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V O L 1 1 . N o . 2 pp. 173191 London Thousand Oaks New Delhi

CARTEL PARTIES IN WESTERN EUROPE?

Klaus Detterbeck
ABSTRACT

In this article I discuss the empirical validity of the cartel thesis, and review three analytical dimensions of the concept: organizational change, functional change and change of party competition in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. I use the empirical ndings to elaborate the cartel party model, with three main results. First, in Denmark and Germany party cartels have developed in different ways; second, while the cartel thesis points to important developments, some assumptions are far-fetched and we therefore have to look for the core dening elements of cartel parties; third, the favourable and unfavourable conditions facilitating or hindering the development of party cartels have to be claried.

KEY WORDS cartel parties party change party democracy party organization political competition

Among various attempts to pinpoint the changes in West European parties, the cartel party model has been one of the most provocative, with a series of comments on its theoretical plausibility (Kitschelt, 2000; Koole, 1996; von Beyme, 1996) as well as its empirical validity for individual countries (e.g. Wiesendahl, 1999; Young, 1998). In their 1995 article, Katz and Mair construct an evolution of party types from the late nineteenth century onwards to show how parties have changed from being part of society (mass parties) to being part of the state apparatus. The provocation the cartel party model entails lies in its claim that the established parties in Western Europe have adapted to declining levels of participation and involvement in party activities not just by turning to resources provided by the state, but by doing so in a collusive manner. The interpenetration of party and state, so the argument goes, has been achieved through cooperation between the major parties. The former opponents now run a party cartel which excludes new and smaller parties. Thus, the cartel party model depicts a fundamental change of party democracy in Western Europe.

1354-0688[DOI: 10.1177/1354068805049738]

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I rst clarify how Katz and Mair (1995) conceptualize party change. In the second part of the article, I examine the formation or non-formation of party cartels and discuss changes among the major parties in four European countries. In the nal part, I try to show how these empirical ndings can contribute to an elaboration of the cartel party model.

The Cartel Party Model

Katz and Mair (1995) distinguish between three dimensions in describing party change since the 1960s and in conceptualizing the cartel party type. Although speaking about a cartel naturally involves looking at the systemic level of party competition, the idea clearly is that the individual party organizations are affected by the degree of inter-party cooperation. Thus, cartel parties possess certain organizational characteristics, a specic relationship with society and the state, as well as a novel understanding of party competition. The organizational dimension is concerned with the balance of power inside the parties (see also Katz and Mair, 2002). The mechanics of internal decision-making are determined by the structural and material resources of the various faces within the organization. Cartel parties are characterized by the ascendancy of the party in public ofce: public ofce-holders dominate party executive organs and internal decision-making procedures; party activists have only marginal inuence; and election campaigns are organized by professional experts. The second organizational feature of
Table 1. The three analytical dimensions of cartel parties Analytical dimension Organizational structures Main characteristics Ascendancy of the party in public ofce Vertical stratarchy Empirical indicators Composition of national party executives Candidate selection Election campaigning Internal policy decisionmaking Involvement of party members Involvement of interest groups Importance of state resources Access to state privileges Style of party competition Protective walls against new parties

Political role

Estrangement from society Symbiotic relations with the state

Party competition

Cartelization of privileges Exclusion of newcomers

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cartel parties is in the vertical stratarchy of different party levels. Whereas the national (parliamentarian) party elite tries to free itself from the demands of regional and local party leaders as far as political and strategic questions on the national level are concerned, the lower strata insist on autonomy in their own domains, for example the selection of candidates or local politics (Katz and Mair, 1995: 21). The political role of parties concerns their position between society and the state. The cartel party model postulates that Western European parties have increasingly lost both their capacity and their eagerness to full their representative functions in society, whereas they have become more strongly involved in executing governmental functions. Professional party leaders are more concerned with policy-making in the parliamentary arena than with interpreting party manifestos or discussing politics at party congresses. Their near exclusive dominance of parliaments and governments has enabled parties to open up a new source for nancing and stafng their organizations, a source which has rendered them relatively independent of party members and donors. Cartel parties are therefore characterized by weak involvement of party members and historically related interest groups (classe garde) in party activities on the one hand, and by an emphasis on governmental functions and state resources on the other. Turning to the level of party competition, the mutually shared need for securing the ow of state resources has changed the relationship of the political opponents towards each other. In a process of social learning, the party actors have realized that there are common interests among the political class which form the basis for collective action (Borchert, 2003; von Beyme, 1996). The process of cartel formation has two facets: cartelization aims at reducing the consequences of electoral competition, basically through granting the opposition parties a certain share of state subventions or patronage appointments. Exclusion aims at securing the position of the established parties against newly mobilized challengers. However, a cartel does not have to be closed completely. The co-optation of new parties that are willing to play according to the established rules can strengthen the viability of a party cartel. Katz and Mair (1995) argue that the formation of a party cartel poses a fundamental problem for Western European party democracies because it denies voters the possibility of choosing a real political alternative and gives ammunition to the rhetoric of neo-populist parties on the political right. In the long run, cartelization will widen the gulf between voters and politicians and make it increasingly difcult to legitimize political decisions. Although the causal relationships between these three dimensions have not been clearly spelled out, the logic of the argument is that an increase in vulnerability (fewer party members, more volatile voters) causes party change. Vulnerability brought about a declining capacity of parties to full their representative functions which subsequently led them: (a) to concentrate on their governmental functions; and (b) to collude with their established 175

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opponents in order to secure the required resources for organizational sustenance. The freedom of manoeuvre which party leaders needed to do both led to internal party reforms. As a result of these changes, the links between the professionalized party organizations and the citizenry further eroded, which in turn intensied the trend towards the sphere of the state and to interparty collusion (see Young, 1998).

The Cases Selected

Although there has been a general tendency towards cartelization, the cartel thesis assumes that the intensity of this process has spread unevenly among European democracies. It is argued that the extent of party vulnerability, the intensity of problem perception and the capacity of parties to react are all mediated by the different institutional contexts and political traditions in which parties act. In testing the accuracy of the Katz and Mair framework, we employ the method of indirect difference (Skocpol and Somers, 1980). Our case selection should include positive cases, where the cartel tendency is thought to be strong since the preconditions for cartel formation are given, as well as negative cases, where there is little cartelization since the preconditions are missing. If the cartel thesis has empirical validity, then evidence of cartelization for the positive cases should exceed that for the negative cases. We expect the dependent variable, the cartel party type, to be more strongly developed in positive cases in all three analytical dimensions. According to Katz and Mair, Germany and Denmark represent positive cases, whereas the United Kingdom, where a tradition of adversary politics combines with relatively limited state support for party organizations (1995: 17), has been selected as a negative case. Switzerland, not included in the Katz and Mair project (1992, 1994), with its tradition of inter-party cooperation (magic formula), at rst sight seems like a typical cartel case. Yet, institutional features such as direct democracy and corporatism may weaken a partys capacity to act in its own selfinterest. The Swiss case may thus answer additional questions on the importance of institutional features. In comparing these four countries with their alleged differences in cartel intensity, we can evaluate how much the cartel thesis can add to our understanding of party change in Western Europe. Within each country, two major parties have been chosen which, owing to their political strength, are most likely to develop cartel traits. They represent the predominant leftright divide in the party spectrum: the German (SPD) and Swiss (SPS) social democrats have to deal with Christian democratic parties (CDU and CVP), the British (Labour) and Danish (SD) moderate left with Conservative parties. 176

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Formation or Non-Formation of Party Cartels

Germany has been described as one of the pioneers of the public roads to political money (Nassmacher, 1989: 237). Parliamentary parties have been receiving subsidies for employing research assistants and secretaries since 1959; individual MPs have been able to claim an allowance for employing personal assistants since 1969. The party organizations received state subventions for general political activities between 1959 and 1966, and campaign reimbursement as well as substantial subsidies for their political foundations from 1967 onwards. As long ago as the 1970s, the national levels of both the SPD and the CDU were nanced primarily by the state. However, the introduction and expansion of public subsidies coincided with a massive expansion of the membership organizations and with a process of defragmentation in the party system in the 1960s and 1970s (Wiesendahl, 1999). The established parties therefore began to look elsewhere for further income at a time when they were successful in mobilizing new members and in closing off the political market. The strong position of German parties in the state institutions, the Parteienstaat, enabled the established parties to expand state funding, although this was restricted to some extent by the Constitutional Court. The discovery of common interests rather than vulnerability led to formation of the German party cartel. In Denmark, the interpenetration of parties and the state began later, and is as yet weaker than in Germany. The Danish move towards the state was clearly triggered by vulnerability. In the 1970s, volatility increased signicantly and the number of parties in parliament doubled in the earthquake election of 1973. Since then, fragmentation of the party system has remained at a high level and the number of party members has fallen dramatically (Bille, 1994; Mair and van Biezen, 2001). Danish parties adapted to this crisis by turning to state resources: subsidies to the parliamentary parties, introduced in 1965, were considerably expanded in the 1980s. In 1986, parliament passed a law introducing public subsidies to the party organizations. In 1995 these subventions quadrupled, with the opposition Konservative Folkeparti (KF) carrying the bill for the SD-led government (Bille, 1999). As a result, the national budget of the Danish parties, while growing, became increasingly dependent on state subventions (see below). In neither Switzerland nor the United Kingdom was there a similar move of parties towards the state. There are no direct public subsidies to party organizations and only rather modest payments to the parliamentary parties. However, the reasons why cartels have not formed are very different. The British parties are clearly in control of the political decision-making process. The Westminster system gives strong leeway to the governmental party in terms of political competence and patronage potential. However, the major parties choose to rely on non-state sources of nance. The Labour Party made some effort in the 1970s to introduce public subsidies, yet hesitated to go further than introducing modest grants to the opposition parties 177

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in parliament (Short Money) in 1974. The opposition Conservative Party, with its access to wealthy donors, rendered inter-party cooperation infeasible (Scarrow, 1996: 120). The long period in opposition (197997) led Labour to rethink the institutional arrangements that upheld the British two-party system. The reform agenda on which Labour and the Liberal Democrats agreed included the provision of state nancing. However, in contrast to other reform projects, for example devolution, the Blair government did not force the issue when in ofce (Webb, 1999). The strict competitive logic within British parliamentarianism has been reinforced by the ideological polarization which took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of mutually securing their respective organizational maintenance, as envisaged in the cartel party model, the Conservative government violated vital interests of their opponents (abolition of local councils, weakening of trade unions, unwillingness to share appointments), while the Labour Party ended the implicit consensus on the institutional rules of the game. For introducing public subsidies, there was no common ground to agree on. The British case demonstrates that agreement on common organizational interests is a sine qua non for forming a party cartel. By contrast, in Switzerland, there has been widespread consensus among the established parties on the need for state funding. The Grand Coalition, which has held power since 1959 according to the magic formula, failed to expand parties organizational resources by providing for state subventions. In the early 1970s, the CVP began to set the agenda for closer cooperation between the government partners. In 1973, the national government (initiated by the CVP) introduced a bill that contained regulations on campaign reimbursement. Interest groups and regional governments rejected this initiative in the pre-parliamentarian consultations. The government settled for modest subsidies to the parliamentary parties. In 1977, the same proposal was part of a constitutional revision and contributed to the downfall of the whole project. Once again, interest groups and regional governments declared their opposition to the national government in the obligatory referendum. In 1989, parliament (initiated by the SPS) called for an expansion of subsidies to the parliamentary parties (realized in 1990) and for the introduction of campaign reimbursement to the party organizations. In addition, parliamentary reform (including higher allowances and better infrastructure for MPs) was passed supported by nearly all parties. This reform was rejected in a referendum in 1992, showing the reluctance of Swiss citizens to accept the professionalization of politics (Wiesli, 2003). This chronology of events demonstrates that the Swiss parties would have been willing to secure their organizational self-interest by moving towards the state. However, the Swiss institutional setting, with federalism, direct democracy and corporatism representing alternative political channels to the parliamentary arena, necessitates wide-ranging consensus for reform (Sciarini and Hug, 1999). The cartel of the magic formula, which has 178

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proved so successful in maintaining governmental status, has not been able to benet from this status organizationally, since there are important channels of political decision-making beyond the parliamentary arena in Switzerland that the national parties cannot control. As a result, Germany and Denmark can be described as positive cartel cases, while the United Kingdom and Switzerland classify as negative cases.

The Organizational Dimension

On the organizational dimension, ideal-type cartel parties are characterized by the ascendancy of the party in public ofce and by stratarchy. National parliamentarians and cabinet members control the most important power positions within their party organizations at the national level. At the same time, there is autonomy between the different territorial party strata. Regional party leaders lack inuence on national party politics, yet are given free rein in regard to subnational politics (Katz and Mair, 1995: 21). However, if we analyse the composition of the parties national executive committees, the empirical results suggest that federalization, rather than stratarchy, characterizes the internal power distribution of the parties analysed (see also Koole, 1996: 518). The percentage of national public ofce-holders in the party leading bodies has actually declined in all cases since the 1960s, largely due to the fact that executive committees in all the parties studied (except the Swiss CVP) tended to comprise more members over time (see Table 2). Those that have beneted most from these enlargements are representatives of the lower party strata. In general, while members of this group possess leading positions in subnational party organs, they also hold public ofce at the regional or local level. Thus, our analysis does not deny the ascendancy of the party in public ofce. In all parties (except the Labour Party with the still strong representation of the trade unions), public ofce-holders constitute the majority within national executive committees. Groups such as staff of party headquarters or delegates of afliated organizations have become less frequently represented over time. Yet, there seems to have been an increasing need to integrate party elites from different political levels, to give them fora to meet and to decide policies and political strategies. As in most European countries, political decision-making has become more multilayered in recent decades owing to factors such as the extension of the welfare state, Europeanization and regionalization (see, e.g., Scharpf, 1999). The leading party bodies have developed into multi-level organs, bringing together the most important politicians of the national and subnational levels and, to some extent, representatives of the European level.1 The table indicates the most signicant development in the personnel of national party executive committees, the increasing representation of members of lower party strata (and the higher European party level in the 179

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1990s). The Conservative Party is not included, since it created a politically relevant leading organ, the Governing Board, only in 1998.2 The predominance of public ofce-holders within parties and federalization are general trends that are not restricted to positive cartel cases. These are likely to be caused by developments other than cartelization. In both Danish parties, regional party leaders (Amtsformand) are strongly present within national executive committees in the 1990s. While in the KF, with its decentralist tradition, there has been stable regional representation over the whole period, there have been more changes to the internal power distribution within the Socialdemocratiet since the party reform in 1969. The stronger impact of regional leaders within the SD was paralleled by the increasing political weight of the lower political levels in Denmark in administering the welfare state and European policies (Pedersen, 1987: 423).

Table 2. Representatives of subnational and supranational party strata in national party executive committees 1960s SPD (Prsidium) 11% 1/9 (1963) CDU 14% (Prsidium) 1/7 (1964) SD 0% (Ledelse) 0/12 (1962) KF 43% (Forretningsudvalg) 3/7 (1966) Labour 3% (NEC) 1/29 (1962) SPS 35% (Prsidium) 6/17 (1967) CVP 11% (Prsidium) 2/19 (1965) 17% 1970s 18% 2/11 (1973) 33% 4/12 (1974) 43% 6/14 (1974) 43% 3/7 (1974) 3% 1/31 (1973) 44% 8/18 (1976) 27% 3/11 (1976) 30% Early 1980s 33% 4/12 (1983) 50% 7/14 (1983) 40% 6/15 (1984) 43% 3/7 (1983) 7% 2/30 (1983) 45% 9/20 (1982) 36% 4/11 (1984) 36% Late 1980s 33% 4/12 (1987) 43% 6/14 (1989) 47% 8/17 (1989) 43% 3/7 (1989) 0% 0/29 (1989) 50% 10/20 (1989) 55% 6/11 (1989) 39% Early 1990s 29% 4/14 (1993) 24% 4/17 (1993) 53% 9/17 (1993) 43% 3/7 (1993) 0% 0/30 (1994) 61% 11/18 (1993) 27% 3/11 (1993) 34% Late 1990s 23% 3/14 (1999) 33% 6/18 (1999) 65% 11/17 (1998) 67% 4/6 (1999) 24% 8/33 (1998) 38% 8/21 (1997) 50% 6/12 (1996) 43%

Source: Detterbeck (2002). Under this heading, all members of national executive committees have been counted who have held a supranational/regional/local public ofce or party mandate and were not members of national parliaments or cabinets at the time. The second line gives exact numbers and the size of the party body. The analysis is based on parties yearbooks and homepages, parliamentary records and relevant newspaper articles.

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In both German parties, the national party in public ofce held at least half of the seats throughout the whole period. From the 1970s onwards, leading politicians from the Lnder, often regional prime ministers or opposition leaders, have been elected more frequently into the national party executive committees. The CDU and SPD tended to include more regional party leaders in their national leadership while in opposition, when the federal party lacked power and resources. However, there is no doubt that strong regional party units, especially when in ofce, can exert considerable inuence on their national party. This interdependence between party levels reects the increasingly cooperative federal structure of Germany with its powerful Lnder executives (Detterbeck and Renzsch, 2003; Scharpf, 1999). In the negative Swiss case, the development has been similar. There is an increased representation of the powerful regional party level in national party bodies. Since the 1960s, the incentives for leading regional politicians to participate in national politics have become stronger as the Swiss polity has become more multilayered, and as both Christian democrats and social democrats have sought to develop national political strategies and policies. The development within the British Labour Party has been different. The national executive (NEC) traditionally has been, and still is, dominated by national MPs and representatives of the corporate organizations. Only since the NEC reform in 1998 has there been representation of public ofceholders from different political levels (MEPs, MPs, local councillors). This can be interpreted as a concession to the increasingly multi-level character of British politics. The representation of trade unions with some 40 percent of the NEC seats has not been affected by this reform. However, the political status of the NEC was reduced signicantly in the 1990s. New policymaking bodies, such as the Joint Policy Committee and the National Policy Forum, are clearly dominated by the parliamentary leadership and have taken over competences once exercised by the NEC. For the organization of election campaigns, much the same could be said. In addition, reforms of the voting procedures at party conferences and the introduction of party plebiscites (one member, one vote) in the selection of candidates and party leaders reduced the political inuence of trade union ofcials and party activists (Webb, 1999). Yet, the comparative analysis shows that the development of the Labour Party in the 1990s has been quite exceptional. Within the other three social democratic parties there have been only few institutional changes in internal decision-making procedures. They are still characterized by the working of party commissions bringing together all sections and wings of the party. Programmatic debates tend to be slow and driven by the search for compromises; national executives remain the locus of political and strategic long-term decision-making. The delegates at party conferences still have veto rights; direct democratic procedures, while introduced in the 1990s, have only slightly altered the mechanics of internal decision-making. 181

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Looking at the period from the 1960s onwards as a whole, programmatic debates and internal policy conict were more intense in the 1970s and 1980s than in previous decades. Only in the 1990s was there a return to more pragmatism and freedom of manoeuvre for the party elites. Following electoral disappointments, the Christian democratic parties of Switzerland and Germany have gone through a period of belated democratization in the 1970s. Within both parties the extra-parliamentary organization gained inuence, national executives developed into loci of real decision-making, and programmatic debates became more controversial. Again, we see that in the 1990s the parliamentary leadership regained control, with party headquarters and the membership organization losing political momentum (Ladner, 1999). Still, having developed into membership parties in the 1970s, the CVP and CDU are now characterized by a more balanced power structure between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary organization. The Danish Conservatives have travelled some way along the same lines, limiting the political autonomy of the parliamentary leadership from the early 1970s onwards. Party policies that used to be the domain of the parliamentary party are now discussed and decided within the wider party. However, the national party executive only developed its own political prole in times of acute crisis. Until 1998, it was up to the parliamentary party leader of the British Conservatives to decide party policies. No formal mechanisms stipulated whether and to which political advice he (or she) would listen. Only after the 1997 electoral asco did the Conservatives decide to end the separation of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary party, and to give their members a say in the election of the party leader and to create an executive committee with formal policy-making competences (Peele, 1998). Looking at organizational change, the analysis suggests that party-specic features, such as electoral fortunes or the traditions of specic party families, are more important than cartel tendencies. With respect to organizational power structures, the different familles spirituelles have gradually become more alike. Whereas in social democratic parties there is more control for the parliamentary elites, in bourgeois parties there is less than there was some decades ago. Organizational changes do not follow the lines between positive and negative cartel cases. Although there is no party cartel in Britain, no other party saw a similar increase in the dominance of the national party in public ofce than Labour. The organizational developments of both Christian democratic parties show nearly identical patterns, although the degree of cartelization in both countries proved to be quite different. Parties have adapted in similar ways to similar challenges, for example Europeanization, societal change and media expansion. Katz and Mair (1995) rightly argue that the ascendancy of the party in public ofce has been the result of these common challenges to parties in Western Europe. In the 1990s, the leading politicians were better equipped and more 182

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professional in pushing through their policy preferences than in earlier periods. They had more staff at their disposal; they were better able to set political agendas via the mass media; and they had expertise in and access to an enlarged set of policy decision-making at both national and European Union level. However, more centralized parties do not necessarily form a cartel, as the British case shows. Even in Germany and Denmark, the autonomy of parliamentary elites and the marginalization of party activists is less marked than the cartel thesis assumes. Obviously then, cartels can be formed by parties that still have strong remainders of mass parties.

The Functional Dimension

On the second analytical dimension, Katz and Mair (1995) postulate that the ways the cartel parties full their political role distinguish them from former party types. While parties increasingly lose their embeddedness in society, they compensate by making use of state resources and by focusing on their functions in parliament and government. Taking the importance of state resources for the national party organizations as an empirical indicator of the increasing interpenetration of parties and the state, we nd strong evidence in Germany and Denmark. By contrast, public subsidies are of little importance to British and Swiss parties. The process of etatization is fairly advanced in the German case. National party organizations are nanced primarily by the state; parliamentary parties and individual MPs can rely on the expertise of an extensive number of publicly paid staff. However, it would be an exaggeration to describe the SPD and CDU as estranged from society. Membership fees still constitute some 20 percent (CDU) to 25 per cent (SPD) of the budget of the national parties. For the regional and local party levels, fees are even more important. Members are therefore a nancial asset for German parties, the more so since state subventions have been coupled to member fees in 1994. The delegatory principle, stipulated by the party law of 1967, has not been eroded substantially. Ties to interest groups have become weaker and more pluralized over time, conicts between former allies more common, but still there is an organized trade union wing among both parties and a rather inuential business group wing within the CDU. So, German parties have moved closer to the sphere of the state but, like amphibians, have not lost their ability to swim in society (Poguntke, 1994: 212). In Denmark, the national level of the SD used to be 90 percent nanced by membership fees and donations from the trade unions until the 1980s. In the 1990s, this share of private means was reduced to 60 percent, while public subsidies now constituted around 40 percent of the total income of the national party. While the trade unions remained the primary source of income, their nancial dominance has been lessened and may be decreasing further with the end of mutual ex ofcio representation in 1996. In the 183

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1990s, the KF, which traditionally relied on private donations, became nanced primarily by the public purse (to some 60 percent). Both parties could double their staff at party headquarters and in parliament in the 1990s compared to the 1960s (Bille, 1994). However, at the same time as the Danish parties tapped into state resources they also tried to revitalize their membership organizations through internal reforms. While it is fair to say that they have been much more successful in the former than in the latter, there is no systematic marginalization of party executives and party delegates with respect to internal decision-making. While there is clear evidence for a loosening of ties to historically related interest groups in recent decades, trade unions remain inuential partners of the SD while business groups still have privileged access to the KF. Thus, in both positive cartel cases, parties have moved closer to the sphere of the state without, however, becoming detached from societal bonds. The Swiss national party organizations have remained relatively weak in terms of nancial means, with the bulk of revenue coming either from the party members (SPS) or out of private donations (CVP). In the 1990s, public subsidies to the parliamentary parties amounted to some 20 percent of the national budget of both the SPS and the CVP. Swiss parties continue to rely on permanent organizational linkages to society. For the Social Democrats, the trade unions with their superior nancial and organizational resources remain the most important political partner. The CVP continues to depend on the support of Catholic organizations, small business rms and peasant associations, since the party did not succeed in extending its electoral appeal beyond its traditional milieu (Ladner, 1999). The dilemma of both Swiss parties is that, although the relationships with their historical allies have become more conict-ridden, there is hardly any effective political initiative feasible without their expertise and support. The Swiss militia system, in which many full-time politicians accumulate different part-time functions within parliaments, parties and the wider cultural and economic sector, results in a fairly underdeveloped differentiation of the societal subsystems (Wiesli, 2003). Thus, although the parties monopolize elite recruitment to the sphere of the state, they remain anchored within society. In some ways, it is even fair to say that the Swiss parties are not detached enough to make use of their dominant position within state institutions. In Britain, the Labour Party has traditionally been nanced primarily by the afliation fees of trade unions. In the 1990s, the Blair leadership successfully undertook efforts to reduce this nancial dependence and to expand the party budget by reversing the downward trend of individual party membership, raising membership fees and attracting donations from the business sector (Scarrow, 1996: 1201). Having more revenues made it possible to expand and professionalize party headquarters, and to employ new strategies of political marketing and capital-intensive campaigning (Webb, 1999). Thus, New Labour sought to further its electoral fortunes by attracting new sectors of society, instead of moving towards the state, at 184

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that time dominated by a rather hostile Conservative Party. At the same time, the parliamentary party elite could increase its political autonomy by reducing the policy input of trade unionist leaders and party activists through party reforms. While the party intended to listen to a wider spectrum within society, it was less willing to give these voices direct impact on party policies. However, the historical alliance with the trade unions continues to matter organizationally and nancially. The Conservative Party has always been financed primarily by donations from the business sector. Although the social and political proximity to the upper middle class is beyond doubt, the party did not develop permanent organizational linkages to business interest groups. Likewise, the Tories entertained a large membership organization without formal political inuence. Thus, the Conservative leadership has always been less constrained by direct involvement of party members and interest groups than other party elites. However, the party depends on nancial and organizational resources provided by its supporters. Summing up, there are very different national patterns with respect to the interpenetration of party and state. While we have observed that permanent organizational links to society via party membership and interest groups have generally become weaker, they have not been eroded altogether. There remain signicant differences in the degree to which these links are still present in European parties. There is an equal variety to the importance of state resources for party organizations. The cartel thesis captures this signicant development and accounts for country-specic differences. Our cases amply underline that, at this point, we are close to the heart of the cartel thesis. However, we have seen that parties in positive cases have become more attached to the sphere of the state without losing their ability to provide selective and collective incentives for aligned social groups.

The Competitive Dimension

The third analytical dimension is concerned with the systemic level of party competition. Party cartels are characterized by the cartelization of privileges and the exclusion of new parties. There is a high level of at least implicit inter-party cooperation in securing state resources for themselves and building protective walls against new competitors. In both positive cases there is clear evidence of collusion. In Germany, most reforms of public funding since 1967 have been based on inter-party parliamentary initiatives (Ebbighausen et al., 1996: 15887). In Denmark, the introduction and expansion of public funding since 1965 has been supported by all moderate parties (Bille, 1999). However, in both countries the level of exclusion of new parties has been rather low. In German elections there is a high threshold to obtain seats at both national and regional level (5 percent), which proved to be an effective instrument of exclusion. Proportional regulations are in force with respect to state funding and media 185

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access in election campaigns. The electorally more successful parties will thus receive more state resources, which provides them with a competitive advantage. However, the access to public subsidies is modest (0.5 percent of the votes) and even minuscule parties can have their TV spot. The case of the Green Party demonstrates that public funding can facilitate an easy consolidation of new parties. In the 1980s, electoral success provided extensive public means by which to put the political agenda of the Greens forward, to build up an organizational network and to turn political activists into professional politicians. Thus, public funding helped the new party to secure its place in party competition. With the Greens becoming more pragmatic politically, the SPD accepted them as junior partner in several coalitions on the regional level before they joined forces in the national government of 1998. In terms of inter-party cooperation, the SPD introduced an outsider that proved to be increasingly willing to play according to the established rules, e.g. accept the parties need for public funding. In Denmark, there is a similar cartelization with respect to government formation. While new moderate parties were invited to participate in coalitions, extreme parties on both sides of the party spectrum remained pariahs. In terms of electoral competition, the level of exclusion is even lower than in Germany. The electoral threshold (2 percent) remained relatively low despite the increasing fragmentation of the party system; the proportional access to public subsidies is not restricted and all parties have equal access to the public media in election campaigns. Small parties could increase their organizational means very rapidly by tapping into state resources (Bille, 1994). In both countries the established parties used their leverage within state institutions to further their mutual organizational self-interest. However, it seems that this was less a matter of excluding new parties than an attempt to secure resources from which all parties would benet. In addition, this is not equivalent to parties pursuing the same policies. As a political class, parties may share common interests, yet as a policy-making elite parties may remain competitive, at least in some respects (von Beyme, 1996: 151). As far as there are policy differences among the established cartel parties, voters still have political alternatives, and elections do not become dignied parts of the constitution (Katz and Mair, 1995: 22). If we compare the patterns to the negative cases, Britain and Switzerland, we have already seen that inter-party cooperation on common organizational interests either did not happen or was not successful. However, in both cases a long-term institutional consensus prevailed that exclusively beneted the established parties. In the UK, the majoritarian voting system, the unitary state structure and the absence of public funding made it quite difcult for third parties, especially on a national platform, to break the duopoly of Labour and Conservative. In Switzerland, the openness of the electoral system was counteracted by the voluntary agreement to maintain the Grand 186

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Coalition according to the magic formula. Although new parties, like the Greens, emerged, they were excluded from government ofce. Thus, effective barriers against new competitors were erected in both countries due to quite different political traditions. In both countries, the institutional consensus has become weaker over the past decade. In the 1990s, the opposition Labour Party agreed with the Liberal Democrats on an institutional reform agenda, introducing devolution and a mixed member voting system at the regional level when coming into ofce in 1997. In Switzerland, the tensions within the Grand Coalition intensied and the changing electoral strength of the four parties led to an adjustment of the magic formula in 2003.3 The cartel thesis points to an important development in party politics when focusing on the increased amount of inter-party cooperation in institutional matters, especially on state funding, in some European countries. However, we have found that state funding is more likely to help rather than hinder new challengers to consolidate (see also Pierre et al., 2000). Other factors, too, such as the voting system or the nature of coalitionbuilding, have to be taken into account when evaluating the degree of exclusion. Furthermore, the electoral success of newcomers depends on the evolution of cleavage structures within a polity. There is thus no direct relationship between cartel formation and party system fractionalization. While in Germany and the United Kingdom, quite different cases with respect to cartelization, the number of relevant parties remained limited, fractionalization increased signicantly in Denmark and remained on a high level in the plural society of Switzerland.

Conclusions
The foregoing discussion could be summed up in the suggestion that there should be three modications to the cartel thesis. Denmark and Germany represent alternative paths to a party cartel. In Denmark, parties perceived an increasing vulnerability of societal resources and adapted by moving towards the state. In Germany, parties realized that they could use their dominance in the political institutions (Parteienstaat) to expand their organizational resources by acting collectively and sharing the resources provided by the state. Thus, it was not a crisis that motivated formation of the German party cartel, but the capacity of the major parties to further their common interests. My rst suggestion, therefore, is that we should allow for multiple causation (Ragin, 1987) when explaining cartel tendencies. My second suggestion is that we restrict the cartel thesis to its core elements. The cartel thesis elaborates on signicant changes in at least some European countries when pointing to the stronger symbiosis between parties and the state, as well as to the increased disposition of parties to engage in inter-party cooperation with respect to organizational self-interests. However, the empirical analysis suggests that not all of the aspects associated with the 187

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cartel type form dening characteristics (Koole, 1996). The cartel model is overloaded with assumptions. On the organizational dimension, there have been important changes, especially the ascendancy of the party in public ofce, which are not restricted to the positive cases, however. Thus, cartelization does not seem to be the cause of such organizational developments that nevertheless may be seen as facilitating the capacity of party leaders to engage in inter-party cooperation. The German and Danish cases suggest that parties with quite different organizational patterns can collude and form a cartel. In a similar vein, on the functional dimension, loosened societal ties have also been found in the United Kingdom and to some extent in Switzerland. Yet, only in Denmark and Germany has there been a signicant move towards the state. With respect to the competitive dimension, the level of inter-party cooperation is higher in the positive cases, although the exclusion of new parties is a more complex question than Katz and Mair (1995) claimed. My third suggestion concerns favourable and unfavourable conditions in forming a party cartel. This line of argument is already present in the original article by Katz and Mair (1995), yet needs to be elaborated. I would like to stress three aspects. First, institutional parameters proved to be important. On the one hand, the electoral system either reinforced (e.g. Denmark) or blocked (e.g. United Kingdom) the perception of vulnerability and thereby inuenced the intensity of pressure to adapt. On the other hand, the strength of the party state (e.g. Germany) furthered the capacities of parties to control their organizational development, whereas a weak party state (e.g. Switzerland) diminished these possibilities. In particular, direct democracy counteracted cartelization in the Swiss case. Second, political traditions of accommodation facilitate cartel formation. Political actors have learned to cooperate with their political opponents by solving major political issues. Compromises and mutual trust came to dominate the political process. The basis for collective action was therefore laid in the consensual traditions of Denmark and Switzerland. In Germany, the parties tried, after 1945, to overcome the traditional hostilities between the political subcultures that have characterized the Weimar Republic. In contrast, British parties were socialized in an adversarial political culture. When Thatcherism ended the Keynesian post-war consensus, the ideological cleavages between the opponents were reinforced. Third, political professionalization facilitates cartel formation. Full-time politicians planning a long-term political career come to regard their political opponents as fellow professionals, who are driven by the same desire for job security (Katz and Mair, 1995: 23). Thus, politicians of different parties not only work together in coalitions and parliamentary committees, they also share common interests concerning their individual (income, re-election, career ambitions) and organizational (state subsidies, patronage) self-maintenance, and are therefore prepared to participate in 188

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institutional inter-party cooperation (Borchert, 2003). The high level of professionalization in Germany and the increasing professionalization in Denmark added to the favourable conditions for establishing a party cartel. In contrast, Westminster MPs, especially Conservative members, continued to remain part-time parliamentarians well into the 1970s. Again, this contributed to the rather different perception of self-interest on both sides of parliament.

Notes
A rst draft of the article, which is based on my 2002 PhD thesis, was presented at the ECPR Workshop on Causes and Consequences of Organisational Innovation in European Political Parties, ECPR Joint Sessions, Grenoble, 611 April 2001. I am grateful to Jens Borchert, Peter Lsche, Peter Mair, Angelika Maser, Klaus Stolz, Wolfgang Renzsch and two anonymous referees for comments. 1 In the 1990s, both German parties, the Danish SD and the Labour Party included one MEP in their highest party body, which may be interpreted as modest attempts to integrate the supranational level in the national party executives. 2 Although the party leader has decisive powers in appointing members to the Board, it is interesting to note that among its 16 members there are three ex ofcio representatives of the Scottish, the Welsh and the local party level (Peele, 1998). 3 In the 2003 election, the Swiss Peoples Party became the strongest party, with the rightist proponent, Christoph Blocher, demanding a second seat for his party in the government coalition. In the parliamentary ballot, Blocher replaced the CVP minister. The rst change to the magic formula since 1959 initiated debates as to whether this would signal the end of the Grand Coalition altogether. There still seems to be the possibility that the Social Democrats will leave the Coalition, giving way to a competitive style of government formation.

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KLAUS DETTERBECK is Assistant Professor at the University of Magdeburg, Germany. His research focuses on party organizations, party systems and the dynamics of federal systems in Western democracies. His works include Der Wandel politischer Parteien in Westeuropa (Opladen, 2002) and articles in several journals, including European Urban and Regional Studies and Jahrbuch des Fderalismus. ADDRESS: Institute of Political Science, University of Magdeburg, Zschokkestr. 32, D-39016 Magdeburg, Germany. [email: klaus.detterbeck@gse-w.uni-magdeburg.de] Paper submitted 7 May 2003; accepted for publication 13 March 2004.

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