Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | Political parties are used to adapt in the face of political challenges, but little is known about how party elites actually perceive crises and ultimately opt for certain types of reforms accordingly. To address this gap, we focus on the complete transformation process of the Belgian French-Speaking Christian Democratic Party (cdH) in 2022 as a case study. Interviews with party elites shows how challenges shared by many West-European centre-right parties can create a dependence on the party leader to the point of marginalising other traditional actors from the definition of a response strategy. We reveal the unprecedented strategy employed by the leader, who positioned an advisor as a surrogate, at the cost of creating major internal dissension. We argue that the likely multiplication of mainstream parties slipping into great distress in the near future could lead to a shift in managing party change, making it more technocratic than political. |
