Patrick Seyd

Citizenship and Civic Engagement: Attitudes and Behaviour in Britain

Analysis of patterns of participation revealed three dimensions of civic activism in modern Britain: individualistic activism; contact activism; and collective activism. Three alternative theories of participation were examined to account for these dimensions: general incentives; social capital; and civic voluntarism. None proved sufficient in itself to account for civic activism in modern Britain: each provided only part of the explanation.

Local Party Campaigning and Electoral Mobilization in Britain

Research on the effects of local election campaigning by party activists on electoral behavior has been confined almost entirely to the United States, where most findings suggest that there are significant effects. This note discusses reasons why such effects are also likely to exist, and may even be stronger, in Britain than in the United States. It then goes on to estimate models of the turnout and vote share for the Labour party in the 1987 general election in Britain. The results show that local campaigning by Labour party members had a significant influence on the Labour vote share in the 1987 election, but not on turnout. A model is developed using data from a national survey of Labour party members, together with a number of control variables to test relationships. The findings are similar to those by Huckfeldt and Sprague for gubernatorial and Senate elections in the United States.

New Parties/New Politics? A Case Study of the British Labour Party

Britains two major parties have rediscovered their members. For a variety of reasons both the Labour and Conservative parties have adopted pro-active recruitment strategies. At the same time, they have introduced direct democracy as an important part of their internal procedures. A detailed study of Labours reforms suggests various possible implications for the future, including the fact that the plebiscitarian party might be an increasingly common feature in modern democracies.

British Party Members : An Overview

Party membership and activism is declining among Britain’s three major parties. Using individual membership survey data, evidence of this decline, particularly in party activism, is presented. Reasons for the decline are considered. It is suggested that choice-based rather than structural explanations are more persuasive. The impact of the decline upon the parties and the political system is considered. The article concludes that it is possible for parties to stimulate membership and activism.

How to win a landslide by really trying: the effects of local campaigning on voting in the 1997 British general election

Abstract There is a continuing debate among political scientists and commentators about the relevance of local party campaigns in influencing the vote in British general elections. We review that debate in the case of the 1997 British general election, and then go on to specify and estimate models of the influence of local campaigning on the constituency vote share for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives in that election. In contrast to the Michigan studies, which have tended to emphasise long-term partisan and policy-related predispositions, the results of our analysis show that local campaigning, measured from surveys of local party members together with proxy variables based on constituency spending data, had a very important influence on the vote. The effects appear to be strongest for the Liberal Democrats, important for New Labour, and rather weak for the Conservatives. The findings are relevant for both debates about campaign effects in Britain and debates about the electoral–professional party model. The results imply that the image of the electoral–professional party as a well-organised ‘army’ that obeys commands from the centre is misleading when applied to understanding party election campaigns.

The Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain: A Spiral of Demobilization?

Changes in activism among grassroots members of the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain are modelled using panel surveys in this article, with party members being surveyed before and after the 1992 general election. The evidence suggests that a decline in activism over time has occurred in both parties, but this decline is greater in the Labour party than in the Conservative party. This is attributed to a number of political, cultural and sociological changes in society over time, but in the short run the main factor is the outcome of the general election in 1992. These trends are modelled by means of a ‘general incentives’ theory of activism, which explains the decline in activism in terms of changing incentives for political action. Reductions in incentives for activism were, with one exception, greater for Labour party members than for Conservatives, which explains the differences between the two parties. This may produce a ‘spiral of demobilization’ in which electoral losses produce a decline in activism and campaigning at the local level, which in turn leads to further electoral losses.

Measuring Local Campaign Effects: Labour Party Constituency Campaigning at the 1987 General Election

Thursday 31 March: Polling day. To headquarters at about 9 and from 9.30 am to 6 visiting all the polling stations and committee rooms. We had lunch at the ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’ and then went out again with our loudspeaker, doing final knocking up. After the polls closed we cleared up the headquarters, went back to the hotel and began watching the BBC Election programme. It was evident that a big Labour victory was coming …1

Radical Sheffield: from Socialism to Entrepreneurialism

Since the 1960s various radical community initiatives have emerged in Western Europe and North America. The types of radicalism have varied (socialism, feminism, environmentalism and anti-racism) but common to all has been the belief that fundamental social change is required and that the locality is a significant base for achieving that change.’ In Britain this local radicalism was associated with the new urban left which emerged from the crisis within the Labour Party in the late 1970s. A generation of left activists, alienated by the actions of the Wilson/Callaghan governments, aimed to win control of the Labour Party at the national level. Almost by accident they captured control of some major city authorities in which they then attempted to put into practice a programme of municipal radicalism as a demonstration of successful socialist enterprise which should be incorporated into Labour’s national programme.* The authorities linked with this new municipal socialism included the Greater London Council and the London boroughs of Camden, Greenwich, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Southwark and, in the provinces, Sheffield. This new urban left was never one homogeneous bloc: each authority had its own distinctive features. Some arrived on the scene early and departed early (Walsall) while others arrived late (Manchester). Some were none too welcome at any time (Liverpool). I propose to examine one such radical project Sheffield where the city council avoided the media tag of ‘loony left’, was commended by outside observers for the standard of its services and maintained the support of its local voters at elections, yet has been forced into modifying its programme. Trapped between the pincers of central government and multinational capital, the city council has moved from socialism to entreprene~rialism.~ Sheffield is a city of labour both industrially and politically. Manual workers have dominated the local workforce, depth of unionism amongst this workforce has been high and half of all households have been council house tenant^.^

Party Election Campaigning in Britain The Labour Party

A modern British election campaign is multidimensional, with significant variations in party strategies over time and location. In the general elections of 1992 and 1997, the Labour Party developed innovative forms of campaigning, some of which the Conservative Party attempted to replicate in the 2001 general election. The article outlines the main features of Labours campaign leading up to the 2001 general election. In order to evaluate the impact of Labours campaign on turnout and party choice, data on the Conservative and Liberal Democrat campaigns are also examined using the 2001 British Election Study panel survey. The impact of party campaigning is revealed to have a significant effect on both turnout and party choice. Liberal Democrat and Labour campaigning proves to be especially influential. These findings reinforce earlier research on the importance of party campaigning in influencing voting behaviour.

Thatcherism and the Conservative Party

Neither spatial models of party competition nor the ‘Westminster’ model of British politics explain the phenomenon of Thatcherism. One explanation of its success, examined by Crewe and Searing, suggests that Mrs Thatcher sought to convert the Conservative party and the wider electorate to her distinctive brand of liberal Whiggism and traditional Toryism. They found little evidence of the success of this, however, among the British electorate as a whole. In this paper, data from the first national survey of Conservative party members demonstrates that she had little success in converting the Conservative party to these ideas either, although she did have a secure ideological base within the party. The results also suggest that her successor, John Major, has a rather different support base within the party from that of Mrs Thatcher. The implications of these findings for spatial models of party competition and the Westminster model of British politics are discussed.