How to Go Without Leaving: Digital Transformation as Organizational Change and Challenge for Political Parties
摘要
As unique political organizations, political parties struggle with diverse challenges in digital times. Digital transformation requires them to rethink and adjust their internal organization and interaction with their socio-technical environments. By this, parties and researchers studying them must adapt to the changed demands of members and supporters. The chapter identifies specific areas for digital party research, including party organization reform due to digital transformation as the core topic of the junior research group DIPART by accessing the recent literature in three steps. First, this contribution links digital and party research as integrated digital party research. This phrase encompasses the entirety of both worlds and encourages qualifying parties’ digital transformation. The second part examines possible areas of digital party research. Finally, the third part discusses relevant central areas for future party research. Mainly, it is discussed how parties might adapt to digital by copying movements’ strategies, which can be traced by integrated party research from a procedural perspective. Moreover, broader conclusions regarding what the digital transformation does to democracies concerning a weakening or strengthening are drawn.