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Parties and Elections > Week 18 > Flashcards

Week 18 Flashcards

Party members

1
Q

Who are party members?

A
  • Supporters
  • Members
  • Activists and leaders
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2
Q

How are supporters defined in the context of party members?

A

(Usually) vote and possibly speak in favour of a party

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3
Q

How are members defined in the context of party members?

A
  • Supporters with a form of formal membership status
  • Often must pay membership fees
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4
Q

How are activists and leaders defined in the context of party members?

A

Members who participate in party activities, especially campaigning

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5
Q

Are activists ideological radicals?

A
  • Selection: only the highly committed become activists
  • Socialisation: social experience reinforces worldview
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6
Q

Why is the distinction between the different types of party members important?

A
  • Different costs and benefits for the leaders and individuals
  • Different actors have different preferences and expectations and receive different rewards
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7
Q

Why do supporters and members become party members?

A
  • Purposive goals (join the party for a specific reason)
  • Policy-seeking
  • Moderate: not (as) self-selected, more diverse, less encouraged by social experience
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8
Q

Why do party members decide to become activists?

A
  • Purposive and social goals (social goals being social interactions with people outside of the party)
  • Mainly: policy and community seeking
  • Extreme preferences: driven by purposive goals and social experience (socialisation and selection)
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9
Q

What is the role of leaders (like members of parliament) within the party membership?

A
  • Vote, office, policy and community-seeking
  • Material, purposive and social goals
  • Moderate preferences: tamed by office goals
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10
Q

What is May’s Law of Curvilinear Disparity?

A

Activist members tend to be more ideologically extreme than both the leadership of that party and its base (the supporters and members)

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11
Q

How are the different types of party members categorised in May’s Law of Curvilinear Disparity?

A
  • Party leaders - the leadership of the party - includes MPs
  • Sub-leaders - the activists within the party membership
  • Non-leaders - passive supporters or inactive members of a party
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12
Q

According to May’s Law of Curvilinear Disparity what would the political position of party leaders be?

A

Likely to have political values in between those of the party activists and the median voter

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13
Q

According to May’s Law of Curvilinear Disparity why do party leaders have the political values that they have?

A
  • MPs have to focus on re-election and party management so they cannot have views that are too extreme
  • They have to consider the mean voter and casual members
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14
Q

According to May’s Law of Curvilinear Disparity what political position would activists have?

A

More likely to have more extreme values than the rest of the categories of party members

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15
Q

According to May’s Law of Curvilinear Disparity why would activists have the political position they have?

A
  • Not or much less motivated by career advancement
  • Don’t want or need to cater to the general public
  • Purely motivated by ideological purity
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16
Q

According to May’s Law of Curvilinear Disparity what political position would non-leaders have?

A

Likely to have political values that are closer to the median voter

17
Q

Why do parties want members?

A
  • Reliable voters
  • Financial contributions
  • Legitimacy (signals a broad social base to others)
18
Q

Why do parties want activists?

A
  • Campaign resource
  • Local ambassadors (spread information to and from party)
  • Candidates for elected office
  • Policy ideas
19
Q

What are the main costs of too many activist members of a party?

A
  • Hinder moderate policy progress and demand “purist policy”
  • Activists (and members) require resources and time
20
Q

How does activist members desiring purer policy cost the party?

A

Desiring “purist policy” hinders the progress of moderate policy
- Moderate voters dislike this (vote costs)
- Pragmatic coalitions become unlikely (office costs)
- Changing problems are being ignored (policy costs)

—> Creates an image of internal disarray and weak leadership (vote costs)

21
Q

What resources do activists (and members) require?

A
  • Demand to be heard (meetings, consultations, etc.)
  • Basic administrative costs (but they pay fees)
22
Q

Why do citizens not want to join a party?

A

Few reasons for membership
- Very long path to secure paid office (sometimes more than 10-15 years)
- Individual members lack influence for shaping policy
- Other people can make the party work
- Collective action problem

23
Q

How does the collective action problem cause people to not want to join a party?

A
  • Supporters want the party to benefit from having many activists
  • But there are strong free-riding incentives
  • Let others become activists and still benefit from the success of the party
24
Q

Why do citizens want to join a party?

A

Selective benefits only for members are a strategy against free-riding
- Material benefits: financial (individual-level benefits)
- Social benefits: status, friendship, inclusion (individual-level benefits)
- Purposive benefits - policy influence and outcomes (individual and collective level benefits)

25
Q

What main two reasons may explain the general decline in party membership?

A
  • Reduced supply of people joining parties
  • Reduced demand from parties
26
Q

What contemporary issues are there membership extremism in?

A
  • Trade
  • European integration
  • Globalisation
  • Migration
27
Q

Why might there be a reduced supply of people joining parties?

A
  • Political market is less competitive
  • People have less time for parties
  • Social/demographic changes
28
Q

Why might the political marketplace being more competitive contribute to the reduced supply of people joining parties?

A
  • Wide range of single-issue pressure groups
  • (Less relevant): convergence of major parties
29
Q

Why may people have less time to join parties?

A
  • Work/life balance
  • Private forms of entertainment (e.g., media)
30
Q

Why might social/demographic changes cause the supply of people joining parties to reduce?

A
  • Partisan dealignment
  • Decline of working class communities and trade unions
  • Sub-urbanisation
31
Q

Why might there be a reduced demand for member from parties?

A
  • Media campaigning (rise of political marketing reduces the need for activists)
  • Different sources of party funding
  • Party leaders do not want extremists joining (need more moderate policies)
32
Q

What are the different sources of party funding might cause parties to have a lower demand for party members?

A
  • Greater reliance on wealthy individual donors
  • Greater availability of state funding

Parties and Elections (11 decks)

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