Causes of party decline

“Only the paranoid survive” (Andy Grove)

Chances are, at some point, a political party or one of its regional branches will require a turnaround. By turnaround I mean a transformation effort to revitalise and change the direction of a struggling political party of any size. It also applies to improving a party that has simply underperformed its competition.

The British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was once asked what the most troubling problem of his Prime Ministership was. His response was “events, my dear boy, events”. While shock events can be a challenge to political parties in government as much as outside of it, they alone seldom disrupt a political party in a way that threatens its very existence. More often, the crisis develops like a multi-organ failure. Several things go wrong.

I am not aware of comparative research on why political parties decline or fail (except for this paper, thanks Marcelo Jenny !). So the list below is not based on scientific data, but on first-hand and anecdotal data.

External causes for party decline

• Competition (entry of new players like in France, or the repositioning of other established parties)
• Shifts in voter preferences (long-term trends around policy issues, eg Gen Z may have different preferences compared to Gen X)
• Events (external shocks like the financial crisis -as featured in one of my posts-, or the Russian war against Ukraine)
• Regulation (legal game-changers, eg in electoral law or party funding)
• Changes in technology (eg micro-targeting)

Internal causes for party decline

• Strategic (false electoral positioning or targeting, leadership failure, delivery failure in government, self-absorption via constant internal power-plays, splits, or scandals that damage the core - think Italy’s DC and PSI).?
• Operational (management, talent, structure, communication)
• Financial (insolvency or excessive indebtedness)
• Programmatic (ideological infighting, or on the contrary, programmatic exhaustion)

Newer parties are more vulnerable to external and internal problems than more established parties, due to a weaker brand, and a weaker organisation; on the other hand, they are easier to transform.

Addressing substantial problems that threaten the core of the party is an adaptive leadership challenge. The longer such problems go unsolved, the harder it is to turn around the party; and the earlier political intrapreneurs realise and recognise the party is having them, the greater the likelihood of success. This means that they need to proactively look for potential problems. What applies to big corporates like Intel also applies to political parties: in the longer term, only the paranoid survive.

The problem is that the decline starts exactly because party leaders and executives do have blind spots. Due to hubris, complacency, excessive demand or incompetence, they cannot or do not want to see the growing distress of their organisation.

Next week, we will look at the phases of party decline, and how to prevent it in the first place.