When do parties go digital? Examining the drivers of internal and external party digitalisation

Abstract

Our paper investigates the drivers of party digitalisation, measuring the influence of environmental factors, inter-party competition and party characteristics on the utilisation of digital tools. The main innovation of this paper is to propose a measurement of digitalisation that classifies digital processes according to their functions and goals: an internal dimension oriented towards participation and members’ engagement, and an external dimension focused on communication and campaigning. Data has been extracted from the DIGIPART database on parties’ digital procedures by Meloni et al. (2024). Our findings highlight the importance of parties’ organisational and ideological features in explaining their internal digitalisation, but not the external. In terms of participation, bigger parties tend to implement more initiatives for online participation, while right-wing parties are less prone to digitalise their internal structures. These effects are reinforced by competition between rivals and contagion processes, which exert positive influence both at the internal and external levels.