Wolfgang C. Müller, "Inside the Black Box: A Confrontation of Party Organizational Change," Party Politics, 3 (July 1997), 293-313.

First Paragraph:
Party change has been of interest to political scientists since the early days of party research (see e.g. Michels, 1925). Research interests and approaches have varied considerably. For the sake of simplicity we can distinguish two major contemporary approaches to the problem of party change: an environmentalist approach and a purposive-action approach (Child and Kieser, 1981: 28-30). These approaches do not directly contradict each other but clearly differ in their emphases and research strategies.

Figures and Tables:
Figure 1: Potential sources of party change for the SPO, 1945-70.
Figure 2: SPO propaganda expenditure, 1949-77 (as % of total expenditure).

Last Paragraph:
What remains to be said is that the theory of Harmel and Janda (1994) has worked extremely well in explaining the crucial changes in the organization of the SPO that have been addressed in this article. A proper test of the theory, however, would require further quantatative testing, as proposed by Harmel et al. (1995), as well as additional in-depth case studies.