Ingrid van Biezen

Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980-2000

This article reports a comprehensive overview of new data on the levels of individual membership of political parties in twenty contemporary European democracies. Among the patterns noted in the data is the contrast between large and small democracies, as well as that between new and older democracies. However, the most striking feature to be noted is the sheer extent and consistency of membership decline through to the end of the 1990s. Not only have levels of party membership continued to decline as a proportion of the electorate, a trend which was already apparent at the end of the 1980s, there is now also compelling evidence of a major decline in the absolute numbers of party members across all the long-established European democracies. As these data clearly reveal, parties in contemporary Europe are rapidly losing their capacity to engage citizens.

Political Parties as Public Utilities

The exceptional relevance of the state in party finance in contemporary European democracies is not only of particular importance for the way in which parties organize, but also has a bearing on the normative connotations associated with the place of political parties in modern democracy. The contention of this article is that the increasingly prominent role of the state in the funding of parties should be understood in the context of, and has been legitimized by, an ideational transformation by which parties have gradually come to be seen as necessary and desirable institutions for democracy. Moreover, the direct involvement of the state in internal party affairs has contributed to a transformation of parties from the traditionally voluntary private associations towards parties as public utilities. A comparison of the practice of public funding and public control on party finance in the older liberal democracies with more recent cases of democratization shows that the newer European democracies in partic...The exceptional relevance of the state in party finance in contemporary European democracies is not only of particular importance for the way in which parties organize, but also has a bearing on the normative connotations associated with the place of political parties in modern democracy. The contention of this article is that the increasingly prominent role of the state in the funding of parties should be understood in the context of, and has been legitimized by, an ideational transformation by which parties have gradually come to be seen as necessary and desirable institutions for democracy. Moreover, the direct involvement of the state in internal party affairs has contributed to a transformation of parties from the traditionally voluntary private associations towards parties as public utilities. A comparison of the practice of public funding and public control on party finance in the older liberal democracies with more recent cases of democratization shows that the newer European democracies in particular provide unequivocal testimony of such a new conception of parties and democracy.

The State and the Parties Public Funding, Public Regulation and Rent-Seeking in Contemporary Democracies

This article focuses on the relationship between political parties and the state. We propose an analytical framework distinguishing between three different dimensions of the party-state linkage: the dependence of parties on the state, the management of parties by the state and the control of the state by parties. We provide a cross-national empirical analysis of the relationship between parties and the state in contemporary liberal democracies. Our analysis underscores the considerable importance of the state for political parties in general. It also highlights important differences between old and new democracies, as well as important regional differences in terms of the nature of the relationship between parties and the state in the recently established democracies. We argue that these different types of linkages are highly relevant for party system development and the nature of democracy.

On the Internal Balance of Party Power Party Organizations in New Democracies

This paper focuses on the relationship between the party central office and the party in public office in the relatively new democracies of Southern and East Central Europe. The analysis reveals that, although the party executives are strongly invaded by public office holders, it is, contrary to expectations, not the party in public office but the party central office that emerges as the most predominant of the two faces. It appears that party organizations in these new democracies are largely controlled from a small centre of power, located at the intersection of the extra-parliamentary organization and the party in public office. This phenomenon, it is argued, can probably be best explained as a device to increase party cohesion and to reduce the potentially destabilizing consequences that emerge from a context of weakly developed party loyalties and a general lack of party institutionalization.This paper focuses on the relationship between the party central office and the party in public office in the relatively new democracies of Southern and East Central Europe. The analysis reveals that, although the party executives are strongly invaded by public office holders, it is, contrary to expectations, not the party in public office but the party central office that emerges as the most predominant of the two faces. It appears that party organizations in these new democracies are largely controlled from a small centre of power, located at the intersection of the extra-parliamentary organization and the party in public office. This phenomenon, it is argued, can probably be best explained as a device to increase party cohesion and to reduce the potentially destabilizing consequences that emerge from a context of weakly developed party loyalties and a general lack of party institutionalization.

Constitutionalizing Party Democracy: The Constitutive Codification of Political Parties in Post-war Europe

This article analyses the process of party constitutionalization in post-war Europe. It explores the temporal patterns of party constitutionalization and reveals their connection with moments of fundamental institutional restructuring. It discusses the different modes of party constitutionalization, and addresses what these convey about the underlying conceptions of party democracy. It argues that the constitutional codification of political parties has consolidated the empirical reality of modern party government as well as its normative foundations of modern party government, thereby transforming political parties from socio-political organizations into integral units of the democratic state. Finally, it suggests that the constitutionalization of the democratic importance of political parties might reflect an attempt to legitimize their existence in the face of their weakening as agents of democratic representation.

The decline of membership-based politics

In one of his last publications, Peter Mair documented how party membership had declined substantially in virtually all European democracies. As his collaborators on this piece, it seems pertinent that we take these findings as a point of departure and discuss what they mean for our understanding of party democracy. After all, the collapse of membership figures calls into question one of the central elements of our conceptualization of representative democracy, namely that it is based on voluntary political participation within political parties. All authoritative typologies of political parties consider the role of members to be one of their defining elements, although the cartel party most clearly envisages the marginalization of party members by professional party politicians. The traditional organizational allies of political parties (e.g. trade unions, organized religion) are subject to similar processes of erosion. In this article, we review the evidence of the social anchorage of political parties and discuss how political parties and party democracy can survive in an age where amateur politicians are becoming an increasingly rare species and parties are being transformed into organizational vehicles for those to whom politics is a profession rather than a vocation.

Party Financing in New Democracies Spain and Portugal

In the relatively young democracies of Spain and Portugal, public funding plays a critical role in the financing of political parties, which generally lack the organizational capacity to generate their own income. The rules and practice of party financing show that, in addition to the overall heavy dependence on the state, by far the greatest part of the public money is assigned to the party central office. In this sense, they contradict the West European tendency, where it is the party in public office that has become the more privileged face of the party organization in recent times.In the relatively young democracies of Spain and Portugal, public funding plays a critical role in the financing of political parties, which generally lack the organizational capacity to generate t...

State Intervention in Party Politics: The Public Funding and Regulation of Political Parties

This article is concerned with a closer investigation of the growing tendency for the state to intervene in contemporary party politics. It examines two trends. First, it looks more closely at the increased levels of regulation of party activity and behaviour in European democracies, discussing the empirical practice as well as the underlying normative paradigms of party regulation. Second, it examines the increased availability of public funding to political parties from a comparative perspective, while also exploring the motivations for its introduction in light of particular understandings of party democracy. It is argued that both dimensions constitute part of the way in which parties have strengthened their linkages with the state in recent years, and that parties, as a result of the increased involvement of the state in their internal affairs and external behaviour, have become increasingly defined as public utilities or semi-state agencies.

Deterring new party entry? The impact of state regulation on the permeability of party systems

Despite the growing amount of party regulation, we still have a limited understanding of the effect that party laws have on party systems and political competition. Notwithstanding predictions that incumbent parties adopt rules which favour their own position, found in both the cartel party thesis and the rational actor view of politics, we continue to witness the frequent appearance of new political parties, some of which successfully enter parliament. Using comparative electoral data and a newly built dataset on party regulation in post-war Europe, we trace the changes in the rules governing political parties and explore the effect of party regulation on the number of successful new entrants. Overall, we find that more regulation significantly decreases the number of successful new entries, while high electoral volatility and the legacy of post-communism increase the amount of successful new party entries in the legislature. Our nalysis further shows that the existence of public funding and the payout threshold have no effect on the permeability of party systems.

Models of Party Democracy : Patterns of Party Regulation in Post-War European Constitutions

This article investigates the ways in which political parties are codified in modern democratic constitutions, providing a unique cross-sectional and longitudinal overview of the patterns of party constitutionalization in post-war Europe. Although the constitutions of western liberal democracies traditionally have paid little attention to the role of parties, evidence suggests that in contemporary democracies, both old and new, they are increasingly accorded a formal constitutional status. Little is known, however, about the substantive content of their constitutional position or about the normative connotations of their constitutional codification. In this article, we demonstrate that there is a clear correlation between the nature and the intensity of party constitutionalization and the newness and historical experience of democracy and that, with time, the constitutional regulation of the extra-parliamentary organization and the parties’ rights and duties has gained in importance at the expense of their parliamentary and electoral roles. The analysis furthermore suggests that three distinct models of party constitutionalization can be identified – Defending Democracy, Parties in Public Office, and Parties as Public Utilities – each of which is related to a particular conception of party democracy.