Abstract
This chapter places the phenomenon of entrepreneurial parties in the wider historical perspective of the types of political party. The text offers a definition of an entrepreneurial party based on a discussion of scholarly concepts. The empirical reality shows that political entrepreneurs differ in the size and role of their businesses and their approach to party organisation. The differences are used to create a typology which combines two characteristics. The first is the business facilities of political entrepreneurs, that is, their ability and willingness to invest their own financial, media, personnel and other resources into the start-up and operation of their parties. Simply put, there are political entrepreneurs ‘with a firm’ and those ‘without a firm’. The second characteristic is concerned with whether there is any party membership and territorial structure at all. Further, the chapter outlines the topics of party durability and collapse and presents a three-phase model of the institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties.
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Notes
- 1.
Some parts of this chapter are based on our journal article: Hloušek and Kopeček (2017a).
- 2.
This, of course, is not the only factor. The political opportunities structure is also crucial for entrepreneurial party success. Typically, an entrepreneurial party succeeds in a situation of major political or economic crisis, which causes an earthquake in the party system, allowing the entrepreneurial party to pick up the dissatisfied voters of the established parties. This dimension of entrepreneurial parties’ success, however, must be considered contextually on a case-by-case basis, and as such it cannot be used as one of the dimensions in an entrepreneurial party typology.
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Hloušek, V., Kopeček, L., Vodová, P. (2020). Political Entrepreneurs and Their Parties: Conceptual and Typological Issues. In: The Rise of Entrepreneurial Parties in European Politics. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_2
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