Electoral Defeat and Party Change

This book examines the factors determining the character, depth, scope and outcomes of changes made by political parties in the aftermath of electoral losses. “This book looks into the subjective black box of electoral defeat and offers important insights for our understanding of when and how parties react to electoral losses.” —Thomas Poguntke, Chair of Comparative Politics, Universität Düsseldorf, Germany “Adopting a nuanced framework that combines objective elements of organisational change with subjective accounts of the consequences of defeat from key party actors, this book convincingly shows that it is not just the defeat itself, but how actors’ own beliefs and subjective assessments of that defeat shape the organisational decisions made by parties.” — Anika Gauja, Professor, University of Sydney, Australia “This book is a must-read for scholars and students who want to understand what electoral defeat is doing to parties and how different degrees of party change can be one of the answers.” —Kris Deschouwer, Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, VrijeUniversiteit Brussel, Belgium This book examines the factors determining the character, depth, scope and outcomes of changes made by political parties in the aftermath of electoral losses. It considers not only the objective aspects of party organisation and its features and structure, in explaining post-defeat party change, but also includes findings on the perceptions and interpretations of electoral results within political parties. Based on an extensive fieldwork, the authors propose a new analytical perspective to establish whether and under what conditions and circumstances an electoral defeat leads to a profound party makeover. Anna Pacześniak is Professor of Political Science at the…