The consequences of membership incentives: Do greater political benefits attract different kinds of members?

Achury, Susan; Scarrow, Susan E.; Kosiara‐Pedersen, Karina; Haute, Émilie Van

doi:10.1177/1354068818754603

Cited by 30 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…If this hypothesis would be confirmed, we can conclude that the trend towards multi-speed parties should not have major consequences for the broader political functioning of political parties. If we do not find support for our hypothesis, we have to side with the view that, all things considered, party supporters are indeed more distant from political parties than formal members (Achury et al, forthcoming). Although political parties also have other functions in a democratic society that are not covered by the current analysis, it is important to know about the consequences of the trend towards multi-speed parties.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 67%

“…Gauja (2015) even argued that the concept of party membership itself should be considered as a social construction that can take on totally different forms depending on the specific national context. Given these considerations, there is no apparent theoretical reason to consider formal party membership as a uniquely privileged form of party attachment (Van Haute and Gauja, 2015), although it has to be noted that party members seem to have a particularly strong relation to their party (Achury et al, forthcoming). Other forms of partisan attachment, therefore, could fulfil a similar function (Green et al, 2002).…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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Types of party affiliation and the multi-speed party

Hooghe

Kölln

2018

Party Politics

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Research has repeatedly shown that formal party membership is in structural decline in liberal democracies. The same strongly negative trend, however, has not been observed for less formal forms of party attachment and authors have claimed that this leads to a pattern of multi-speed party adherence. In the current analysis, we investigate to what extent non-formalized forms of adhering to a political party have the same attitudinal and behavioural functions as formal party membership. The analysis is based on a 4-year (2011–2015) panel study in the Netherlands. The results indicate that party supporters are characterized by lower levels of commitment and stability than party members. What seems to matter, however, is the level of conviction, and a smaller group of highly motivated supporters resembles party members quite strongly. We close with some observations on how political parties might react to this deinstitutionalization of party attachment.

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Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Types of party affiliation and the multi-speed party

Hooghe

Kölln

2018

Party Politics

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“…Scholars have not ignored these alternative explanations, and party factors are now garnering some of the attention they deserve. Consider, for instance, Scarrow’s (2015) seminal work linking party organizational choices to the roles assigned to their members, or Achury et al’s (2018) study outlining how individual variables interact with party factors to determine party membership size. Nevertheless, questions of how the motivation–activism relationship varies across parties and what affects these variations remain underexplored.…”

Section: Explaining Party Activism With Motivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does policy motivation drive party activism? A study of party activists in three Asian democracies

Koo

2020

Party Politics

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Studies of party activism highlight that party activists are driven by various motivations and that these affect their level of activism. However, it remains unclear whether policy-motivated activists are more engaged in party activities than those motivated by other incentives and whether the motivation–activism link varies with party characteristics. This article investigates these questions by focusing on political actors linking parties and voters in the local community. I use a party activist survey data set collected during recent national election campaigns in three Asian young democracies: Taiwan, Korea, and Mongolia. The results demonstrated the prominence of policy motivation as an impetus for activists’ intraparty commitment. I also found that the positive effect of policy motivation is especially robust in small parties, while it is muted in large parties and that party membership increases the probability of intraparty commitment, challenging the widely held belief that formal membership is pointless in Asian parties.

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“…On the one hand, parties that have access to State resources may distribute such assets amongst their affiliates in the form of goods (e.g. recruitment and careers of the civil servants), organizational innovations (by adding layers of political appointees to the civil service) and selective incentives: in all these cases, the attractiveness to become PM supposedly increases (Scarrow et al, 2018). On the other hand, the expansion of public administration is generally supported by the citizens when it intertwines with an extension of public services (Steinmo, 1993;Ferrera, 2014), so that the number of voters is also expected to increase.…”

Section: Public Administration and Party Decline?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The neglected variable. The coevolution of public administration and political parties in the UK and Italy (1950–2010)

Pizzimenti

Calossi

2019

Riv. ital. sci. polit.

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The relationships between the State and political parties have often been analysed in dual terms. Yet, as Katz and Mair already noticed in their well-known (and criticized) article on the emergence of the cartel party, a clear separation between parties and public institutions has never been completely achieved, in the evolution of liberal democracies. In contrast, while parties act as agencies of institutionalization, public institutions recognize (de jure or de facto) parties as the legitimate actors of political representation. From this perspective, it is worth considering party change as a process intertwined also with institutional change. To date, however, the analysis of such a relationship has been neglected by political scientists, who have privileged explanations of party change based on other factors, whether at systemic or at a micro level. By avoiding a priori assumptions about causality, our main research question is the following: is it possible to identify patterns of co-evolution between State institutions – more specifically, public administration – and party organizations? Building on a new institutional approach to organization theory, the aim of this article is to investigate to what extent the evolution in the size of party organizations and in the size of public administration has followed similar trajectories. Our study focuses on the United Kingdom and Italy, from 1950 to 2010. Our findings confirm that parties' external face expands when public spending and the number of public employees increase, and vice-versa. The same holds for parties' internal face, at least in the Italian case.

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The consequences of membership incentives: Do greater political benefits attract different kinds of members?

Cited by 30 publications

References 28 publications

Types of party affiliation and the multi-speed party

Types of party affiliation and the multi-speed party

Does policy motivation drive party activism? A study of party activists in three Asian democracies

The neglected variable. The coevolution of public administration and political parties in the UK and Italy (1950–2010)

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