Intra-party cohesion is a crucial feature of parliamentary democracies. Indeed, government’s stability and survival as well as legislative activity greatly depend on the capacity of political parties to work as unified entities. However, parties are not monolithic organizations: they aggregate more or less divergent views; include amateurs and professionals, followers and leaders; and are organized along a hierarchical or stratarchical structure. This presentation aims, first, at highlighting the various forms and motivations of intra-party divisions. By building a conceptual framework, it argues that these can occur both between and within the faces of the party, e.g. party members’ dissatisfaction with their local section (party on the ground - PoG), divisions at party congresses surrounding the elaboration of the party platform or leadership selection (party in central office - PCO), disunity of legislators voting behavior (party in public office - PPO). Second, the presentation aims at questioning the potential effects of intra-party organizational structures and rules on parties’ capacity to function as collective entities. Arguably, this is a crucial issue at a time when political parties around the democratic world have entered processes of organizational transformation, through for instance cartelization and intra-party democratization processes.

Caroline Close is a FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), in the Centre for the Study of Politics (CEVIPOL). Her main research interests are intra-party politics, elections, democratic innovations and legislative studies. She is involved in the international MAPP network (Members and Activists of Political Parties). She has recently published an article in Party Politics, entitled 'Parliamentary party loyalty and party family: the missing link?'. From September to December 2016, she is doing a research stay at the University of Sydney, as a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Government and International Relations.