Party Organizational Linkage

The literature argues that vertically integrated parties are important for generating or encouraging stability in multi-level systems. This chapter differentiates between party organizational linkages at the level of resources and services, cooperation, and attitudinal dimensions. Drawing on data from a survey of over 250 subnational party organizations in seven multi-level systems, this chapter shows that the institutional design of a federation does not necessarily predict the way in which parties share resources and services through vertical linkages, but it does help us predict other important aspects of multi-level organization. This includes the degree of shared values and the ideological distance between subnational and federal parties.