Do parties ‘act as they talk’ about immigrant incorporation?
P3-03
Presented by: Monika Bozhinoska Lazarova
Comparative studies have researched the position of political parties on immigration, but very limited research has been done on how parties include the immigrants in their own organization (exception Sobolewska 2013; Burchianti & Zapata-Barrero 2016; Markard & Dähnke 2017; Szlovak 2017). Parties’ positive position toward immigration is the first stipulation toward further actions on immigrant incorporation in parties. However, parties’ positions do not always translate into organizational actions. Using Brunsson’s (1989) neo-institutional theory on organizations, on a cross-national sample, this paper, will test the coherence of parties’ positions and parties’ actions on immigrant incorporation and assess the organizational behaviour parties have over the issue of immigrant political incorporation. Beyond general organizational characteristics, particular focus will be given on mechanisms that political parties use to promote immigrant incorporation in their organization. In particular, this paper will examine how the mechanisms parties use to include immigrants in their organizations (such as comities and working groups on diversity, minority quotas, candidates nomination procedure, recruitment), as well as organizational characteristics (such as candidate selection process, centralization in decision making, ideology), moderate the relation between parties' position on immigrant integration (organizational talk) and the number of elected representatives with immigrant background (organizational action). The analysis of party positions will be based on manifesto data from Parties’ Immigration and Integration Positions Dataset (PImPo), while the political parties organizational characteristics will be analysed using the Political Party Database Project.