Beyond Party Members: Changing Approaches to Partisan Mobilization

257 Pages·2015·2.331 MB·English

by  Susan E. Scarrow

BEYOND PARTY MEMBERS
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with
contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a
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Beyond Party Members
Changing Approaches to Partisan Mobilization
SUSAN E. SCARROW
1
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Acknowledgements
Writing a book is never a completely solo activity. While the errors that
remain are certainly my own, the work that follows has been immeasurably
strengthened by inputs from a supportive and collaborative community of
party scholars. The citations and bibliography recognize my specific debts;
here I want to mention a few of the less obvious ones.
This book’s arguments have been shaped and refined by workshop and
panel discussions with colleagues from all over the world. Special thanks
are due to the hosts and participants of several of these gatherings, includ-
ing Bill Cross and Dick Katz for organizing two meetings in Ottawa on
intra-party democracy, and to Luciano Bardi for organizing an APSA
round-table on trends in party organizational change. Discussions in these
sessions convinced me to revisit the topic of party membership with the aim
of answering some puzzles about common patterns in cross-national devel-
opments. I benefited from further opportunities to develop my ideas in con-
versation with scholars at a 2009 colloquium convened by the Party Research
Institute at the Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, at a 2011 lecture at
the Sorbonne Nouvelle University organized by Emmanuelle Avril, at the
ECPR Political Parties Summer School in Brussels in 2012, organized by
Jean-Benoit Pilet, Kris Deschouwer, and Emilie van Haute, and at a 2013
workshop on party membership at the University of Copenhagen, orga-
nized by Karina Pedersen. I am indebted to the organizers and funders of
these forums. Even in an era where e-mails leap over time zones, such gath-
erings are invaluable for fostering intellectual exchange and trans-national
collaboration.
Special thanks are due to Liz Mallet, who collected Facebook data, and
to Aldo Ponce, who helped prepare some of the survey data used in this
book. Many others generously shared data or answered questions about
specific countries or parties, including Elin Haugsgjerd Allern, Katharina
Barié, Josje den Ridder, Vesa Koskimaa, Katrina Kosiara-Pedersen, and
Emilie van Haute. My brother, chemistry professor Rob Scarrow, gave me
a much-needed refresher tutorial on the Bohr model of the atom. The first
chapters of this book were drafted during a Faculty Development Leave
provided by the University of Houston. The index was subsidized by a
grant from the University of Houston’s College of Liberal Arts and Social
Sciences. I am grateful to my college and my university for their support of
inquiry and scholarship.
vi Acknowledgements
Last but certainly not least, I am deeply appreciative of those who read
and commented on drafts of this manuscript in various stages, including
Anika Gauja, Anna Mikulska, Aldo Ponce, Margit Tavits, and Emilie van
Haute. Among these readers, one who deserves special recognition is Ken
Carty, the exemplary series editor for this book. In addition to his work
in expeditiously shepherding this project through the publication process,
Ken offered substantive comments at multiple stages that managed to be
simultaneously encouraging and challenging, sometimes prompting sig-
nificant rewrites. I had the good fortune to again work with staff at Oxford
University Press and editor Dominic Byatt, who were prompt and support-
ive throughout.
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
1. Introduction: The Puzzles of Party Membership 1
Part I Party Membership: The Uneven Development
2. Motives and Modes of Party Membership 13
3. Myths and Realities of Mass Membership Parties 36
4. Explaining Enrollment Change: Looking Beneath the Numbers 69
Part II Party Membership: The Uncertain Future
5. What Do Party Members Contribute? 101
6. Multi-Speed Membership Parties 128
7. Making Party Membership Rewarding: Social
and Material Benefits 156
8. Making Membership Meaningful: Political Benefits 175
9. The Consequences of Organizational Change 206
References 219
Index 233

List of Figures
1.1 Varieties of party membership 6
2.1 Party affiliation: Duverger’s bulls-eye model 27
2.2 Party affiliation: the multi-speed model 33
4.1 Membership density: low initial level 71
4.2 Membership density: medium initial level 71
4.3 Membership density: high initial level 71
4.4 Hypothetical changes in membership density 75
4.5 Party membership density: long term decline 87
4.6 Party membership density: change since 1990s 88
4.7 Party membership density: relative stability 89
5.1 Party member activity 104
5.2 Member impact: % of participants who are party members 106
5.3 Event attenders: participation levels 107
5.4 Event attenders: % of participants who are party members 108
5.5 Campaign participation in the Netherlands 109
5.6 Changing importance of member-based financing 113
5.7 Donors and fundraisers: participation levels 119
5.8 Donors and fundraisers: % of participants
who are party members 120
5.9 Voters: % eligible voters who participated in last election 121
5.10 Discussing and persuading: participation levels 123
5.11 Discussing and persuading: % of participants
who are party members 124
5.12 Media contacters: participation levels 124
5.13 Media contacters: % of participants who are party members 125
6.1 Membership accessibility: ease of joining 133
6.2 Party affiliation: the multi-speed model 136
6.3 Sustainers: party web pages and fundraising 140