The aim of this paper is to analyse the organizational model of one of the most successful European radical left parties, the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA). Our goal is to analyse SYRIZA’s organizational transition from the electoral arena to the government (2015). Our main finding is that SYRIZA started as a socially-oriented organization led by an oligarchic dominant coalition and converted itself into a political party, characterized by a prevailing role of the party in public office/party government. Both the institutional environment and the party organization’s first configuration have had an impact on this change.

How do the features of a rebel group and the external political environment interact to affect the internal dynamics within a rebel group after it transforms into a political party? In this paper we combine literature on organizational change in parties in new democracies with the emerging literature on rebel group-to-party transformation, to develop a framework by which to understand these dynamics. Using the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) as a case study, we find that the legacies of the conflict, the organizational legacies of the rebel group, and the post civil war incentives for electoral gain, create political cleavages within parties that generate considerable organizational centripetal pressures, pressures that will need to be accommodated in new party organizational structures.

A detailed analysis of party organization, party funding and voting behaviour in parliament in Slovenia indicates a partial cartelization of Slovene party politics. In line with the cartel thesis, parties in Slovenia are heavily dependent on the state for their finances and there is evidence that parties have used the resources of the state to limit competition. Nonetheless, there is much less evidence of cartelization in terms of party organization indicating more cartelization in the party system as a whole than within individual parties.

The contrast between Slovakia’s primary Communist successor party—the Party of the Democratic Left—and its own successor— Smer —offers considerable insight into the interaction between party ideology, organization and electoral success in post-Communist Europe. The Party of the Democratic Left and Smer offered relatively similar programmatic positions, but Smer managed to replace—and far outpace—its predecessor by offering a more charismatic public face, a smaller and more tightly centralized organization and an ideological flexibility that permitted it to take advantage of a shifting electoral environment.

In harmony with recent literature the article combines different approaches to describe how representation has become more complex while also more ambiguous in the process of democratic transition. First, with respect to parliament, the author argues that still a public bias prevails towards “direct representation” in Hungary (i.e. people assume to realize personal or local interests with the help of their MPs). In line with this, MPs—however strongly they are tied to parties—seem to pay particular attention to constituency representation although they are reluctant to report on their connections with interest groups or other interest organizations. Second, regarding the party dimension, it is found that although the national party scene in Hungary has remained unchanged in the past seven years, enormous electoral uncertainties and representation deficit prevail in its background and electoral linkages are weak. Parties are not well organized externally as demonstrated by membership figures and by the number of local organizations; internally, the major intra-party events (like candidate selection or leadership election) only vaguely reveal the representative dimension. Finally, experiences in Hungary thus far prove that the responsible party model cannot be applied at all: party programmes do not include clear policies and even if so, the policies often change during the electoral cycle.