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The polymorphic nature of party membership
Author(s) -
HEIDAR KNUT
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1994.tb01201.x
Subject(s) - norwegian , normative , democracy , politics , political science , positive economics , point (geometry) , quality (philosophy) , law and economics , sociology , law , epistemology , economics , philosophy , linguistics , geometry , mathematics
. The article argues that party member activity differs in terms of the degree, type and quality of organizational involvement, a fact often ignored in comparative studies of party membership as well as in arguments about the democratic potential of political parties. The article first presents different perspectives adopted in the literature on party membership. Distinctions are made on the one hand between research treating membership as an independent or as a dependent variable, and on the other between research focusing on different levels of analysis ‐ the country, the organization and the individual. To develop some empirical implications of these points, a survey of Norwegian party members is discussed in the second part. The emphasis here lies on the members'level of party activity and how to explain it. The conclusion is that whether or not the low level of member activity found in Norwegian parties is seen as a problem depends on which normative model of democracy is taken as a point of reference.