ABSTRACT
The organizations of the eurocommunist parties have undergone substantial re-evaluation and change in the past three decades. The extent to which such change has occurred, however, has varied considerably. The national contexts in which the parties operate, and the evolution of their national strategies, have differed; it is understandable that so too have their patterns of organizational change. The pressure to make the parties more open to society has also promoted occasional debates about the appropriateness of democratic centralism as the organizing principle of party life; but, to date, changes in this regard have been limited. The Spanish and French parties have been much slower to pursue the kind of heterogeneous electoral strategy undertaken by the Italians. Party change has also occurred with respect to organizational membership. The French party too adopted more open membership criteria and practices in the immediate postwar period, although it never abandoned functionary control.
