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Parties As Membership Organizations : A Longitudinal Perspective
Parties As Membership Organizations : A Longitudinal Perspective
Tuesday, 12 July 2016: 10:45-12:15
Location: Hörsaal 5A G (Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG))
RC18 Political Sociology (host committee) Language: English
From the 1990s onwards, much of the empirical literature on party membership has focused on longitudinal trends in aggregate country-level membership figures (Mair and van Biezen, 2001; van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke, 2011; Whiteley, 2011). A recurrent conclusion of these studies has been party membership decline.
Framed within the context of theoretical debates on party decline (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000) and erosion of conventional political participation (Quintelier and Marien, 2011), the decline in party membership figures has been considered as an evidence of a decreasing influence of political parties on citizens’ behaviour (Reiter, 1989). These studies bring forward systemic institutional or structural explanations for this decline (Norris, 2002).
However, when disaggregating the figures, at the party level, the trends are far less linear (Delwit, 2011; Kölln, 2014). All parties do not face the same difficulties in recruiting and mobilizing members. This calls for other explanatory factors of membership fluctuations.
This regular session panel calls for comparative papers testing alternative explanations for membership fluctuations, including short-term factors (electoral and governmental cycles) and party-level factors (party age, party family, party organizational features).
Session Organizer: