Actos performativos definitorios

As argued, party institutionalization should be understood both as a process and a property variable. Consequently, a framework suitable to analyze Hamas’s institutionalization into a political party must deal both with how it institutionalized and the degree to which it has institutionalized. These two aspects of institutionalization will be dealt with separately in the following sections.

The process of institutionalization

Famously defined by Huntington, institutionalization is “the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value and stability” (1968, 12), or, in the words of Panebianco, it is what takes place when an “organization slowly loses its character as a tool [and instead]

becomes valuable in and of itself” and when “its goals become inseparable and indistinguishable from it” (1988, 53). In broad terms, the process of institutionalization can be traced from the party’s establishment to its “relevance” (Sartori 1976), and it can further be sequenced in the following three main phases (Harmel and Svåsand 1993; Panebianco 1988, 20):

First, the party must develop a message and establish its identification, and through this define and carve out its ideological “hunting domain.” During this phase, the party can be seen as a tool or a means toward some ideological end. Next, to be capable of reaching its goal, the party labors to increase its organizational capacity. This is done by building its organization through the establishment of local branches, and by bureaucratizing and professionalizing its operations. And finally, as it becomes increasingly bureaucratized and professionalized, the party stabilizes, at which time it is expected to have gone from being a means toward some political end to becoming an end in itself. These three phases, labeled the identification, organization, and stabilization phase, will guide the analysis of Hamas’s process of institutionalization.²⁰

The process of institutionalization, however, does not play out in the same way for all parties.

Rather, the mechanism through which the party came to be in the first place, its genetic makeup as it were, has consequences for both its process and degree of institutionalization.

From Panebianco’s model outlining factors affecting party genetics, Hamas seems to most closely resemble an externally legitimated party established through combined territorial 20 As Harmel and Svåsand note, many parties of course also go through a fourth phase, namely that of decline

(1993, 87, fn. 16), alternatively labeled de-institutionalization (Randall and Svåsand 2002a, 15).

diffusion and penetration (1988, 51–53).²¹

To be externally legitimated means that a party is created or sponsored by some external institution, a mechanism consistent with the movement-to-party thesis. Being the creation of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas can thus be said to have been externally legitimated. And to be the political arm of some external sponsor has consequences for the institutionalization process. For one, the presence of an external sponsor can lead to double organizational loyalties and thereby undermine the authority of the party leadership to the benefit of the sponsoring institution’s leadership. This makes it more difficult for the party leadership to establish its identity and articulate its goals and strategy freely, as the sponsoring institution is expected to directly or indirectly interfere—at least if the goals and strategy wanted by the party diverge from those of the sponsoring institution.

Second, to be externally legitimated also has potentially negative consequences for organization-building. The sponsor is expected to wield considerable influence over the party organization for two reasons. For one, as the leadership at least initially draws its legitimacy from this sponsoring institution, the sponsor has significant leverage regarding the makeup of the leadership. One example would be where the sponsor favors one leadership coalition over another, presumably the more loyal one. And two, the development of the party into an autonomous organization is impeded as the sponsoring institution is loath to see its political arm emancipated. In sum, being externally legitimated poses some ideological, strategic, and organizational challenges for the party’s institutionalization.

At the same time, it is argued here that stemming from a social movement also has its benefits in terms of institutionalization. Although the problems for organizational development associated with being the creation of a sponsoring institution still have some relevance for Hamas, being the organizational offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood meant that it arrived with an established ideology and a ready-made constituency (Randall and Svåsand 2002a, 19). And based on the experience from Islamic parties elsewhere in the developing world, its roots in a social movement bodes well for Hamas’s institutionalization (Randall 2007, 645).

So, while the presence of an external sponsor might have worked to curb the institutionalization of Hamas in some ways, the strong roots of the Muslim Brotherhood canceled out this effect to a certain extent.

21 Panebianco distinguishes between three factors affecting a party’s genetics: it can be created through territorial diffusion or penetration, it can be externally or internally legitimated, and its initial leadership can qualify as being a case of personal charisma in the Weberian sense (1988, 65–67).

As for the territorial aspect of Hamas’s genetics, it spread through a combination of diffusion and penetration. A party is said to be established through diffusion when it emerged at the periphery and only over time and through alliance building became a national organization.

Conversely, a party founded at the center and then expanding to the periphery to establish a national presence is said to be created through territorial penetration. The former is expected to lead to a more turbulent and uncertain process toward institutionalization, as competing claims of leadership and local interests take on a more salient role. The latter precipitates a cohesive and strong central leadership, which in turn makes for a smoother organization-building phase.

Although Hamas was established on the Gaza Strip and then spread to the West Bank, it was not a clear-cut case of territorial penetration. Rather, Hamas relied on the existing organizational structure of the Muslim Brotherhood on the West Bank. So, while the organizational center of gravity undoubtedly was in Gaza at the time of its establishment, the process by which Hamas spread out through the occupied territories relied on an already existing structure, meaning that the process was a combination of penetration and diffusion.

Rather than a smooth organization-building phase, some of the turbulence associated with territorial diffusion is expected to have affected the organization-building of Hamas.

In brief, the process of Hamas’s institutionalization toward a political party will analyzed according to three phases: identification, organization, and stability. Furthermore, the emphasis on the consequences of Hamas’s genetic makeup calls for an investigation into how it was legitimated and how it built its early organization. With regard to this latter point, it is pertinent to note that both Hamas’s ideological heritage from the Muslim Brotherhood and its history as an armed liberation movement are hypothesized to counteract the expected ideological moderation associated with the transmutation from movement to party and the subsequent institutionalization process.²² Also, certain characteristics of the political environment in occupied Palestine undermine this theoretically expected moderation. In particular, the unresolved nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict intuitively means that it would be tantamount to political suicide for any Palestinian faction—including Hamas—to abandon its goals of Palestinian liberation. It is therefore recognized that even if the need for contextual sensitivity is heeded when traveling to occupied Palestine with the selected

22 See Gunther and Diamond (2003) for a brief discussion regarding the expected ideological rigidity associated with religious parties, and Close and Prevost (2008) and de Zeeuw (2008b) for details of the effects of militancy on ideological development.

theories, the ongoing occupation of Palestine limits their applicability somewhat and they can thus not be expected to exhaustively explain the subject matter.

Notwithstanding these caveats, the processual elements of the analytical framework suggested above are deemed suitable to ground the analysis theoretically, thereby producing improved knowledge regarding the development of Hamas. Throughout the analysis of Hamas’s transmutation from movement toward party and institutionalization process, its degree of institutionalization will be measured at critical junctures, aided by the framework discussed in the next subsection.

Institutionalization as a property variable

The framework offered by Randall and Svåsand (2002a) will be taken as a point of departure for analyzing and measuring the degree to which Hamas has institutionalized at various points in its development. Although theories on institutionalization abound (see Huntington 1968;

Janda 1980; Levitsky 1998; Panebianco 1988), Randall and Svåsand’s framework convincingly builds upon and refines previous theories, and is explicitly developed to allow for the analysis of parties in the developing world. In addition, it has already been operationalized and applied on empirical cases (Basedau and Stroh 2008; de Zeeuw 2009).²³ It is therefore considered the most well-developed and suitable framework for the case at hand.

In brief, Randall and Svåsand argue that a more complete measurement of institutionalization than previously available is made possible by distinguishing between a party’s structural and attitudinal qualities in its internal and external dimensions. Their conceptualization of institutionalization is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Dimensions of party institutionalization

Internal External

Structural Systemness Decisional autonomy Attitudinal Value infusion Reification

Beginning in the top left corner with their internal-structural element of institutionalization, Randall and Svåsand define systemness as “the increasing scope, density and regularity of the interactions that constitute the party structure,” adding that this regularity “implies … 23 See the next section for details regarding the selected criteria and associated indicators used to assess the

degree to which Hamas has institutionalized.

routinization, and the development of prevalent conventions guiding behaviour” (2002a, 13).

As a party’s systemness increases, so does its degree of institutionalization. This definition of systemness is inspired by Panebianco, although its somewhat broadened scope captures other forms of routinization than the explicitly formal ones, e.g., routinization of informal procedures.

On the external-structural dimension, Randall and Svåsand identify an important conceptual disagreement in the literature. Both Huntington (1968, 20) and Panebianco (1988, 55) define and use autonomy in a similar way, arguing that parties are more institutionalized the more independent they are from their environment. However, as argued by Janda, “a party can be highly institutionalized and yet lack independence of other groups … as the Labour Party in Great Britain” (1980, 19). Randall and Svåsand also point to Levitsky’s analysis of the Justicialist Party in Argentina, in which he argues that the close (but informal) ties between the trade union movement and the party in fact increased the latter’s degree of institutionalization (1998, 86).²⁴

Randall and Svåsand proceed to suggest decisional autonomy as an alternative to circumvent the conceptual disagreement and confusion regarding the term. This is deemed as a more useful indicator of party institutionalization as it says something specific about the nature of the relationship between a party and other organizations, allowing parties to have strong ties to external organizations or other nonpolitical actors, while retaining its decisional discretion (2002a, 14). This element relates directly to the question of internal or external legitimation, as already discussed. Given Hamas’s roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and the alleged influence of its international sponsors, the question of decisional autonomy is of particular importance.

Value infusion is defined as “the extent to which party actors and supporters … acquire an identification with and commitment to the party which transcend more instrumental or self-interested incentives for involvement” (2002a, 13). As the party takes on a value in and for itself, it stops being just a means to an end for its members; it becomes a valued end in itself (Randall and Svåsand 2002a, 13). In essence, the more infused with value a party is, the more institutionalized it is.

24 Interestingly, Levitsky uses this close link between the Justicialist Party and the trade union movement as an example of informal routinization, which Randall and Svåsand avoid incorporating explicitly into their framework.

The last concept in Randall and Svåsand’s framework is the attitudinal-external element, reification, defined as “the extent to which the party’s existence is established in the public imagination … including other parties” (2002a, 14).²⁵ In short, the more reified a party is, the more institutionalized it is.

Adaptability has been a traditional dimension in conceptualizations of institutionalization.

Randall and Svåsand, however, leave it out as a measurement, as “it seems more appropriate to regard it as a likely but not inevitable consequence of institutionalization, leaving its exact relationship with institutionalization in any given case as a matter of empirical investigation”

(2002a, 15). Depending on which dimension a party has institutionalized, a high level of institutionalization might even impede its capability to adapt to environmental challenges and shocks. For, as Panebianco argues,

a “strong” institution can be more fragile than a “weak” one [because w]hen an organization’s systemness level is high … a crisis affecting one of its parts is destined to make itself quickly felt by all its other parts. When its level is low, the relative autonomy of the different parts allows for an easier isolation of the crisis effects (1988, 57–8).²⁶

More specifically, he argues that

an inverse relation exists between the party’s degree of institutionalization and its sub-groups’ degree of organization, for the more institutionalized the party, the less organized its internal groups. Correlatively, the less institutionalized the party, the more organized are its internal groups (1988, 60).

This relationship between degree of institutionalization and coherence of a party’s internal groups is presented in Figure 1, employing Sartori’s terminology for more (factions) or less (tendencies) organized sub-groups (1976, 66–67).

25 Note that Harmel and Svåsand introduced a similar element in their theory on party development phases.

According to their theory, a party must, in its third and final phase of development, “develop [a] reputation for credibility and dependability [and] develop … relations with other parties” (1993, 75).

26 As an example of this counterintuitive weakness of highly institutionalized parties, Svåsand points to the Venezuelan experience, in which the “two main parties appeared to be well institutionalized” but nevertheless collapsed (2013, 16–17).

Figure 1: Organizational strength of party sub-groups

(Source: Panebianco 1988, 61).

While an important observation in its own right, it also underlines the high level of complexity in the institutionalization concept. For, although institution connotes permanence and survival, this means—somewhat counterintuitively—that being highly institutionalized is no guarantee for survival. As Hamas has faced environmental shocks and challenges of considerable force, this implies that its subunits are closer to being factions than tendencies, and in turn that the degree of systemness throughout considerable portions of its existence might have been rather low.

1.3.4 Tracing the process and measuring the degree of institutionalization