par Sierens, Vivien Denis
Référence Belgium. The State of the Federation (7: 20/12/2018: KUL, Leuven)
Publication Non publié, 2018-12-20
Communication à un colloque
Résumé : The impact of infra-national dynamics on party membership has been understudied so far. This is rather surprising as recent studies have shown the importance of local and regional context for political participation and party competition (Remmer, 2009; Müller, 2013; Oliver, 2014). This paper suggests to explore this issue by testing the differentiated effect of electoral district size, national and regional election cycles on party membership fluctuations in the Belgian multilevel system. Based on a subset of MAPP data on Belgian party members disaggregated at the electoral district level over a period from 1990 to 2004, this paper shows that fluctuations of party membership ratios are linked to party level factors and to regional context. It also shows a differentiated impact of national and regional elections as mobilization factors.