Staying connected: explaining parties’ enduring connections to civil society

Abstract

The connections between political parties and civil society are central to parties’ representative performance. Several explanations exist for cross-party variations in the strength of these connections. However, nobody has compared the explanatory power of rival theories. This article does just that, using a novel dataset covering 149 parties in 29 elections in 14 West European countries. It establishes that elites in parties with government experience and a left-wing ideological orientation have the strongest links to civil society. Parties at the far right are the least connected, in particular those that have no governing experience. Contrary to expectations, however, the study shows that, when controlling for party ideology and governing experience, the level of intra-party democracy and key components of party trajectory, such as party origin and strategy, are not significant in explaining the strength of party-society connections. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: 10.1080/01402382.2021.1986784.