The Rise of Entrepreneurial Political Parties in European Politics Vít Hloušek, Lubomír Kopeček, and Petra Vodová. Palgrave, 2020. 228 pp., 90€

Abstract

Political parties are strange animals. The study of them in fact indicates a paradox. Despite many definitions and a vast and consolidated literature grounded on well-established thinking and contributions of outstanding scholars, there is a lack of knowledge on what political parties relay are today. This weakness in understanding is not simply ontologically related to the ongoing and never-ending story of human research especially in social science, it also depends on the fact that the models that have been proposed are somehow limited in their general impact by different biases. The mass party often referred to as the model for political organisation represents in fact the exception, being mostly, and almost exclusively present in western European countries. Other very interesting and useful intuitions, such as the cartel party or the catch-all party are able to photograph some parties, at some point, in a given context but often they do not grasp the essence of what is happening to the most important collective political actor all over the world. It is not an easy task and probably it is inconceivable to go far from a minimal definition of what a party is in order to cover all the organisations falling into the same category. At the same time, the dramatic changes that have invested society and politics since the late Sixties of the 19th century have shown the need for a change and a continuous adaption of the analytical paradigm to define the political parties. This latter impellent push for frequent adaption to real life is remarkably bigger when we move from the organisational approach to the definition of what the political parties’ tasks and functions are. Therefore, we can rely on a good amount of information, literature, and comparative research concerning the organisational aspects and definition of the political party, but we are still searching to catch its fundamental functions, actions, and the reason why it acts in a way or another. The rise of entrepreneurial political parties in European politics represents a timely publication. The topic is hugely overlooked in the literature, and the book courageously published by Palgrave represents a very important contribution that will become a landmark for those dealing with the argument. The book written by Vít Hloušek, Lubomír Kopeček, and Petra Vodová is the arrival point of many kinds of research that they have been carrying around the theme of political leadership. It confirms the vivacity of the research group based at the Masaryk University that is proposing interesting researches from a few years now. The book, which is divided into six chapters, covers four main sub-types of the entrepreneurial political parties. From the theoretical point of view, the authors compare European countries from West to Central and Eastern contexts. They indicate that recently there has been the rise of many ‘new entrepreneurial parties, which have been popping up since the late twentieth century to challenge long-term voting patterns and traditional arrangements of party competition’ (p. 9). Authors recognise that the perspective of politics as indicated by J. A. Schumpeter is useful, but he has considered the internal dynamics of politics as inspired to the economics field.