Introduction

Parties, Max Weber famously once wrote, “live in a house of power,” seeking purposefully to acquire social and political control through means ranging from “naked violence of any sort to canvassing for votes with coarse or subtle means: money, social influence, the force of speech, suggestion, clumsy hoax, and so on …” (Weber 1978: 939). Nonetheless, for all the attention given to parties during elections and the scrutiny they receive during their time in office, surprisingly little is understood about the sociology of parties and how they – and the individuals within them – acquire, lose, and maintain “houses of power,” conceptualized here as the structures, institutions, and relationships that facilitate dominance over material and human resources. The aim of this volume is to take up this topic through a sociological examination of parties, treating parties as relational entities both embedded in “external” fields of social and political power and, simultaneously, as non-unitary entities composed of individuals and groups that are sometimes cooperative, sometimes competing. With an eye to these internal and external dimensions, these essays seek to disaggregate the party to examine how individuals and groups within particular parties gain influence and control over party resources and decision-making; and, relatedly, to examine party relationships with non-party actors – particularly social groups and identities – to study how parties, and groups within parties, interact with, gain strength from, and compete with non-party players in their quest for control over local and national political landscapes.