IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/polstu/v57y2009i3p559-579.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inside the Cartel Party: Party Organisation in Government and Opposition

Author

Listed:
  • Nicole Bolleyer

Abstract

This article assesses the internal dynamics of the cartel party model. It argues that a party's endeavour to increase its societal reach by opening membership boundaries while keeping candidate selection local (two tendencies ascribed to this model), and the general need to maintain party unity, are difficult to reconcile. Therefore a fully fledged cartel party is organisationally vulnerable, which reinforces its resort to selective benefits (i.e. political appointments, patronage) whenever in government to satisfy organisational demands, a trigger intensifying party–state relations which is usually overlooked. Further, the dominant view of the ascendancy of parties' ‘public face’ needs to be qualified: the Irish Fianna Fáil, with its permeable boundaries and local candidate selection, reflects the cartel party model without a cartel at the party system level. Majoritarian dynamics have forced Fianna Fáil repeatedly into opposition which reveals the following: Fianna Fáil as a cartel party can afford to neglect its infrastructure on the ground as long as it is controlling government resources. In opposition its leadership initiates reforms to reinvigorate the party's infrastructure since it is pressed to generate organisational support through other means than distributing benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicole Bolleyer, 2009. "Inside the Cartel Party: Party Organisation in Government and Opposition," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(3), pages 559-579, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:57:y:2009:i:3:p:559-579
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00741.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00741.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00741.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garvin, Tom, 1976. "Local Party Activists in Dublin: Socialization, Recruitment and Incentives," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(3), pages 369-380, July.
    2. Hopkin, Jonathan, 2004. "The problem with party finance : theoretical perspectives on the funding of party politics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 646, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. King, Anthony, 1981. "The Rise of the Career Politician in Britain — And its Consequences," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 249-285, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Federico Quaresima & Fabio Fiorillo, 2020. "The economics of politics: patronage and political selection in Italy," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 27-48, March.
    2. Quaresima, Federico, 2019. "Patronage Appointments between Politics and Public Governance: a Review," MPRA Paper 94650, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leandro De Magalhaes & Salomo Hirvonen, 2021. "A second chance elsewhere. Re-running for parliament after a close race defeat: UK vs US," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 21/744, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    2. Gila Menahem, 1993. "Social Cleavage, Political Division and Local Political Leadership Recruitment," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 5(3), pages 375-395, July.
    3. Matthew Bond, 2007. "Elite Social Relations and Corporate Political Donations in Britain," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(1), pages 59-85, March.
    4. Poire, Alejandro, 2006. "Elements for a Theory of Political Finance," Working Paper Series rwp06-014, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    5. Hopkin, Jonathan & Blyth, Mark, 2018. "The global economics of European populism: growth regimes and party system change in Europe (The Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2017)," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100094, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Paul Fawcett & Jack Corbett, 2018. "Politicians, professionalization and anti-politics: why we want leaders who act like professionals but are paid like amateurs," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 51(4), pages 411-432, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:57:y:2009:i:3:p:559-579. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0032-3217 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.