Parti pour durer ?

Abstract

The enduring electoral insignificance of the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) and the pervasive volatility of its leading and active personnel mainly accounts for the party’s self-dissolution, which, along with its unexpected creation and its laborious evolution, is symptomatic of a certain political and social context in the Netherlands. The depillarisation of the Dutch society has basically caused many political behaviours and attitudes to change noticeably whilst some important issues have been set on the political agenda. Furthermore the political offer has recently become more and more diverse as a result of a double phenomenon: the rising number of political parties (among which ad hoc parties, parties without political apparatus, parties without members) and the increasing speed of their creation. We aim to analyse the relative newness and hasty disappearance of the new and defunct party. We will therefore focus on its functioning, on the actual activities of its personnel, on the circumstances of the political and electoral offer and supply. We will try to see whether the original hyperpersonalisation of a movement deprived from its founding personality has been, for want of any due institutionalization, the cause of an unavoidable end and whether the internal struggle for the monopoly on the formalisation of a specific party culture (i.e. the definition of the identity of the party) has hastened the end of the party.