Relationship Between Social Movements and Political Partiesfor the purpose of Democratic Representation of Social Groups in Europe

This three-year, cross-national empirical project, carried out by SWPS University in Poland, in collaboration with Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) in Germany, addresses what we do not know about the movements-party relationship.

So far, the movement-party relationships have been understudied by social sciences. We know little about the frequency and the conditions, under which these social actors cooperate. We do not know whether the patterns of their relations exist cross-nationally. We do not know the specific mechanisms that help or hinder such cooperation.

We know little about these issues because scholars who are interested in the movement-party relationship have been relying on case studies from Western Europe, and have been focusing on idiosyncrasies of the relationship. They have yet to examine the extent to which protests – the main tool that movements use – impacts social group representation across nations and over time.

In theory, movements and parties should have a dynamic and reciprocal relationship. Social movements can mobilize voters to vote for specific parties. Movements can publicize social issues that parties are forced to address, and they can create new parties. Meanwhile, parties are opportunistic in their pursuit of electoral advantage and may attach themselves to movements because they agree with a movement’s ideology or they simply hunt for new voters. To gain advantage, parties position themselves against other parties, and movements move closer to their social change goals. Movements can improve a party’s representation of disadvantaged groups via protest. Protest is a primary way for social movements to publicly influence the actions of political parties. Thus, social group representation can improve or worsen as a result of the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between movements and parties.

Researchers will use a mixed-method study design that links qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research will reveal how movements and parties cooperate, focusing on how the representation of social groups works.

They will conduct case studies of selected social movements, including the “Women’s Strike” (Poland), “Euromaidan” (Ukraine), and “Fridays for Future” (Germany). The researchers will interview social movement activists and spokespeople of political parties that hold positions in governments and in opposition parties. They will also analyze official documents and media reports before, during, and after parliamentary elections in these countries. This data will allow the researchers to build a theory describing the mechanisms conducive to or hindering mutual cooperation between movements and parties help or hinder mutual cooperation in their pursuit of parliamentary representation.

The researchers will develop a new database and design statistical analyses to reveal whether the patterns of movement-party relations are similar across nations and time. The statistical data that will be used in this project already exists and is publicly available, however, the information is yet to be combined into a single database.

For the representation of social groups, the researchers will use a new dataset that spans 95 national elections, conducted between 1999 and 2016 in 25 European countries. To this data set, they will attach additional data sets concerning protests that took place in Europe during this time period (PolDem), party ideology (MARPOR), and data on institutional contexts (Quality of Government).

The mixed method approach will provide new, theoretical and empirically-based, body of knowledge on the movement-party interaction in comparative perspective.

The study will contribute to the disciplines of sociology and political science. It will also provide information to the public thanks to the researcher’s participate in international academic events, publication of articles in top academic journals. Additionally, the researcher will create a project website to help disseminate the results to other scholars and to the general public.