Chapter 8: Fragmented Campaign Assemblages: Stratarchy and Multi-Level Cooperation in the Liberal Democrat 2021 Greater London Authority Election Campaign

Building on the notions of stratarchy and campaign assemblages, this chapter sheds light on the current power-sharing arrangements, organisational dynamics and reconstruction strategy of the British Liberal Democrats. To do so, it looks into the 2021 Greater London Authority (GLA) campaign and builds on ethnographic observation and a series of qualitative interviews. It particularly analyses the cooperation and subversion practices at play between the federal party, London region party, local parties as well as GLA and local by-election candidates. First, we focus on the arm's length approach adopted by the federal party and the delegation of the campaign management to the regional party. Second, we point to the difficulty of finding candidates and of managing them, which creates tensions between electable candidates, paper candidates, campaign staff and the local parties. Finally, despite incentives to foster cooperation and avoid shirking, we also find evidence of subversion practices between different local parties within GLA constituencies due to the local parties' different political make-up, resources or willingness to focus on local by-elections at the expense of the GLA election. Our main findings point to a fragmented campaign assemblage and to the stratarchical organisation being fostered by the unwinnable character of the election for the party.