism and the activist life, a ‘crisis’ of the organization, is in reality simply a mutation. It is certainly seen and experienced as a ‘crisis’, and above all as a ‘loss’: a loss of reference points, effectiveness, ambiance and style, memory – in short, a loss of identity. However, like every mutation, it permits the emergence of a new organizational ‘formula’: new reference points, a new effectiveness (and ineffectiveness), another style, a different ambiance.
2.Indeed, the changes I have just inventoried (preponderance of new middle classes, weakening of working-class presence and culture, redistribution of internal power at the expense of the membership and traditional bureaucracy, a leadership at once both stronger and weaker, end of the party-community and strengthening of the culture of tradeoffs, weakening of the ‘identity incentives’, reinforcement of anti-authoritarian tendencies and values, less dense membership fabric) – all these tend in the direction of a profound change of identity, rather than an internal reorganization of the social-democratic organizational mode of being.
3.An organizational structure is built through the combination of two complementary and inseparable ‘logics’: local and sectoral implantation, which produces segmented units; and integration, according to modalities of articulation specific to each organization, which confers on these units the unity that inserts them into a functional whole – which does not mean one devoid of contradictions. The peculiarity of the structure is precisely to envelop – and activate – in one and the same modus operandi different, even divergent, units. Today, the decisive weight, if not absolute predominance, within mass socialist organizations of integrative rationality (through a pyramidal armature, bureaucracy, summary but strong and strongly shared ideology, the communitarian-associative spirit, central control of intermediate instances) is considerably reduced. These organizations become political structures in which conflict, disorder and instability are more pronounced and visible than in the past. They become a ‘stage’ for increased instability, or – worse – of stability through indifference, the diminution of their relevance as a stage.85 The centre becomes stronger and the local, outside national election campaigns, more autonomous. Contact between the two becomes more direct and mediating structures are weakened.86 The internal rules of the game are more democratic and decentralized, and the process of choosing leaders is more open and competitive.87 Socialist and social-democratic organizations are less unified and compact, but also more democratic, ‘open’, supple and flexible.
4.The unter uns gesagt (between ourselves) mentality having long since been left behind, flexibility and ‘openness’ make these organizations capable of responding more rapidly to the stimuli of electoral competition. To take one example: the loosening of the link with the unions – as well as a certain weakening of the latter – weakens the social-democratic parties organizationally and electorally.88 But in a society that is not classically bipolar, it simultaneously affords them greater freedom of action and greater openness to new sensibilities, which can be left-wing, right-wing, or ‘neither left nor right’ (e.g. feminist ideas, minority rights, ecology, neoliberal ideas). In addition, the increased autonomy of the leader facilitates a capacity for innovation ‘from above’ (whatever the political and programmatic content of this innovation) and, as a result, socialists’ competitive capacity.89
5.This trend makes most of the contemporary social-democratic organizations mixed structures, halfway between the classical mass party model (described by Weber, Michels, Neumann and above all, Duverger), and the electoral-professional model (described by Panebianco).90 Thus the thesis of the transformation of the mass social-democratic parties into electoral-professional parties is only partially confirmed. Moreover, in actual political life it is intermediate forms, not pure forms, that dominate. Socialist organizations bear marks inherited from the mass party model (reduced but still mass membership; persistence – albeit weakened – of the union link; associative network linked to the party; operational habitus belonging to the organization’s genetic code) and marks pertaining to the electoral-professional party model (increased leadership power; enhanced role of experts/professionals; renunciation of any aspiration to ‘intellectual and moral encadrement of the masses’; ever more interclassist internal format). The balance – and sometimes tension – between these organizational elements and orientations varies according to the internal relation of forces, conjunctures and national traditions. These two types of structure and practice are superimposed, intermingled, intertwined. And in complementing and contradicting one another, they constitute the two faces of contemporary social democracy.
6.This development – which I have doubtless oversimplified somewhat here – is a conclusion whose premisses date from the beginning of the 1960s. If contemporary social-democratic organizations are developing as mixed structures, retaining certain aspects of the mass party while evolving towards the electoral-professional type of party, and thus as structures located in an organizational ‘in-between’, nothing suggests that we are dealing with parties of integration, whatever the meaning attributed to that concept. The ‘comprehensive grassroots connections’ of the past between these organizations and the ‘public’ have become ‘“functional connections” driven by immediate political needs’.91 Today, parties of a social-democratic type are no longer in a position – and anyway, no longer have the ambition – to fulfil a function that was traditionally theirs: ‘the creation and preservation of collective identities through ideology’, in Panebianco’s terms; or ‘the intellectual and moral encardrement of the masses’, according to Otto Kirchheimer. In this respect, the change is radical. Social democracy no longer assumes a central social function which forms part of its deepest political specificity.
7.This drastically diminishes its autonomy vis-à-vis its own environment and its ability to control it: social democracy is no longer constructed as a ‘strong institution’ capable of significantly influencing ‘the value and attitudinal system’ of contemporary societies, and has not been for a long time. ‘Right-thinking’ forces, social-democratic organizations, which today are weakened, ‘are no longer able … to think beyond the next election’.92 The archetype of ‘rational’ politics, based on the prioritization of the search for votes, which scarcely applied to the great membership organizations historically represented by the socialist parties, increasingly accounts for the current modus operandi of social democracy. As a result, these organizations are unable to leave deep traces in the collective imaginary. Their distinctive profile and values have been diluted.
8.In the aftermath of these changes, the social-democratic organization conceived as a ‘community of solidarity’ no longer exists, just as the political and especially social terrain that favoured its development no longer exists. Paradise is lost.93 Today, only the shadow of the party-community, its outline, survives, despite the resistance and resurgence, here and there, of kernels ‘with strong cohesion and great affective connotation’ – of certain ‘niches’, as Jacques Ion would say.94
9.The sociology of social-democratic organization, which registers the hegemony of the middle classes today, differs profoundly from that of the working-class organizations of the prewar period, and even from the popular organizations (with strong working-class representation) of the 1950s. The change is sizeable. The ‘contented majority’ currently control social-democratic organizations, which distance themselves from the mass of the ‘non-privileged’ and still more from the growing world of the excluded. The ‘subaltern’ classes are certainly still present in the organization, but they are reduced to a species of second estate and subsidiary force. In this sense, the famous fracture sociale also exists at the very heart of socialist and social-democratic organization. More precisely, those who are socially either on the ‘periphery’ or extra muros are organizationally outside the party. This development is historically novel. The organization’s sociological continuity has, to a considerable extent, been shattered.
10.Social-democratic ‘self-identity’ is currently more political, and a good deal less ideological, sociological or cultural. Compared with the interwar and immediate postwar periods, contemporary social democracy is in large measure a different social democracy – despite the incontestable fact that ‘past organisational choices have enduring effects’. Even when they evolve substantially towards the model of ‘catch-all entrepreneurial organizations’, the strong structures that mass parties are by definition cannot be totally disowned. Once consolidated, a structure ‘immobilizes time in its own way’. Thus, organizational change often takes the malleable forms bequeathed by the past, while on occasion taking quite new directions. However, the new organizational identity of social democracy, which is unquestionably composite and belongs to two distinct modes of party construction, is not – and will not be – a renewed identity, but a novel identity.
Notes
1.In reaching these percentages, I have excluded from my calculations retired people and housewives, and more generally the economically inactive population. This procedure, necessary in a comparative framework, affords an unduly simplified image of the occupational structure of the parties studied. In addition, it contributes to underestimating the weight of the working class, since a significant proportion of the categories ‘housewives’ or ‘retired’ derives, in all probability, from the working class. Sources: for the SPD (1952, 1966, 1977), in Anton Pelinka, Social Democratic Parties in Europe, Praeger, New York 1983, p. 48; for the SPÖ (1955, 1970, 1978), in William Paterson and Alastair Thomas, eds, The Future of Social-Democracy, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1986, p. 166; for the SPD (1991, east and west) and for the SPÖ (1990), in Wolfgang Merkel et al., Socialist Parties in Europe II: Class, Popular, Catch-all?, ICPS, Barcelona 1992, pp. 138, 161; for the SPD (1996) in Johan Jeroen De Deken, ‘The German Social-Democratic Party’, in Robert Ladrech and Philippe Marlière, eds, Social-Democratic Parties in the European Union, Macmillan, London 1999, p. 86.
2.Lars Bille, ‘The Danish Social-Democratic Party’, in Ladrech and Marlière, eds, Social-Democratic Parties in the European Union, p. 48.
3.Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, Labour’s Grass Roots: The Politics of Party Membership, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992, pp. 34, 39.
4.Nicholas Aylott, ‘The Swedish Social-Democratic Party’, in Ladrech and Marlière, eds, Social-Democratic Parties in the European Union, p. 195.
5.Pascal Perrineau, ‘Introduction’ in Perrineau, ed., L’engagement politique, déclin ou mutation?, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris 1994, p. 16.
6.Gerrit Voerman, ‘De la confiance à la crise. La gauche aux Pays-Bas depuis les années soixante-dix’, in Pascal Dewit and Jean-Michel De Waele, eds, La Gauche face aux mutations en Europe, Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, Brussels 1993, p. 80.
7.Michel Offerlé, Les Partis politiques, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1987, p. 80.
8.On changes in the activity of the leader in an electoral campaign, see, inter alia, the very important work by Peter Esaiasson, ‘120 Years of Swedish Election Campaigning’, Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 14, 1991, pp. 261–78.
9.Shaun Bowler and David Farrell, Electoral Strategies and Political Marketing, St Martin’s Press, New York 1992, passim.
10.Danilo Zolo, Democracy and Complexity, Polity Press, Cambridge 1992, p. 163. The definition of a politics ‘from afar’, thanks to the body of research produced in the ‘little world’ of the specialists without always taking activists’ experience in the field into consideration, creates as many problems as it is supposed to resolve. The inability of the socialist high command to anticipate the emergence and persistence of new social movements and political currents (e.g. the ecological movement, ‘new politics’ parties, new extreme right) is one expression of them. Moreover, the sublimation of the effects of new technologies has often led left-wing leaders to forget the importance of an active membership in successfully resisting a competing political appeal. Moreover, the latter becomes all the more hostile, and its effects more unpredictable, in that it manifests itself principally – what an irony! – on a local stage, far from the television studios, and also far from the opinion pollsters, prior to establishing itself on the national political scene (see Gerassimos Moschonas, ‘L’éclat d’un pouvoir fragilisé. Force et faiblesse du leadership socialiste’, in Marc Lazar, ed., La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1996, p. 586).
11.Knut Heidar, ‘The Norwegian Labour Party: “En Attendant l’Europe”’, in Richard Gillespie and William Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, Frank Cass, London 1993, p. 74.
12.On the expansion of this personnel, which is very sensitive to the ideas of the party leadership and assumes the function of technical support and active executant of its policy, see the case studies collected in Richard Katz and Peter Mair, eds, How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies, Sage, London 1994.
13.Pippa Norris, ‘Political Communications’, in Patrick Dunleavy et al., eds, Developments in British Politics 5, Macmillan, London 1997, p. 77.
14.Moschonas, ‘L’éclat d’un pouvoir fragilisé’, pp. 587–8.
15.Ibid., p. 589.
16.Eric Shaw, ‘Conflict and Cohesion in the British Labour Party’, in David Bell and Eric Shaw, eds, Conflict and Cohesion in Western European Social Democratic Parties, Pinter, London and New York 1994, p. 152.
17.Monica Charlot, Le Parti travailliste, Montchrestien, Paris 1992, pp. 125–48.
18.Colin Leys, ‘The British Labour Party since 1989’, in Donald Sassoon, ed., Looking Left, I.B. Tauris, London and New York 1997, p. 19.
19.Quoted in Thomas Koelble, The Left Unraveled: Social Democracy and the New Left Challenge in Britain and West Germany, Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1991, p. 5.
20.Stephen Padgett and William Paterson, ‘Germany: Stagnation of the Left’, in Perry Anderson and Patrick Camiller, eds, Mapping the West European Left, Verso, London and New York 1994, p. 124.
21.Quoted in Susan Scarrow, Parties and their Members: Organizing for Victory in Britain and Germany, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996, p. 202.
22.Stephen Padgett, ‘The German Social Democrats: A Redefinition of Social Democracy or Bad Godesberg Mark II?’, in Gillespie and Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, p. 36.
23.Thomas Poguntke, ‘Parties in a Legalistic Culture: The Case of Germany’, in Katz and Mair, eds, How Parties Organize, p. 211.
24.Ruud Koole, ‘The Dutch Labour Party: Towards a Modern Cadre Party?’, in Merkel et al., Socialist Parties in Europe II, pp. 207–11.
25.Philip van Praag, ‘Conflict and Cohesion in the Dutch Labour Party’, in Bell and Shaw, eds, Conflict and Cohesion in European Social Democratic Parties, p. 137.
26.Ibid. See also Voerman, ‘De la confiance à la crise’, pp. 67–84.
27.Van Praag, ‘Conflict and Cohesion in the Dutch Labour Party’, p. 147.
28.Kees van Kerbergen, ‘The Dutch Labour Party’, in Ladrech and Marlière, eds, Social-Democratic Parties in the European Union, p. 158.
29.More particularly, in the Labour Party and SPD recourse to strong leadership with a ‘winning profile’ constitutes an exemplary instance of the leader’s function as palliative for the deficits of identity and competitiveness.
30.Leys, ‘The British Labour Party since 1989’, pp. 20–22.
31.Scarrow, Parties and their Members, p. 110.
32.Charles Pattie, Paul Whiteley, Ron Johnston and Patrick Seyd, ‘Measuring Local Campaign Effects: Labour Party Constituency Campaigning at the 1987 General Election’, Political Studies, XLII, 1994, p. 479.
33.Susan Scarrow, ‘The “Paradox of Enrolment”: Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Party Memberships’, European Journal of Political Research, no. 25, 1994, pp. 53–7.
34.Scarrow, Parties and their Members, p. 157.
35.Patrick Seyd, ‘New Parties/New Politics? A Case Study of the British Labour Party’, Party Politics, vol. 5, no. 3, 1999, p. 401.
36.The working-class sections of the SPÖ and SAP (in factories and popular suburbs) are more ‘conformist’ and more respectful of the traditional rituals of party life than sections in which the middle classes predominate (Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Austrian and Swedish Social Democrats in Crisis: Party Strategy and Organization in Corporatist Regimes’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 1994, p. 19).
37.Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties, Organization and Power, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, p. 228.
38.See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger, Polity Press, Cambridge 1989.
39.Ronald Inglehart, La Transition culturelle, Economica, Paris 1993, p. 441.
40.Robert Rohrschneider, ‘How Iron is the Iron Law of Oligarchy? Robert Michels and National Party Delegates in Eleven West European Democracies’, European Journal of Political Research, no. 25, 1994, p. 212. ‘In some ways,’ Herbert Kitschelt has written, ‘the libertarian assault on the European mass-membership party displays a political thrust similar to that of the “progressive” middle-class movements in the United States that attacked the urban party machines after the turn to the twentieth century’ (Kitschelt, ‘European Social Democracy between Political Economy and Electoral Competition’, in Kitschelt et al., eds, Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, p. 331).
41.Rohrschneider, ‘How Iron is the Iron Law of Oligarchy?’, passim. Let us reflect a little on the case of the British Labour Party. Since the ‘treason’ of Ramsay MacDonald, a certain mistrust of the leader has formed part of the genetic code and memory of British Labourism (Charlot, Le Parti travailliste, pp. 35–6). Moreover, the original structure of this party, which made the leader and parliamentary group autonomous, has contributed to the fact that the left wing historically identifies with the ‘base’. The failure of moderate Labourism on the economic front, its persistent inability to keep its economic and social promises (1964–70 and 1974–79 governments), opened up a space for the ‘old’ left within the organization. Faced with this failure of the ‘right’, and in the absence of a ‘new politics’ pole in the British political field, the radical wing ipso facto represented the rival and challenger of the moderate party leadership. This explains the British exception, where, contrary to the pattern in continental parties, the intermediate elites orientated to ‘old politics’ are more focused on the constituency than the centre. The centrality of socioeconomic issues and themes, as well as the working-class and popular tradition of British Labourism, have determined the Labour left’s political and ideological profile and its orientation to the ‘base’ and the constituency. This is a left which, from the heroic period of the Independent Labour Party up to the battle over Clause 4 and its victory at the 1981 Wembley Conference, has stirred itself strongly and ‘sometimes … makes life difficult for the leaders’ (Moisei Ostrogorski, La Démocratie et les partis politiques, Fayard, Paris 1993, p. 313).
42.Koelble, The Left Unraveled, p. 118.
43.Patrick Hassenteufel, ‘Partis socialistes et syndicats: l’autonomisation récip-roque’, in Lazar, ed., La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945.
44.Padgett, ‘The German Social Democrats’, in Gillespie and Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, p. 30.
45.Andrew Taylor, ‘Trade Unions and the Politics of Social Democratic Renewal’, in Gillespie and Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, p. 150.
46.Ibid., pp. 149–50.
47.Gillespie and Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, passim.
48.Gérard Grunberg, ‘Existe-t-il un socialisme de l’Europe du Sud?’, in Lazar, ed., La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945, p. 495.
49.Kitschelt, ‘European Social Democracy between Political Economy and Electoral Competition’, in Kitschelt et al., eds, Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, p. 330.
50.Thomas Koelble, ‘Recasting Social Democracy in Europe: A Nested Games Explanation of Strategic Adjustment in Political Parties’, Politics and Society, vol. 20, no. 1; ‘Intra-party Coalitions and Electoral Strategies: European Social Democracy in Search of Votes’, Southeastern Political Review, vol. 23, no. 1.
51.Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1969, p. 165.
52.See Knut Heidar, ‘The Polymorphic Nature of Party Membership’, European Journal of Political Research, no. 25, 1994, Table 12, p. 80.
53.The same tendency towards weakening is visible since the beginning of the 1970s in the Belgian Socialist Party. However, the party’s division in 1978 into Parti Socialiste (PS) and Socialistische Partij (SP), in accordance with the linguistic divide, does not allow a rigorous comparison with the initial postwar period. Prudence is therefore in order. On the tenure of socialist leaders in Belgium, see Lieven de Winter, ‘The Selection of Party Presidents in Belgium’, European Journal of Political Research, vol. 24, no. 3, October 1993, p. 235.
54.On membership density, indicated by the degree of enrolment of the socialist electorate (rate of adhesion = relation between the number of socialist voters and of members), see Gerassimos Moschonas, La Social-démocratie de 1945 à nos jours, Montchrestien, Paris 1994, p. 33, Table 1. For a different but complementary approach, based on the relation between members and the total electorate, see Gerrit Voerman, ‘Le Paradis perdu’, in Lazar, ed., La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945.
55.According to Kitschelt, ‘in the German social democrats, leadership autonomy has lagged’: ‘European Social Democracy between Political Economy and Electoral Competition’, p. 333. See also Padgett and Paterson, ‘Germany: Stagnation of the Left’, p. 124. For a comparative treatment of the position of the Labour and Conservative leaders in Great Britain, see Giulia Caravale, ‘Leader e sistema di partito in Gran Bretagna’, Politico, vol. LVIII, no. 4, 1993, pp. 531–70.
56.See Herbert Kitschelt, The Transformation of European Social Democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, p. 225.
57.See the excellent analysis by Grunberg, ‘Existe-t-il un socialisme de l’Europe du Sud?’.
58.Costas Botopoulos, Les Socialistes à l’épreuve du pouvoir, Bruylant, Brussels 1993, p. 230.
59.See Moschonas, La Social-démocratie de 1945 à nos jours.
60.See Gerassimos Moschonas, ‘The Panhellenic Socialist Movement’, in Ladrech and Marlière, eds, Social-Democratic Parties in the European Union.
61.Patrick Camillier, ‘Spain: The Survival of Socialism?’, in Anderson and Camiller, eds, Mapping the West European Left, p. 259.
62.Ibid., p. 260.
63.During the 1980s, a certain ‘dyarchy’, with Gonzales representing the ‘party-government’ and Alfonso Guerra the ‘party-organization’, ensured a margin of internal party pluralism, albeit very limited. Moreover, the greater decentralization of the Spanish party system allowed some regional leaders (the so-called ‘barons’) to claim a power space of their own. The regional arena is an important site of conflict within the PSOE, at the expense of both the ‘centre’, which remains the critical instance for the exercise of power, and the ‘local’. See Richard Gillespie, ‘“Programma 2000”: The Appearance and Reality of Socialist Renewal in Spain’, in Gillespie and Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, pp. 80, 84; Gillespie, ‘The Resurgence of Factionalism in the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party’, in Bell and Shaw, eds, Conflict and Cohesion in Western European Social Democratic Parties, pp. 59–62.
64.Kitschelt, ‘Austrian and Swedish Social Democrats in Crisis’, pp. 13, 31–3. See also Jonas Pontusson, ‘Sweden: After the Golden Age’, in Anderson and Camiller, eds, Mapping the West European Left, p. 50.
65.Kitschelt, ‘Austrian and Swedish Social Democrats in Crisis’, pp. 18, 33–4.
66.Wolfgang Muller and D. Meth-Cohn, ‘The Selection of Party Chairmen in Austria: A Study in Intra-Party Decision-Making’, European Journal of Political Research, vol. 20, no. 1, 1991, p. 57.
67.Moschonas, ‘The Panhellenic Socialist Movement’, p. 116.
68.Quoted in Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, Abacus, London 1980, p. 24.
69.See Pascal Quignard, Le Sexe et l’effroi, Gallimard, Paris 1994.
70.Muller and Meth-Cohn, The Selection of Party Chairmen in Austria’, p. 59.
71.Mario Telo, ‘La social-démocratie entre nation et Europe’, in Telo, ed., De la nation à l’Europe, Bruyant, Brussels 1993, p. 48.
72.The case of François Mitterrand is exemplary in this respect. See Alistair Cole, ‘Studying Leadership: The Case of François Mitterrand’, Political Studies, XLII, 1994, pp. 453–68.
73.Jacques Ion, ‘L’évolution des formes de l’engagement public’, in Perrineau, ed., L’engagement politique, p. 33.
74.The distinction between incentives of finality and incentives of identity, which we are applying in the case of mass socialist parties, derives from Peter Lange, ‘La théorie des stimulants et l’analyse des partis politiques’, in J.-L. Seurin, ed., La Démocratie pluraliste, Economica, Paris 1981, especially pp. 253–8.
75.Henri Rey and Françoise Subileau, Les Militants socialistes à l’épreuve du pouvoir, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris 1991, p. 55. The expansion of political information through non-party channels (e.g. television), as well as the multiplication of non-party ‘structures’ of political participation, are additional factors in the weakening of political organizations. See Scarrow, ‘The “Paradox of Enrolment”’, pp. 50–51.
76.Lange, ‘La théorie des stimulants et l’analyse des partis politiques’, p. 249.
77.Rey and Subileau, Les Militants socialistes à l’épreuve du pouvoir, p. 27.
78.Alan Ware, ‘Activist-Leader Relations and the Structure of Political Parties: “Exchange” Models and Vote-Seeking Behaviour in Parties’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 22, no. 1, 1992, p. 84. The abandonment by socialist and social-democratic parties of their traditional ideologies means that ‘authoritarian’ leadership of a party can no longer be justified by reference to ideology (see Jan Sundberg, ‘Finland: Nationalized Parties, Professionalized Organizations’, in Katz and Mair, eds, How Parties Organize, p. 170).
79.Lazar, in Bergounioux and Lazar, La Social-démocratie dans l’Union européenne, p. 12.
80.Ulrich Beck, The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order, Polity Press, Cambridge 1997, p. 144.
81.Ware, ‘Activist-Leader Relations and the Structure of Political Parties’, pp. 89–92. The distinction between the different types of incentive is inevitably schematic, and only occasionally assumes an absolute sense. The motives behind partisan commitment are typically multiple and combined according to a ‘chemistry’ that is specific to each individual. But the fact that the distinction is not absolute does not reduce its heuristic value.
82.Nothing illustrates the end of the party-community better than the profound change in the ‘nature’ and functions of socialist and social-democratic local sections, which increasingly resemble the local sections of conservative and liberal parties. A very eloquent description of this change in the Scandinavian countries is provided by Jan Sundberg, ‘Participation in Local Government: A Source of Social Democratic Deradicalization in Scandinavia?’, in L. Karvonen and J. Sundberg, Social Democracy in Transition, Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe, Dartmouth, Aldershot 1991, pp. 135–8, Tables 10 and 11.
83.See Heidar, ‘The Polymorphic Nature of Party Membership’, pp. 61–86; Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Austrian and Swedish Social Democrats in Crisis: Party Strategy and Organization in Corporatist Regimes’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 1994, p. 10.
84.In this respect our analysis differs from that of Richard Katz and Peter Mair, who maintain that contemporary parties, ‘cartel parties’, are characterized by a model of internal authority of the ‘top-down’, rather than ‘bottom-up’, variety. We believe that while various influential factors considerably strengthen the ‘top-down’ dimension of intra-organizational authority, others tend to strengthen the ‘bottom-up’ dimension (‘Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party’, Party Politics, no. 1, 1995 p. 20).
85.Knut Heidar, ‘Towards Party Irrelevance? The Decline of Both Conflict and Cohesion in the Norwegian Labour Party’, in Bell and Shaw, eds, Conflict and Cohesion in Western European Social Democratic Parties, pp. 96–112. See van Praag, ‘Conflict and Cohesion in the Dutch Labour Party’, in ibid., pp. 146–7.
86.Scarrow, Parties and their Members, pp. 202–4.
87.Two expressions of this ‘openness’ directly concern the leadership. First, leadership selection has become more ‘competitive’. The ‘poison of competition’ is slowly making its appearance in socialist organizations – something that is not always status-enhancing for the image either of the party or of the leader. Second, the selection process has become more democratic. It is less than ever before a matter of a closed circle and an uninfluential, often restricted, selection body, where everything has been settled in advance in the closed universe of the ‘few’, i.e. the organization’s most prestigious leaders. See European Journal of Political Resarch, ‘Selecting Party Leaders’, special issue, vol. 24, no. 3, October 1993; also Mair in Katz and Mair, How Parties Organize, pp. 5, 17.
88.See Christoph Kunkel and Jonas Pontusson, ‘Corporatism versus Social Democracy: Divergent Fortunes of the Austrian and Swedish Labour Movements’, West European Politics, vol. 21, no. 2, 1998.
89.For ‘innovation from above’, see Kitschelt, The Transformation of European Social Democracy, p. 213.
90.The conception of contemporary parties as ‘groups of leaders’, as ‘partnerships of professionals’ absorbed by the state, and no longer as ‘associations of citizens’ (the concept of the ‘cartel party’), unilaterally – and exaggeratedly – accentuates certain features of the modern reality of parties, and takes only partial account of the composite reality of today’s socialist and social-democratic parties. See Katz and Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy’, pp. 16, 21–2.
91.John Coleman, ‘Party Organizational Strength and Public Support for Parties’, American Journal of Political Science, vol. 40, no. 3, 1996, p. 807.
92.Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, I.B. Tauris, London 1996, p. 690.
93.Voerman, ‘Le Paradis perdu’, p. 561.
94.Ion, ‘L’évolution des formes de l’engagement publique’, p. 31.