Ann-Kristin Kölln

Party membership in Europe: Testing party-level explanations of decline

Research on party membership development commonly reports figures aggregated to the country level and/or using only a few time-points. While these choices may be appropriate for certain research questions, they nevertheless hide major differences between parties and conceal short-term fluctuations. Additionally, they are inappropriate for studying individual party trajectories. This is necessary, however, to better describe and ultimately explain the phenomenon of membership decline. The article analyses in total 1653 observations across 47 parties in six western European countries between 1960 and 2010 to test hypotheses pertaining to individual party membership development. Using multilevel modelling and time-series analyses, the results show what aggregated data with few time-points cannot: membership decline is by far not a universal phenomenon. Additionally, membership decline appears to be part of a party’s life-cycle. The more consolidated parties are, the fewer members they have. Few differences between party families are observable.

Emancipated party members: Examining ideological incongruence within political parties

Party members across European democracies exercise increasing influence on parties’ policy platforms or personnel choices. This article investigates ideological (in)congruence on the left–right spectrum between members and their parties by drawing on a party membership survey of more than 10,000 individuals across seven political parties in Sweden. The results show that around two-thirds of members are not perfectly congruent with their party. In a two-step analysis, the article argues that emancipated members, with higher political interest and with a more independent self-conception, are more comfortable being ideologically incongruent with their party. We also provide evidence that ideological incongruence matters for members’ exit, voice and loyalty behaviour. It is associated with a more negative evaluation of the party leader (voice) and with a higher probability to either vote for another party (loyalty) or even to leave the current one (exit). The findings indicate that ideological incongruence within parties is not a trivial matter, but is rather substantial in size with potentially important consequences for party competition.

The effects of membership decline on party organisations in Europe

On election day, voters’ commitment is crucial for political parties, but between elections members are an important resource for party organisations. However, membership figures have been dropping across parties and countries in the last decades. How does this trend affect parties’ organisation? Following classics in party politics research as well as contemporary organisational theory literature, this study tests some of the most longstanding hypotheses in political science regarding the effects of membership size change. According to organisational learning theory, membership decline should induce an expansion of the party organisation. However, threat-rigidity theory and the work of Robert Michels suggest that parties are downsizing their organisation to match the decline in membership size. To test the hypotheses, 47 parties in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are followed annually between 1960 and 2010 on key organisational characteristics such as finances, professionalism and complexity. A total of 1,922 party-year observations are analysed. The results of multilevel modelling show that party membership decline triggers mixed effects. Declining membership size induces the employment of more staff, higher spending and a higher reliance on state subsidies. At the same time, it also triggers lower staff salaries and a reduction in the partys local presence. The findings indicate that todays parties are targeting an organisational structure that is custom-made for the electoral moment every four years. Faced with lasting membership decline, the party organisation retracts its organisational resources and focuses more on election day. Members matter to parties, but votes matter more.

The value of political parties to representative democracy

Political parties play a major role in democratic processes around the world. Recent empirical research suggests that parties are increasingly less important to citizens. Simultaneously, classic and contemporary theories of representative democracy specifically still minimally incorporate accounts of party benefit. This article attempts to reconcile normative political theory on democratic representation with party politics literature. It evaluates party democracy’s value in comparison with its next best theoretical alternative – pluralist democracy with individual representatives – along two different paths. It argues that parties are not flawless, but party democracy is preferable over pluralist democracy. Parties increase predictability and the transparency of policy outcomes. This, in turn, facilitates better accountability between voters and their representatives. In addition, parties save politics from becoming a dispersed and even possibly a contradictory set of actions

Electoral infidelity: Why party members cast defecting votes

Party politics and electoral research generally assume that party members are loyal voters. This article first assesses the empirical basis for this assumption before providing individual-level explanations for defection. It combines prominent theories from party politics and electoral behaviour research and argues that internal disagreement and external pressure can each bring about disloyal voting. The hypotheses are motivated with multi-country European survey data and tested on two sets of party-level national surveys. The results show, first, that, on average, 8 per cent of European party members cast a defecting vote in the last election, and second, that dissatisfaction with the leadership is the strongest predictor of defection. Additionally, internal ideological disagreement is associated with higher probabilities of defection, whereas the effects of pull factors in the form of contentious policies are rather limited. These findings emphasise the importance of testing scientific assumptions and the potential significance of party leadership contests.

Political sophistication affects how citizens’ social policy preferences respond to the economy

Abstract Theoretical and empirical accounts of public opinion show that people’s social policy preferences are affected by the state of economy. According to the countercyclical view, economic downturn increases citizens’ demands for social policy whereas the procyclical view states that citizens demand less social policy during economically tough times. This article argues that individuals’ differences in political sophistication and, specifically, the commonly associated social-psychological characteristics are part of the micro-foundations for those different responses. People acquire and process information differently, which influences their political preferences. Public opinion and macroeconomic data from Europe during the economic crisis support the argument. The results show that people with lower levels of political sophistication tend to be procyclical, whereas this relationship weakens and moves towards countercyclical opinion structures with increasing levels of sophistication. These findings help to explain social policy preferences in response to the economy, and they offer insights into the origins of social policy preferences.

Types of party affiliation and the multi-speed party: What kind of party support is functionally equivalent to party membership?

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.

The lives of the party: Contemporary approaches to the study of intraparty politics in Europe

Intraparty politics is a precursor to political parties’ policy proposals, manifestos, selected leaders and candidates, which often involves many actors and is regularly accompanied by tensions. This essay introduces the contents of a special issue devoted to the internal dynamics of political parties in Europe. We connect each contribution of the issue to three key aspects of intraparty research: (1) sources of information on internal party politics and methods of analysis, (2) how contemporary parties reconcile or otherwise address disagreements within the party and (3) the electoral and other ramifications of internal party tensions or divisions. Overall, the comparative case studies and cross-national comparisons across Western and Eastern Europe included in this issue show that considerations of intraparty dynamics advance scholarly research on alliances and coalitions, party organizations and party competition.