Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | This study examines how the Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP), a Catalan radical left pro-independence party, resists the institutionalization pressures that typically drive movement parties towards moderation and eventual collapse. Through qualitative thematic content analysis of official CUP documents produced between 2023 and 2025 - stratified by institutional level (municipal, regional, national) and thematic domain (housing, climate, healthcare) - the study investigates the discursive mechanisms underpinning the party's ideological resilience. The findings reveal that the CUP does not maintain a uniform discourse across contexts but rather operates a sophisticatedmulti-level rhetorical strategy. It deploys pragmatic, problem-solving language at the municipal level whilst escalating towards systemic anti-capitalist and pro-independence radicalism at the national scale. Far from generating internal contradictions, this contextual variation is enabled and stabilized by the party's decentralized organizational structure.These findings challenge established movement party theory by demonstrating that discursive flexibility and organizational fragmentation, rather than constituting vulnerabilities, can function as mechanisms of long-term ideological coherence and political survival. |
