The CES RN Political Parties, Party Systems, and Elections are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2024 award is the paper What’s in a Name? Party Branding in Europe, presented by Endre Borbáth and Swen Hutter at the CES 2024 Conference in Lyon.

The paper analyzes changes in party brands (understood as the names or denominations of parties as expressions of empirical information about their contents) in 28 countries between 1948 and 2023. It tests the extent to which changes have occurred since the classical party brands existed at the end of World War II, systematizes the conditions under which these changes have taken place, and specifies the types of parties experiencing those changes. Finally, through two conjoint survey experiments carried out in four countries, interviewees evaluated these old and new party brands, specifically whether they like or dislike the changes occurring in the parties they support. The results are extremely interesting, detailing how party systems increasingly contain formations that do not include the term “party” in their names, and how, especially after the Great Recession, non-party brands have emerged, particularly among new parties, opposition parties, and those emerging on the right, all of which tend to adopt non-ideological denominations and/or names related to social movements. These changes have occurred despite the fact that, as shown by the surveys, voters tend to reject changes in party brands and reward parties that maintain continuity in their denominations.

The RN chairs are extremely grateful to the jury composed of: Jose Ramon Montero (Autonomous University of Madrid), Andrea Pirro (University of Bologna), and Bonnie Field (Bentley University). The jury had a very difficult task due to the high quality of the papers presented. A special thanks to all the authors and panel chairs who submitted papers for evaluation. Please note that the responsibility for the final ranking rests solely with the RN chairs.