1 Does Party Change Matter? Party Change and Electoral Recovery in the Dutch Christian Democrats, 1994-2002 MSc Thesis by Martijn van Nijnanten (st. nr. 0778680) Institute of Political Science, Leiden University –
[email protected] Supervisor: Dr. M. Spirova The author gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance provided by drs. M.J. Fraanje at the CDA Scientific Institute and Ms. K. Hoentjen at CDA Central Office, as well as all interview respondents, in obtaining the data required to execute this research project. 2 Political parties in contemporary democracies appear to be increasingly in flux. When thrown off-balance by a crushing electoral defeat, or even the prospect of one, parties seem to resort to changes in strategy, organization or ideology with increasing frequency, as documented in the expansive literature built around the theme of parties changing in response to external shocks (e.g. Panebianco 1988, 242; Harmel and Janda 1994, 264-265). However, parties make different choices when undergoing a process of change – some quite literally re-brand themselves and change their ideologies, such as the British Labour Party adopting the ‘Third Way’, while others choose more subtle ways, such as the Dutch Democrats 66 in the course of the 2000s. These different choices, then, seem to lead to different outcomes in terms of the success or failure of recovery. However, the conditions that foster the success or failure of parties changing to recover have not yet been the subject of systematic inquiry in the literature. This thesis, therefore, asks itself why political parties succeed or fail at recovering from a severe electoral defeat, and how political parties challenged in this way regain their electoral sustainability.