1 Introduction

Why and under which circumstances might established political parties imitate social movements? Recently, several scholars have observed the emergence of parties which ‘seek renewed and wider ties with their base’ (Mercea and Mosca 2021, p. 1328) and which signal that traditional notions of formal and bureaucratic party organization are losing trust, affiliates, and voters. These parties have been conceptualized as ‘movement parties’ (Almeida 2010, p. 201; Porta et al. 2017; Kitschelt 2006), ‘connective parties’ (Bennett et al. 2018), ‘digital parties’ (Gerbaudo 2019a), ‘platform parties’ (Gerbaudo 2019b), ‘digital movement parties’ (Deseriis 2019), or ‘activist parties’ (Peña 2021). They claim an elevated political legitimacy through an organizational form merging party and social movement characteristics and challenge established political elites. In the past, a movement-ization of party politics had been discussed with the emergence of new social movements and the rise of European Green parties (Kitschelt 1988). However, compared to the 1980s, the contemporary context and the characteristics of present-day movement parties such as Syriza, Movimento 5 Stelle, Podemos, LREM, or various European populist radical right movement parties (Caiani and Císař 2019) differ widely. Also, it can be expected that established traditional parties will not remain unaffected. In this article, I compare how an emerging ideal of movement-party hybrids spills over to and affects traditional and established party organizations.

Conceptually, the movement party type has been mainly reserved to challengers of established parties which make use of street politics to claim recognition, legitimacy, and a point of entry as well as allowing for more flexible, non-binding, and horizontal forms of organization. Consequentially, movement parties are primarily described as an inherently instable and transient phenomenon and under a certain pressure to institutionalize (Kitschelt 2006; Mercea and Mosca 2021). The logics and requirements of political organization in the parliamentary arena would eventually make challenger parties turn into more formal and bureaucratic party organizations. However, existing movement party conceptualizations seem to underestimate that not only new parties entering party systems as outsiders seek to renew linkages with citizens. Established parties of all party families, too, have picked up components of the digital and participatory society. Traditional parties have long faced decreasing legitimation, voters, and public trust—and have reacted by mimicking social movement experiences through party reforms that offer direct member and non-member participation, flexible forms of membership activities, as well as the integration of side-entrants and career changers new to politics (Faucher 2015). New and old parties brand themselves as vivid and powerful political actors by emulating social movements (Mercea and Mosca 2021; Priester 2018). This underlines that there might be not only pressures for a gradual institutionalization of party system challengers, but also pressures for a de-institutionalization of the long-established party families. The contemporary promise of democratic legitimation and social change, that is the bottom line, appears to be more movement-fuelled than ever before. This article compares if and how the conceptual ideal of the movement party is reflected in established and traditional Conservative/Christian Democratic as well as Social Democratic parties.

However, different party families seem to perceive of and process pressures for movement-ization in very different ways. They vary in their organizational identities, political orientation, and supporter expectations (Butzlaff et al. 2011), which affects their perception and adaptation to social changes. For instance, it has been suggested that right-wing parties might incorporate participatory preferences of their supporters much more easily than their counterparts on the political left, because of “diverging preferences […] between citizens on the left and the right for how to organize the electoral linkage between society and state” (Bennett et al. 2018, p. 1656). Populist parties left and right—at least rhetorically—advocate measures of direct democracy much stronger than parties of the centre-right (Correa-Lopera 2019). Different parties and party families might, therefore, adapt differently to changing societies and experience very different pressures for a movement-ization of their organization. The ideal of a movement their supporters have in mind might look differently for different parties.

This paper uses the blind spots of existing conceptualizations of movement parties in party research as a point of departure to qualitatively compare how traditional parties perceive the ideal of becoming a movement (again) and how they experience pressures for de-institutionalization. In a series of 39 qualitative interviews with Social Democratic and Conservative party functionaries in Austria, Germany, and the UK, I explore if and how established parties seek to re-establish linkages with society by turning into or rebranding themselves (Lupu 2013) as movement parties. I scrutinize what they understand as a movement-party hybrid, how this alters the way members and voters are integrated into representative democracy, and how possible tensions between a de-formalizing movement-ization and a bureaucratic party culture play out in the light of shifting societal expectations.

In the following section, I revisit existing conceptualizations of organizational hybrids between social movements and political party organizations to establish theoretical lenses and an analytical toolkit for the following empirical perspective on established political parties. After a section on methods and case selection, I analyze Social Democratic and Christian Democratic/Conservative parties in Austria, Germany, and the UK. The concluding section then carves out how Social Democratic and Conservative parties differ in their understanding of movement-like organizational features and logics. The results show that the lure of movement-ization varies greatly between Social Democrats and Conservatives—mainly as a function of (a) their political orientation, (b) the organizational heritage, (c) the different expectations of their members and supporters, and (d) the parties’ diagnoses of what had led to diminishing membership and trust. Whereas many Social Democrats understand (and crave) a movement-ization similar to those conceptualized in the literature, yet suffer from arising conflicts of de-formalization, Conservatives heed a very different understanding of organizational hybrids. To them, their comparatively weak organizational identity creates a political room for manoeuvre with leads to a strategic branding exercise to cater to the expectations of their supporters. With this, the article contributes to the debates on how democratic representation shifts with changing societies as well as to the specification of the movement party conceptualizations in party politics and social movement research.

2 Parties and Movements—Between Functional Differentiation and Hybrid Models

In the research on social movements and political parties, their relationship has been described as functional differentiation. From this perspective, party and movement organizations struggle for the same goals, and provide two-way linkages between the institutions of parliamentary democracy and the people (Dalton et al. 2013; Lawson 1980) but maintain separated action repertoires (Kitschelt 2003; Rucht 1993). Movements and parties are expected to mobilize in different political arenas and address different social groups within society (Hutter 2014; McAdam and Tarrow 2010). Because social movements are considered closer to the daily life of citizens, they have been understood as agenda setters for the electoral arena that provide political parties and elites with information on social developments and help to direct public attention and discourse to critical problems (Hutter and Vliegenthart 2018). However, in what follows, I carve out that different strands of research have formulated different expectations as to how this functional differentiation might change. Whereas some stress that established parties loosen their ties with social movements and civil society, others emphasize growing potential for movement-party hybrids challenging the established party systems.

Firstly, party research since the 1980s had continuously underlined that especially political parties that traditionally held close ties with a social milieu have lost big parts of their societal roots and have suffered from increasing voter volatility and loosening collective identities (Dassonneville et al. 2014; van Biezen and Poguntke 2014). The research on political participation has supported these observations by stating a shift of political activism of citizens from the parliamentary and party-political arena towards street politics and civil society (Dalton 2019). As a result, Katz and Mair suggest in their influential cartel party thesis that parties have withdrawn into cartels that increasingly turn to the state in a collusive manner to retain resources, narrow competition, and improve vote seeking (Katz and Mair 1995, 2009). Consequently, established political parties would be expected to abandon close ties with civil society, members, and sympathizers (Faucher 2015). In this perspective, a functional differentiation between movements and parties would turn into a separation of spheres with less cooperation and coordination. Especially traditional and established parties would not be expected to turn into or present themselves as a movement. However, empirical accounts of cartelization have shown that many parties continuously provide incentives for cooperation with social movements and civil society (Enroth 2017).

Secondly, in contrast to the diagnosis of a separation of movement-party spheres, in the context of an increasing crisis of democratic representation (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000) some scholars expect that social movements’ interactions and cross-overs with political parties will become more frequent (Hutter et al. 2019). Some have emphasized that different political parties increasingly resort to social movement repertoires such as organizing protests and rallies (Borbáth and Hutter 2021; Hoffmann et al. 2022). First observations of organizational crossovers between political parties and social movements date back to the 1980s and the proliferation of Green parties with strong ties to ecological movements (or even earlier working class movements, see Butzlaff and Deflorian 2021), but since the beginning of the new millennium and especially the economic crisis of 2008 and the austerity politics that followed, this strand of research has proliferated (Borbáth and Hutter 2020; Porta et al. 2017). Many participants of the Southern European square movements found their ways into new and ideologically proximate political parties, such as Barcelona en Comú, Partito Democratico, and Syriza (Bazurli 2019; Varvarousis et al. 2020). As the Italian Movimiento 5 Stelle and many European populist radical right movements show, transforming existing party organizations or founding whole new political parties remains an important strategic repertoire of many social movement organizations (Hutter et al. 2019).

Against this background, several scholars have suggested the Movement Party as the most recent party type and as a reaction against the alienation and atomization many citizens experience in post-industrialist societies and austerity politics (Porta et al. 2017; Gunther and Diamond 2003; Kitschelt 2006; Mercea and Mosca 2021; Prentoulis and Thomassen 2020; Almeida 2010; Peña 2021). Although different political orientations of movement parties have been described, from left libertarian to a post-industrialist extreme right (Caiani and Císař 2019; Porta et al. 2017; Gunther and Diamond 2003), and although the conceptualizations slightly vary in their terminology, they reveal a large common ground regarding what they assume as societal preconditions as well as the organizational forms they observe.

Movement parties emerge as new parties if claims of large groups within society remained unaccounted for by the established parties (Almeida 2010; Gunther and Diamond 2003) and when the political, legislative, and cultural barriers of entry into the party system are not too high (Kitschelt 2006). As many have argued, a neoliberalization of the political center-left had increasingly created these conditions post-2008 and new societal cleavages were not represented in many Southern European party systems (Porta et al. 2017; Prentoulis and Thomassen 2020). Organizationally, movement parties were defined as emerging parties that formed when movement activists applied organizational, strategic, and mobilization movement repertoires to the party arena (Kitschelt 2006). Also, the organizational hybrid form based on an overlap of members and functionaries active in party and movement(s) alike (Almeida 2010; Porta et al. 2017; Kitschelt 2006). If there is an already existing group of people active party and movement, so-called hybrid brokers (Peña 2021, p. 641), the creation of a strategic alliance might be realized through shared collective experience, language, program, and mutual trust. Consequently, movement parties follow a movements’ logic of, on the one hand, comparatively loose and little formalized organizational structure as well as, on the other, less investment into a comprehensive and binding political program (Kitschelt 2006). They offer less binding and informal membership affiliation opportunities and this way also cater to citizen demands for more participatory and horizontal engagement (Prentoulis and Thomassen 2020).

Also, in the research on the effects of technological change and digitalization, organizational hybrids have met considerable attention (Mercea and Mosca 2021). Following the emergence of new parties such as the European Pirate party and the Movimiento 5 Stelle in Italy, inter alia Gerbaudo (2019a, b), Deseriis (2019), and Bennett et al. (2018) have suggested that tools of digital and internet-based organization and decision-making render party organization and democracy in general “more democratic, more open to ordinary people, more immediate and direct, more authentic and transparent” (Gerbaudo 2019a, p. 4). By adopting more digital repertoires of organization and mobilization, by allowing for less binding, flexible and more horizontal structures, and by eliminating organizational structures of intermediation, new parties respond to the increasing crisis of representation in Western democracies (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000) as well as to citizen demands for directness and responsiveness of political parties close to the experiences provided by social movement mobilizations.

However, most concepts assume that movement parties are challenger parties entering the national party systems as outsiders. Consequently, several scholars emphasize that weak formal organization and little investment in a comprehensive program may also lead to a party type which is inherently instable and faces constant pressures for institutionalization (Kitschelt 2006; Prentoulis and Thomassen 2020). Movement parties, read this way, are a transient phenomenon and an intermediate aggregation state of movements seeking parliamentary influence, which end up either as a fully institutionalized political party or vanish once electoral success fails to materialize.

Only very few have stressed that movement parties might not only be the result of a social movement’s party-political institutionalization, but in contrast an established party’s strategic choice. Almeida (2010) suggested the term Social Movement Partyism for oppositional political parties seeking alliances with social movements and using movement repertoires for political mobilization. According to Almeida, party-movement cooperation might not necessarily lead to an organizational cross-over, but rather alter the parties’ strategic repertoire. Along the same lines, Peña (2021) coined the term Activist Party. In his perspective, an activist party makes repertoire and organizational choices towards a movement-like appearance (to frame itself as a movement, without necessarily becoming one) to strategically gain traction with members and voters. He diagnosed increasing opportunities for the combination of movement and party arenas due to changes in social preferences and digital technologies (Peña 2021). In this perspective, movement-ization might encompass elements of strategic de-institutionalization (Hoffmann et al. 2022), which have also been addressed in recent social movement research (Jasper et al. 2022). Therefore, assumptions of pressures for institutionalization and formalization of movement parties by default might be premature.

Thus, whereas movement party conceptualizations reveal a large common ground regarding the societal preconditions of their emergence as well as the organizational forms they take, many have overlooked how the same societal premises as well as the emergence of movement party challengers might influence established party organizations. For the research interest pursued here, this means to pay special attention as to when and how the movement party type as well as the societal preconditions that have brought it about spill over and affect traditional and established party organizations. Along the focal points of the movement party type, this includes to ask for:

  • The understanding of movement-ization and its rationality: Is it considered catering to changing democratic expectations of supporters, a strategic and organizational repertoire choice, or a party re-branding?

  • The importance of (previously existing) personal ties between the party organization and social movements: As organizational hybridization might depend on the communication skills and mutual trust of activists that have prefigured the movement-party hybrid—if and how are personal overlaps between social movements and a political party imagined?

  • The fact that a movement party assumes less formal and binding organization and program might challenge established organizations, path dependencies, and party bureaucracies: How does an existing established organization deal with processes of organizational movement-ization?

The established parties in focus here have been affected by shifting societal demands for a long time. Party research has highlighted that changing patterns of citizen participation have made established Western political parties open their organizational structures (Gauja 2017; Ignazi 2020; Wolkenstein 2020). The democratization of parties has been the ‘overarching trend’ (Gauja 2017, p. 79) of the last decades. Generally, Scarrow (1999) highlights a trend characterized by an increasing mobilization outside of political parties and decreasing participation inside the established institutions ‘connected with electoral politics’ (Scarrow 1999, p. 345)—and that political parties are seeking to offer forms of participation once deemed unconventional themselves. By now, the once ‘unconventional’ has become ‘conventional,’ accepted, and a new norm itself (Saurugger 2010). The repertoires of political action, that is the bottom line, have grown far beyond the established representative forms. In the research on political parties, these developments have been described as breaking with the traditional principles of mediation, compensation, and delegate decision-making (Scarrow 1999) and providing new and direct opportunities for political participation, such as leadership selection (Cross and Gauja 2019), candidate selection (Barnea and Rahat 2007), or intra-party democracy (Cross and Katz 2013); furthermore, as adapting to the newly forming digital societies by providing more individualized and direct digital channels of communication between supporters and party leaders (Dommett 2020), media and campaign strategies (Gibson 2015), as well as changing citizens motivations to join a party as members (Bale et al. 2020).

However, these developments affect the traditional and established party families in Western societies in different ways. For instance, European members of Social Democratic and Conservative party families have both suffered considerable losses of members, voters, and trust and struggle with how to organizationally react (Benedetto et al. 2020; Duncan 2015). Yet, Social Democratic parties have typically emphasized issues of democratization within the party as in society and share a collective memory of their social movement roots. They have been described as ‘ideal-typical approximations of the movement-party concept’ (Hoffmann et al. 2022, p. 4). At the same time, many have maintained an organizational ideal of a strictly formal, bureaucratic, and hierarchical party organization (Micus 2011).

In the Austrian SPÖ, since the 1980s, periodical processes of inner-party democratization and an opening of structures had broached the issues of movement repertoires and organizational renovation (Micus 2011; Tieber 1991). Similarly, in the German SPD the debates around organizational reform are coming back time and again since the beginning of the 1990s (Butzlaff et al. 2011; Jun 1996; Michels and Borucki 2021). UK’s Labour has gone furthest in debating actually becoming a movement. In comparison, it has seen the biggest organizational transformations with an unprecedented spike in membership following the campaign for the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and the establishment of the Momentum movement attached to the party (Bale et al. 2020; Whiteley et al. 2019).

Conservative parties have not paid the same attention to issues of internal or external democratization but have often maintained a rather flexible and loose organizational structure with comparatively blurred boundaries between members and non-members (Bale 2016; Walter et al. 2011). The German CDU/CSU has been much more reserved when it comes to de-formalizing the party. Still, the party organizes regional conferences and more open processes when it comes to an election of party leaders and candidates following increasing pressure from its members (Dürr 2001; Walter et al. 2011). Similarly, UK’s Conservatives have traditionally granted very little formal influence to their members, but have recently seen rising demands to open up structures for more intra-party democracy (Bale 2016; Bale et al. 2020). In contrast, the Austrian ÖVP has become one of the most compelling examples of organizational renovation in the European party landscape. In 2017, it transformed from an established and hierarchically structured Volkspartei (people’s party) into a political movement, which presented itself as a lose assembly of sympathizers concentrated on its then leader, Sebastian Kurz (Bodlos and Plescia 2018).

Thus, against the background of their own organizational identities, and contrary to the movement party attributes established in the literature, I expect that:

  • Parties from both party families experience demands and pressures for organizational de-institutionalization.

  • Pressures for movement-ization and de-formalization differ between Social Democratic and Conservative parties as well as create different inner-organizational tensions.

  • Social Democratic parties might face much stronger and somewhat nostalgic demands for a movement-ization going beyond electoral campaigns.

  • Conservative parties might reject the notion of a broad movement-party network yet make use of movement-party framings to address shifting voter and member demands.

For the research interest pursued here, this means that in contrast to existing conceptualizations of movement-party hybrids, pressures to movement-ize and attempts to address these demands might extend much further than newly emerging movement parties. Addressing these blind spots in the literature, I compare how different established parties experience pressures for movement-ization. Yet, rather than establishing a yardstick of when a party might be righteously coined a movement party, I qualitatively assess how parties experience and debate an emerging ideal of more horizontal, less institutionalized, social movement-like representation.

3 Methods and Case Selection

To understand how different political parties perceive and process pressures and shifting ideals to movement-ize, in this paper a qualitative empirical approach has been chosen. Qualitative interviews provide a better understanding of intra-organizational perspectives and logics as well as of the different parties’ understandings of shifting societal constellations. As party families differ in their exposure to shifting social expectations and in their capabilities and willingness to adapt (Borz and Janda 2020), I have chosen a diverse cases research design in which I place emphasis on the variance along the dimensions of individual parties, party family, and political system (Seawright and Gerring 2008). I compare Social Democratic and Christian Democratic/Conservative parties in Austria (Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP)), Germany (Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU)), and the UK (Labour Party, Conservative Party).

Firstly, as the goal is to explore established and traditional parties (and not newly emerging challengers), Social Democratic and Christian Democratic/Conservative parties are promising, because in all three countries (as in many European societies) they have been formative for and central pillars of the political party system since WWII. They greatly differ in their organizational heritage and self-understanding as membership organizations, yet the six Social Democratic and Conservative parties cover the range of Western European people’s parties and party systems they have shaped. Secondly, all six parties present different government and opposition experiences during the last years as well as changes in the party leadership, all frequently identified as key drivers of organizational change and adaptation (Gauja 2017). At the time of the interviews, of the six parties, four (SPD, CDU/CSU, ÖVP, and the Conservatives) were in government whereas the SPÖ and Labour were in opposition, and therefore had different opportunities to facilitate not only organizational but political and social change. Thirdly, since the 1980s, all six parties have—to a varying degree—pursued processes of organizational change and democratization, which picked up notions of movement-ization. The sample contains both Social Democratic and Conservative parties that have implemented or were exposed to wide-ranging organizational transformations (Labour, ÖVP) and parties from both families that have been exposed to these debates but have not changed organizationally or to a significant lesser degree.

Between December 2019 and November 2021, 39 qualitative semi-structured interviews, between 40 and 85 min each, have been conducted. All interviewees were active (or retired) functionaries or office holders and were involved in developing party politics or party organization at various levels. Additionally, several experts were interviewed that had either closely observed a party’s development as academics, journalists, or as functionaries of an affiliated political foundation. A detailed overview of the interviewees’ background, their positions in the party, their socio-demographic composition as well as the questionnaire are included in the supplementary material to this article. The recruitment for the interviews was a mixture of a previously defined set of interviewees (minimum per party, country, different age groups and party levels) and a snowball sampling by asking for a recommendation at the end of each interview, with several snowball starting points for each party, to avoid personal bias. The goal was to include all relevant factions as well as ideological and regional heterogeneities within the parties, although in a qualitative setting with limited sample size this clearly has limits for large heterogeneous organizations. I asked for understandings of a political movement, and under which conditions they wanted to become one. Furthermore, informed by the previous conceptualizations of the term developed in section two, I asked for the organizational changes necessary to transform into a movement-party. I addressed the roles of members, activists, program, and digitalization, possible arenas of mobilization as well as the role of existing personal overlaps between movements and parties. Subsequently, the interviews where coded with the help of MAXQDA (VERBI Software, Berlin/Germany). The coding of the material followed a directed qualitative content analysis (Hsiu-Fang and Shannon 2005) using a deductive category application and coding scheme, informed by the framework developed in section two and continuously adapted during the interpretation process. Furthermore, the interpretation followed an interpretative approach (Sławecki 2018) in that I did not assume one objective meaning and rationality behind organizational de-formalization but focused on the differing perceptions of demands for movement-ization by the interviewees and the diverging rationalities in dealing with them (Durnová 2012; Wagenaar 2011).

4 The Different Ideals of Becoming a Movement

The perception that citizens demand a movement-ization of party organizations is visible in many interviews. The interviewees agree that citizens increasingly aim rather at a project-based and temporary engagement than at a long-term membership commitment. Therefore, participatory expectations and democratic demands of citizens are not easily integrated into traditional, representative, and hierarchically structured organizations. Consequently, framing the own organization as a movement (or turning it into one) to some appears an attractive choice. However, between the six parties observed, the perception widely differs as to what exactly that entails, if and how desirable it is, and which consequences might arise. I present the results along the structure developed in Section 2.

4.1 The Understanding of Movement-Party Hybrids

In the interviews, Social Democratic interviewees strongly feel the imperative of opening the party. This is consistent with their self-understanding as a progressive, equality-oriented organization. For instance, SPÖ interviewees understand a movement as a political dynamic, which somehow breaks with the internal logic of the hierarchical committee structure but maintains the idea of a traditional membership organization. ‘What we need is an intra-party cultural revolution with which we re-connect with the own history as a social movement. […] we can only achieve change if we dismantle and revolutionize parts of the organization.’ (A6_Daniel) To them, movement-ization means ‘the suggestion of creative will and agency’ (A5_Christina).

The SPD interviewees frame their idea of a political movement as a network, where the party organization on the ground leads and inspires a re-establishment of the long-lost feeling of a coherent social milieu—a ‘collecting movement (Sammlungsbewegung)’ (D7_Franz). The traditional structures of Social Democratic organization are complemented but remain in control.

“The demands for movement-ization just mean that the party wants to re-connect with the ordinary, authentic people. But it is not about the ‘free, wild and colourful’ life of social movements. The SPD is craving for the feeling of movement-ization, but strongly clings to the ideal of organizational unity and inner-party discipline. In the SPD, movement-ization means linkages and networks, but not becoming a social movement.” (D1_Eduard)

Many of the SPD interviewees, even more so organizers and functionaries from local branches, emphasize a bottom-up culture which in their views helps to incorporate changing participatory expectations. Yet, many underline that this bottom-up culture and new participatory opportunities shall complement but not replace the traditional and hierarchical committee structures.

For many Labour party interviewees, the experience of the rise of the Momentum movement, greatly increasing membership numbers, highlights how important the notion of a party-independent and external form of movement might be. Momentum’s idea of a movement resembled the notions of an external bottom-up influence to the party and an agenda setter, fuelled by citizens’ demands and claims, holding the party accountable. It intended to liberate from the restrictions, logics, and boundaries of a parliamentary and bureaucratic party organization. In contrast, party functionaries uphold a notion of movement-ization that emphasizes top-down steering and control by the party. These top-down understandings are then criticized by some of the other Social Democratic interviewees as reflecting the traditionally hierarchic and—to a certain extent—patronizing notion of party organization. Yet, among most Social Democratic interviewees, the idea that a movement is managed and steered by the party is predominant—an idea that has been at the core of Social Democratic self-understanding for many decades (Butzlaff and Deflorian 2021).

Compared with the Social Democratic parties, Conservative interviewees describe their supporters’ and members’ expectations for political organization quite differently. They also report demands for more flexible, less binding, and more single-issue oriented participation. However, all Conservative interviewees strongly emphasize that members and supporters foremost expect the party to efficiently organize ‘good governance.’ Instead of providing leadership by co-designing a collective and bottom-up vision for the future and a society to strive for (as are expecting large parts of the Social Democratic supporters), the interviewees understand that demands for leadership and efficient governance are fuelled by the perception of growing societal complexities. To them, rationality, speed of decision-making, efficient bureaucracy, and the prospect to win and remain in public office are the cornerstones of what members and supporters expect: ‘Let them do their job in Berlin!’ (D52_Marcel) Modern party organization in the eyes of Conservative members and supporters, so the interviews suggest, means first and foremost governance efficiency, speed, and rationality. And the self-understanding of Conservative interviewees emphasizes their role as a party in government steering the country and the party’s role to facilitate this.

Thus, they mostly reject the term movement-ization as an organizational development goal and perceive its open discussion as a ‘topic of defeat’ (D55_Sabine). Opening the organization is presented as a top-down prompted campaign and marketing strategy to attract voters and supporters, but not as a necessary way to overhaul the political culture of the party on the ground. The CDU/CSU interviewees are skeptical regarding organizational changes—and emphasize the careful provision of emotions: ‘movement is just a feeling that persists […] it requires quick action and fast results […], really just to present any kind of results.’ (D54_Natalie) New digital participation opportunities, member surveys, and participation (not decision-making) are provided by the national headquarters.

Similarly, UK Conservatives present the imperatives of government efficacy and rationality to be much more formative and important. ‘If you say the word social movement to a Conservative it congers up images of […] Black Lives Matter, the women’s movement, the peace movement, the ecology movement […] which we don’t really hold with and instinctively turn away from.’ (UK1_Theodore) Thus, providing members and sympathizers the feeling to be involved and included, to be part of a Conservative political project, is satisfied through an efficient administration of governmental affairs.

In the eyes of the ÖVP interviewees, movement-ization means to lower the hurdles for citizen engagement. ‘With the party reforms of Sebastian Kurz, we wanted to become more dynamic and timeless, efficacious and fast and still rooted in society.’ (A54_Natascha) A movement in their perspective entails a strategic re-branding of the organization. Increasing supporter and member participation is understood as collecting people’s demands and then pick what was needed. Beyond that, movement-ization in the ÖVP interviewees’ understanding promises policy efficiency and—most importantly—political success without the endless quarrelling parliamentary politics and a long-term grand coalition in Austria had been.Footnote 1 People were asked to voice their suggestions and to turn in so-called ‘declarations of support’ (Unterstützungserklärung). The ÖVP offered people to join with a single-issue interest without having to accept the whole programmatic spectrum. Hence, a movement constitutes a dismantling of bureaucratic structures of party organization with the aim to ensure more room for manoeuvre for the (highly personalized) party leadership. By atomizing the individual member or supporter and by facilitating direct opportunities to voice their opinion and preferences (without giving away decision powers), the Austrian Conservative take represents a highly centralized, personalized, and professionalized movement in the name of organizational democratization.

In the view of the interviewees, movement-izing the organization appears highly contradictory, as it might compromise the demanded efficiency and rationality. In comparison, the UK Conservatives claim flexible organization: ‘It is no heavy oil tanker.’ (UK55_Samuel) Conservative understandings of movement-ization focus on providing opportunities for participation and the feeling of being involved, not formal member or supporter co-decision.

4.2 The Role of Membership and Activist Overlap

For the Social Democratic interviewees, a personal overlap of members and supporters active in both party and different movements is considered an integral part of a movement party. They touch upon the historical self-understanding of Social Democracy as part of a tightly-knit social milieu that integrated people into a network of initiatives, movements, associations, and unions, and that was then represented by the party in the parliamentary-political realm (Butzlaff and Deflorian 2021). The notion of tying such a network with the help of members continuously crossing the borders between party and movements is highly present in the interviews. A1_Andreas describes it as the ‘development of Social Democracy into a platform of civic engagement.’

However, although personal overlap was considered a core ingredient of a Social Democratic movement party, any movement-ization would need to take place within the existing organization. The social democratic understanding of a movement-party focuses on (re-)establishing the party as intermediary and broker of a wider party-movement network of sympathizing activists, but hardly abandons the notion of a bureaucratic and hierarchically structured membership organization. Furthermore, many interviewees emphasize that it is only a part of the members that strongly demand more influence and participation and crave the feeling of a political movement. They feel this group might not have grown but is surely louder and more influential today. In contrast, members clinging on to the notion of a traditional membership organization were suspicious of handing out influence to non-members.

In the UK, the experience of Momentum was highly focused on enabling communication and trust-building between movement activists and the party. Putting such an understanding of a movement party into practice would mean to open the party organization to movement activists. Yet, this is not what Labour—nor the SPD and SPÖ—have been doing during the last decades. The existing organizations remain rather sceptical of “outside” movements. Or, as UK3_Dalia complains: ‘The only thing they can imagine with emerging movements is to hijack them.’ Consequently, after experimenting with participatory opportunities for non-members and sympathizers, Social Democratic parties are restricting newly opened participatory opportunities to already registered members.

The Conservative take on personal overlap is different. Interviewees emphasize providing individual and atomized citizens access to the party, but connecting Conservative party organization with an existing social movement landscape is not part of their idea of a desirable movement-ization.

Conservative interviewees show a political self-understanding focusing on government, political efficacy, and winning elections—in contrast to a Social Democratic identity which is much more concerned with programmatic coherence and the self-understanding as a historical political force for a different society. For instance, the ÖVP experience of movement-ization was aimed almost exclusively at the flexible and non-binding engagement of individuals. The individual citizen was addressed and asked for support, if only for a short time. To build a network of different movements or to seek engagement of movement activists was not part of this understanding. This blurred the boundaries between members and sympathizers: ‘At the end of the day, it changes the perception. We hardly differentiate between party members and supporters of the movement.’ (A54_Natascha)

Personal overlap between existing initiatives and the party would be recognized as important for the party-society linkages at the very local level, but it would not be part of any wider movement-ization efforts. Democratizing the party is understood as a top-down strategic re-branding exercise focusing on individual citizens, not as a network with existing movements and initiatives. It is hardly meant to alter the power balance in the party.

Or, as A53_Norbert summarizes: ‘It is all a big show. […] a superficial staging of a movement.’ In this, Conservatives resemble a boiled down version of Peña’s activist party (2021) that talks like a movement without necessarily restructuring the power balance of the organization: ‘It’s a question of style.’ (A51_Michael)

4.3 The Role of the Existing Party Organization

For Social Democratic interviewees, the debates on movement-ization spark a conflict with the heritage of socialist and hierarchical bureaucratic organization: ‘many people [that] have to change their concrete behaviour within the organization or learn a new one’ (A1_Andreas). Movement-izing and de-formalizing an existing organization becomes difficult due to the own organizational traditions, narratives, and identities.

Thus, collective experiences and party bureaucracy might make any structural change difficult or even impossible if it contradicts these internalized self-understandings of members and functionaries. For instance, many Social Democratic interviewees highlight that their parties’ organizational structure and many of their functionaries have become self-referential, closed, and very reluctant to open up for new members (Micus 2011; Sassoon 2010). This could be understood as a heritage from its own, long-lived organizational history. Due to the exclusion and prosecution of socialists in all three countries between 1850 and the 1960s, efficient and tight-knit milieu-connected organization was crucial. However, it contrasts with the impression of many of the interviewees that members and voters demand to fight not for a societal status quo but for a better, more equal, and changing future. As A7_Emilia describes it: ‘There is a massive demand for the feeling to be part of something […] for emotional elements of movements.’

Many interviewees feel that the question of movement-ization divides long-term members with a traditional sense of loyalty and hierarchical structures and younger members and supporters that do not accept organizational hierarchies anymore and demand more flexible and direct participation. From their perspective, there is a distrust between old and new members, as the former still cling to an idea of seniority when it comes to decide candidatures and mandates, whereas the latter expect these questions to be deliberated and decided in a much more horizontal and transparent manner. In the eyes of many organizers and functionaries, it’s the “old” members and functionaries clinging to the historical role model of hierarchical organization that make it so hard to adapt to the new generation’s demands for political organization.

Similarly, interviewees of the Labour Party describe how the demands for movement-ization of party organization, characterized by the rise of Momentum, created immense tensions between the party in parliament, concentrated on winning elections and returning to office, and the party on the ground and social movement activists, focused on changing party culture and creating open and bottom-up participation opportunities. On the one hand, the organizational heritage of social democracy circles around the progressive potential of a hierarchical and bureaucratic organization, on the other hand, the majoritarian electoral system in the UK highlights the importance of broad electoral majorities. To one side a movement meant the promise of programmatic radicalization and a reconnection with social groups that had abandoned the party over the experience of the Blair/Brown governments of 1997–2010. To the other side a movement-ization of the party meant to give in to the organized participatory demands of a small portion of the members and to let go of all hopes for a swift recapture of national government responsibility. Consequently, the question of becoming a movement had contributed to a harsh division in the party and tensions between Momentum and Labour amounted. As UK2_Emily describes it, Momentum sought to organize open debates and policy discussions, often in parallel to Labour party conferences, ‘but the party does not want to hear it.’ Labour is ‘an intellectually incurious organization.’

Furthermore, many interviewees stress that they perceive people willing to be part of temporary single-issue projects of limited scope only. This project-ization of membership creates big challenges for the organization, as demands for a movement-like, flexible engagement complicate the everyday organizational work on the ground and question long-established party cultures of compromise and delegate decision-making. As UK3_Dalia puts it:

“… in each group there is a group of people that are ‘mavericks’ with an all or nothing approach to politics: they show up and demand that everything follows their idea and that accept no compromise. They demand a sense of immediateness and are very convinced of themselves. Still, they are not willing to invest much in convincing others of their ideas.”

Thus, Social Democratic movement-ization includes a conflict between returning to what some of the interviewees view as the roots of their own organization—and dismantling the foundations that had deeply entrenched the three parties in their national democracy and government.Footnote 2

Compared to the Social Democratic parties, Conservative political organization has always been less formalized, binding, and bureaucratic (Walter et al. 2011). Due to these organizational traditions, opening up the organization does not cause the tensions visible in Social Democratic parties. Membership has been organized loosely, and the notion of flexible participation and engagement has been inscribed into Conservative understandings of party–society linkages. As UK56_Nicole puts it: ‘The party is more like a broad church, much more than Labour.’

Thus, traditional Conservative party organization might resemble a movement organization and mirror the demands of modern consumer societies to a greater extent than the understandings of hierarchic and bureaucratic Social Democracy—and might therefore ease catering to changing citizens’ demands for participation. However, whereas for the interviewees of the CDU and the UK Conservatives a movement would entail opening and de-formalizing the organization and therefore dismantling what guarantees rational government and efficacy (and they therefore reject the idea of movement-ization), in light of the Austrian party system for the ÖVP becoming a movement meant getting rid of what seemingly inhibited the same efficacy.

5 Conclusion

This article set out to explore how an emerging ideal of movement-party hybrids spills over to and affects traditional and established party organizations. Existing research on the movement party type has focused mainly on newly emerging parties and has conceptualized them as transient and exposed to pressures for institutionalization. In contrast, the parties revisited here have been in government or have been identified with the core of their national political system for decades. Consequently, they have been facing decreasing levels of membership, public trust, and legitimacy for a long time. The interviews show that established parties, too, experience demands for movement-like experiences and greater responsiveness. The proliferation of the movement party ideal highlights that the established institutional logics of Western parliamentary representative democracy are increasingly questioned, and that role models of party organization and representative democracy are shifting. In contrast to what conceptualizations of the movement party type indicate, parties might not only experience pressures for formalization and institutionalization, but member and voter demands might lead to the contrary.

Yet, the notions of what a movement party entails differ greatly between the six parties revisited here—mainly as a function of (a) their political orientation, (b) different expectations and demands of their members and supporters, (c) their organizational self-understanding, and (d) the parties’ diagnosis of what had led to diminishing membership and trust.

For (most) Social Democrats, becoming a movement party means (re)creating a network between sympathetic social movements and initiatives—with the party in the steering position (see Table 1). To them, it entails a formal democratization, more horizontal party structures and caters to increasing democratic demands of their supporters. It is something that (some) members and voters expect and crave for, but that is deeply contradictory regarding their own organizational heritage and self-understanding. Social Democrats mostly consider their party family as rooting in movement parties. Yet, their own self-understanding prominently places a formal and bureaucratic notion of a membership organization at the core of past political successes.

Table 1 Different understandings of movement-ization
Full size table

In contrast, Conservatives understand movement-ization as a strategic re-branding of the party which might be helpful for securing electoral success and staging responsiveness (see Table 1). Pressures for de-formalization and movement-ization are perceived only if organizational petrification is identified as the core problem for decreasing party legitimacy. They also see opening up and movement-ization as a potential answer to citizen demands—yet, Conservative understandings of a movement party emphasize individual sympathetic citizens approaching the party in a nonbinding manner. To them, movement-ization entails a more informal way of member and supporter participation. Also, they face fewer contradictory demands from their supporters. Movement-ization is only desirable if it contributes to rationality, speed of decision-making, efficient bureaucracy, and the prospect to win public office (as it is the case with the Austrian ÖVP, but not with the CDU/CSU or the UK’s Conservatives).

Conservative self-understanding has historically meant weaker and less formalized organization. In this, they have always been closer to present conceptualizations of movement-party hybrids. It stands out that for the ÖVP, the Austrian party system with its quasi-permanent grand coalition was identified as the main driver for losing legitimacy, voters, and governmental efficacy. Their rebranding as a professionalized movement party answered to this perception. The CDU/CSU and the British Conservatives did not experience the same pressures as they were (comparatively) able to maintain their self-image as a political force for rational and efficient government. This way, movement-izing appears much more complicated for Social Democratic party organizations.

Movement-ization appears a promising strategy when bureaucratization or organizational petrification are considered key problems for legitimacy and trust and when the own organizational identity allows for opening and flexibilization. Furthermore, in contrast to many movement party conceptualizations, the cases of organizational movement-ization of traditional parties are not induced bottom-up by social movement activists, but often top-down by party elites and without the involvement of movement actors. It is a party elite-induced movement-ization which entails a top-down steering of organizational flexibilization. As the case of the ÖVP shows, a rebranding as a challenger to a petrified party system might be possible from a position in government. However, for established parties, this also needs to be carefully interwoven with the organizational legacy and identity as well as with a plausible framing of renewal.

The results indicate that a movement-ization of established party organizations and thus, a modernization under conditions of modern consumer democracies, greatly differs between parties. It creates considerable challenges, especially for Social Democratic parties. In contrast, the Conservative cases indicate that a weak organizational identity seems to ease a movement-ization of the party (yet with a different understanding and strategy). These results also highlight that the lures of social movements extend far beyond the existing conceptualizations of newly emerging or challenger parties. They imply contemporary pressures for a de-formalization of established organizations and even parties in government. This might raise the question how helpful an ideal party type is for the analysis of contemporary party systems. But it also emphasizes that ideals of and demands for democratic political representation are shifting, and that political parties and party systems need to adapt.