Political Parties Transition into the Digital Era

Abstract

This chapter outlines the main dimensions of analysis for assessing how mainstream and new parties are building their digital platforms and transitioning from traditional (offline) organisations into the digital world. So far, most of the academic attention has been focused on the impact of the use of digital technologies on party competition and campaigning, while the intra-organisational dimensions have been significantly under-researched. However, several parties in Europe and around the world, both traditional and digital native, have increasingly used digital technologies such as online platforms for internal decision-making, funding, communication and membership mobilisation. We provide here an innovative analytical framework for empirical exploration of the democratic consequences and technical challenges raised by the digitalization of party organisations from a comparative perspective.