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Political Parties and Power: a Multi-Dimensional Analy- Sis View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses ORBIT - Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses Enabling Open Access to Birkbecks Research Degree output Political Parties and Power: A Multi-dimensional Analy- sis http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/40/ Version: Full Version Citation: Rye, Daniel James (2012) Political Parties and Power: A Multi-dimensional Analysis. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London. c 2012 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit guide Contact: email Political Parties and Power: A Multi-dimensional Analysis Daniel James Rye Department of Politics School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy Birkbeck College, University of London Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of London February 2012 1 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. 2 Abstract Political parties are ideal subjects for the study of power because they are specific sites in which it is produced and organised, fought over, captured and lost. However, the literature on political parties largely lacks an explicit and systematic theorisation of power as it is exercised and operates in them. As a result, the study of parties has not kept up with developments in theoretical approaches to power and power relations. For example, the failure to recognise how power works through constituting subjects who are empowered as effective agents with appropriate skills and capacities is a major lacuna in the literature. Parties are not only electoral machines or vehicles for personal ambition: they are organisations, complex relations of individuals, rules and rituals. An approach to power in parties should reflect this. To this end, I develop a five-dimensional framework of power which I use to account for political parties in all their complexity. My aim is to introduce some of the more nuanced and sophisticated insights of political theory to the analysis of political parties without dismissing the benefits of some of the more established ways of looking at power. Power is therefore approached as a rich, multi-dimensional concept, derived from diverse intellectual traditions, including behaviouralist, structuralist and Foucauldian accounts. My framework encapsulates individual agency, the strategic mobilisation of rules and norms, rationalisation and bureaucracy, the constitution of subjectivities and the micro-level discipline of bodies. Theory is employed in conjunction with original interview and archive research on the British Labour Party to construct an account of how power operates in party settings. This provides a unique and, I argue, much richer perspective on the exercise and operation of power in political parties than has been offered before. 3 Acknowledgements The long path that has led me here was by turns exciting and daunting, with many pitfalls along the way. I would like to thank my supervisors, Diana Coole and Joni Lovenduski for their wise counsel, constructive criticism and patient encouragement during my journey. I would also like to thank Phil Cowley, Eric Shaw and Paul Webb who gave generously of their time and advice in the early stages of designing my empirical research. Without my interviewees, this thesis would lack the rich insights into party life that only an experienced practitioner of politics can bring. Thank you all and I hope I have done you justice. I would also like to thank the staff at the Labour Party archive in Manchester. Their expert professional support and guidance helped me find the gems hidden in the seemingly endless boxes of reports, memos and publications they fetched for me. I am grateful to Marc Settle and Faith Armitage who helped me correct the many mistakes that always come with drafting a long piece of work like this. Needless to say, any errors that still remain are entirely mine. I would like to thank my friends for keeping my feet on the ground and asking me why my thesis is taking so long to finish, and my parents, Brenda and Eddy, for their support and encouragement. Most of all, however, I would like to thank my wife, Harriet, who has been a rock throughout and my daughter, Charlotte, who brings a smile to my face every day. This thesis is dedicated to them. 4 Table of Contents Introduction: Dimensions of Power 9 Summary of the Core Thesis 10 Lukes’ Three Dimensional Approach 17 Setting Out the Theoretical Framework 21 Institutionalism and Power 30 Using the Framework to Research Power: Strategies of Investigation 32 Additional Methodological Issues: Analysing Empirical Data 35 Structure of the Thesis 37 One: Power in the Party Literature 39 Overview 39 Michels and the Iron Law of Oligarchy 42 Duverger and the ‘Intensification’ of Power 49 Panebianco and ‘Unequal Exchange’ 54 Katz and Mair: Elites and Cartels 58 Party Discipline and the Puzzle of Loyalty 62 Conclusion 74 Two: Individualistic Power 81 What is Individualistic Power? 82 Identifying Individualistic Power: Conditions and Locations 91 Application: Testing Individualistic Power’s Explanatory Scope 95 Example 1: Patronage Example 2: A Coup in Tower Hamlets Conclusion 119 Three: Strategic Power 123 What is Strategic Power? 123 Identifying Strategic Power 128 Application: Testing Strategic Power’s Explanatory Scope 130 Example 1: The ‘Partnership in Power’ Reforms Example 2: Getting ‘One Member One Vote’ Through the 1993 Conference Example 3: Recruitment and Selection Conclusion 166 5 Table of Contents continued Four: Bureaucratic Control 167 What is Bureaucratic Control? 168 Identifying Bureaucratic Control 177 Application: Testing Bureaucratic Control’s Explanatory Scope 179 Example 1: Centralisation and Bureaucratic Control Example 2: Organisational Imperatives, Meetings and Canvassing Conclusion 209 Five: Constitutive Power 213 What is Constitutive Power? 214 Identifying Constitutive Power 220 Application: Testing Constitutive Power’s Explanatory Scope 223 Example 1: Meetings Example 2: The Party Career Structure Example 3: Training Councillors Conclusion 247 Six: Disciplinary Control 251 What is Disciplinary Control? 252 Identifying Disciplinary Control 262 Application: Testing Disciplinary Control’s Explanatory Scope 263 Example 1: Election and Campaign Planning Example 2: Media, Marketing and Normalisation Conclusion 294 Seven: Conclusion / A Multi-dimensional Framework of Power in Political Parties 297 Power and the Party Literature 297 Summary of the Core Argument 299 The Framework of Power 301 The Framework as a Whole 317 Applying the Whole Framework: Reform of Policy-Making in the Labour Party 319 Conclusion 322 6 Table of Contents Continued BIBLIOGRAPHY 325 APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW SUBJECTS 340 APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW SCHEDULE FOR PARTY MEMBERS 348 APPENDIX 3: MODEL INTERVIEW SCHEDULE FOR MPs / OFFICIALS 353 APPENDIX 4: INTERVIEWEE RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION 355 List of Tables and Figures Table 0.1: The Framework of Power 22 Table 2.1: The Specific Means by which Individualistic Power is Exercised 92 Figure 5.1: Example of Candidate Training Activity 242 Figure 6.1: Polling Day Battle Plan 266 Table 7.1: The Framework of Power 302 7 8 Introduction: Dimensions of Power All politics is in some sense a manifestation of power struggles. Max Weber argues that the importance of politics is that it strives ‘to share power or… to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state’ (Weber 1948 [PV], 78). In democratic states, the primary vehicle for these struggles is the political party. Therefore it is not surprising that, from the earliest studies of political parties, how power and organisation interact has been of major concern. For two early twentieth century pioneers of the study of parties, the very emergence of party organisation in the first place had problematic effects in terms of power: for Ostrogorski (1970 [1902]), the transformation of parliamentary parties into mass organisations, although a practical response to the expanding franchise, undermined the deliberative freedom of parliamentary elites, making them into mere agents of the organisation and its members (Ostrogorski 1970 [1902], 386). Conversely, Michels (1962 [1915]) argues that the growth of organised parties actually supported the power of elites at the expense of members, crushing the democratic hopes of the masses under the grinding wheel of oligarchy. Many other studies since then have sought to explain how, as parties have developed, power relations within them have changed: the ‘mass party’ of the twentieth century was naturally oligarchic according to Duverger (1959, 151). Kirchheimer (1966) and Epstein (1967) argued that professionalised media age parties had begun to throw off their memberships altogether, becoming even more centralised and elitist. More recently, Katz and Mair (1995) have suggested that the party at elite level has become interpenetrated with the state itself, whilst the relationship with the party on the ground has become one of virtual mutual autonomy. 9 The works I have briefly outlined above have all played an important role in the academic analysis of party organisation. However, whilst all these studies are concerned in some way with the ‘distribution’ of power in parties, particularly in terms of the relative power of members and leaders, the majority of these and other studies have failed to address explicitly or adequately the question of power as a dynamic force that has many different dimensions to it. Political parties are sites in which the exercise of power can be observed in conflicts over policy and preferences, and in the means that actors use to secure their interests and maintain dominant positions. But power also works in political parties in less observable, but highly effective ways. It produces and constitutes political actors through the rituals and practices of everyday party life and it controls and disciplines them through routinised organisational imperatives and the fine-grained disciplinary techniques of surveillance and normalisation.
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