The differentiation of parties through the lens of an electoral campaign. Planning and implementation of Knockthevote in a European Election (Pes, 2014) .

Parties restructure their organizations to prepare themselves for new challenges. In many cases, the changes involve a reduction of the subsystems structure, dropping the number of territorial units or finding leaner solutions and outsourcing of activities which were once fulfilled within the boundaries of the party organization. Specifically, the phenomenon of outsourcing concerns, on the one hand, aggregation of interests and policymaking and, on the other, electoral mobilization and management of political communication. Looking for new solutions – flexible, without a unique centre – can lead to a process of de-differentiation that characterizes organization in postmodern society: a new definition of levels of hierarchy and "transgression of boundaries", through a continuous exchange of resources with the environment, which is unpredictable and constantly changing. As in other organizations, parties encourage the formation of horizontal links with new external actors - associations, informal groups, individuals and influencers - in order to build networks that cooperate to exchange essential resources for the party itself. In this framework, the study aims to interpret de-differentiation in political parties from a specific point of view: the analysis of political campaigns as indicators of this process. The “outside campaign”, created by a set of non-party actors, is growing: the sector of organized interests, that, unlike in the past, is "de-aligned" from the political parties and does not respond to traditional socio-political cleavage, is present in parties and candidates’ campaigns with greater resources than was the case formerly. The research describes and analyses the recent “outside campaign” of the European Socialist Party (PES) at the 2014 European elections: in order to support their candidate Schulz for president, a campaign (called “knockthevote”) referred directly to partisans and, at a wider level, to political parties’ supporters in each state. The campaign depended on a "double mandate": the first to a single communication board at European level for the planning phase of activities supporting the Commission Presidential Candidate; the second to volunteers for the implementation of the election campaign. The study, in particular by monitoring social networks (with SNA, NodeXL), shows that the outside campaign, conceived by the PES, had a differential impact on single states of the EU, and allowed a potential social base for the creation of a true Euro-Party to be identified.