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" Always look on the bright side of life ". Assessing the impact of intra-party factors on party recruitment patterns

par Sierens, Vivien Denis
Référence ECPR Summer School on Political Parties (27: 11-22 September 2017: Nottingham)
Publication Non publié, 2017-09-11

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Most of the empirical literature on party membership has focused on the decline of national party membership figures across Europe (Mair and Van Biezen, 2001; Weldon, 2006; Van Biezen et al., 2012). However, when disaggregating the figures at the party level, the trends are far less linear (Delwit 2011, Kolln 2014). Not all parties have been affected by membership decline and some parties have managed to continuously increased their membership base. Besides, many parties have attempted to attract new members by easing their affiliation rules and engaging in processes of intra-party democracy reforms. Yet, today, we still know very little on how internal party factors impact on membership recruitment patterns. This paper investigates this relationship across 30 parties in six European countries. Using a Crisp Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) relying on data collected in the framework of the Members and Activist of Political Parties (MAPP) project, the Political Party Database (PPDB) and the European Social Surveys (ESS), it shows that parties' internal reforms do have an impact on their ability to attract new members and on the degree of activism of the members that they recruit.