This symposium marks the 30th anniversary of Party Politics , a leading journal in the study of political parties and organizations. Over three decades, the field has evolved in response to profound political and societal changes, including the rise of new parties, digitalization, judicialization, and personalization. The symposium invites critical self-reflection on the theories and methods that have shaped party scholarship. It revisits foundational contributions such as Katz and Mair’s cartel party thesis, and debates the continued centrality of parties in democratic politics and research. Contributions also examine the normative value of partisanship, the intellectual networks underpinning party research, and the limited convergence between academic and practitioner perspectives on party organization and regulation. By reassessing the field’s intellectual genealogy and its responsiveness to contemporary challenges, the symposium aims to reinvigorate scholarly debate and foster a more inclusive, interconnected future for party politics research.
Haute et al. (Mon,) studied this question.