Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies

Abstract

This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database (PPDB) project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project's first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this paper we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focussing on parties' resources, structures and internal decision-making. We examine party-family and within country organizational patterns, and where possible we make temporal comparisons with older datasets. Our analyses suggest a remarkable coexistence of uniformity and diversity. In terms of the major organizational resources on which parties can draw, such as members, staff and finance, the new evidence largely confirms the continuation of trends identified in previous research: i.e., declining membership, but enhanced financial resources and 2 more paid staff. We also find remarkable uniformity regarding the core architecture of party organizations. At the same time, however, we find substantial variation between countries and party families in terms of their internal processes, with particular regard to how internally democratic they are, and in the forms that this democratization takes.3

Party bureaucrats, independent professionals, or politicians? A study of party employees

“…Some uniform trends characterise the development of party organisations in established democracies: party membership declines while financial resources and paid labour grows (van Biezen et al 2012;Kölln 2015;Poguntke et al 2016). The Norwegian case is typical of this general trend.…”

Revealed social preferences of Dutch political parties

“…In particular, concentration of top incomes in The Netherlands is among the lowest in the world and has not increased in recent decades, see Atkinson and Salverda (2005) and the World Top Income Database. Moreover, party financing in The Netherlands is not important from an international perspective (Poguntke et al, 2016). Furthermore, CEO compensation is relatively low in The Netherlands.…”

The Italian Democratic Party, its nature and its Secretary

“…Looking at Figure 1, it is possible to compare the level of party membership of the PD with that of the Italian Communist (until 1990) and post-Communist party (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006). The downward trend, which is common throughout Western Europe (Poguntke et al, 2016;Van Biezen et al, 2012;Katz et al, 1992), is particularly evident in the case of the Partito Democratico, which can now count on less than 400,000 members. Even for the largest left-wing party in Italy, the golden age of mass politics and, accordingly, of mass-based parties is just a distant memory.…”