Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 62 No. 2, 2009, 242– 257
Advance Access Publication 21 January 2009
Where Have All the Members Gone? The Dynamics
of Party Membership in Britain
BY PAUL WHITELEY
This paper examines current and past party membership in Britain by means of a
large-scale internet-based survey. It shows that party members differ from voters in
being higher status and more educated, but more likely to be retired than the population in general. It examines the differences between the characteristics of Labour,
Conservative and Liberal Democrat members, and explores the differences between
current and former members. The latter outnumber the former by almost two to
one, indicating that the grassroots party organisations are continuing to decline in
Britain. This paper then discusses the implications of this finding for British politics, suggesting that while parties at the centre will continue to operate, parties in
the community will not fulfil their functions effectively. It then shows that a
decline of membership will weaken partisanship in the electorate, and this in turn
will undermine the effectiveness of central government in Britain.
Introduction
THERE is good evidence to show that a long-term decline in grassroots
party membership and party activism has been taking place in Britain.1
This trend is not, however, confined to Britain since it is also apparently occurring in other European democracies as well.2 In light of this,
we examine the current state of the grassroots party membership in
Britain in this paper with the assistance of a large-scale internet survey
conducted in January 2008. The aim is to track changes in membership
over time and to compare and contrast the health of the grassroots
membership organisations, paying particular attention to the three
major parties. Overall, it appears that the party membership is continuing to decline in Britain, particularly in the case of the Labour party,
so the trends first identified in the 1990s are continuing.
This topic is important because political parties continue to play a
central role in the governance of modern democracies, and a decline in
their voluntary base has important implications for the future of
democracy. We shall argue that a decline in party membership weakens
civil society by undermining key relationships between citizens and
the state, many of which are sustained by political parties.3 Moreover,
Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 62 No. 2 # The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the
Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
[email protected]
doi: 10.1093/pa/gsn054
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ABSTRACT
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
243
Party membership in Britain in 2008
The data for this analysis comes from an internet-based panel survey of
the UK electorate, which is linked to the British Election Study and
funded by the ESRC4. A key problem for researchers into party membership is that members make up only a relatively small minority of the electorate. As a consequence, a standard face-to-face probability survey of
voters is not a cost-effective means of reaching them. Earlier research has
circumvented this problem by using mail surveys of party members conducted with the assistance of the national party organisations. The
approach taken was to sample members from local or national databases
of members held by the parties.5 An alternative to this is to conduct a
very large-scale survey of electors on the internet, which is then subsequently filtered in order to identify party members or ex-members in
the sample. This is the strategy adopted in the present paper. The analysis is based on an internet survey of 18,706 electors in Britain conducted
in January 2008 of whom 1,230 or 6.6 per cent were party members
and a further 2,288 or 13.1 per cent were former members. The survey
is the third wave of a panel of electors originally started in 2005.6
There are controversies associated with internet-based surveys, since
they are not based on classically designed probability samples.
However, as internet penetration in Britain gets higher it is becoming
easier to correct for the fact that some groups in the population have
limited access to the internet. This is done by the use of appropriate
weighting schemes. The 2005 British Election Study conducted an
extensive series of comparisons between internet surveys and traditional probability-based face-to-face surveys. The aim was to
compare and contrast responses to a large number of attitudinal and
behavioural questions in order to examine the extent to which these
different modes of data collection produced different answers. The
overall findings were that variables like vote intentions and issue perceptions did differ between the two modes of analysis, although the
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as we show below, this change has the potential to undermine the
effectiveness of government.
After briefly describing some of the methodological problems of surveying party members, we describe the internet survey used in the
present analysis and then go on to examine the current membership of
the political parties in Britain, comparing and contrasting the social
characteristics of members with the rest of the population. Part of this
exercise involves investigating how strongly attached the members are
to their party, since this is an indication of how committed they are.
This is followed by an examination of former party members, or
‘exitors’, in order to say something about the implications of their
leaving for the remaining members. Finally, in a third section of the
paper we examine some of the implications of these trends for wider
British politics.
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1. Party membership in Britain in 2008 (n 5 1,230)
Percentage of members
Percentage vote in the
2005 general election
Labour
Conservatives
Liberal Democrats
Scottish National Party
Plaid Cymru
Green Party
UKIP
Respect
British National Party
Other Parties
38.4
30.6
13.7
3.6
0.6
2.5
4.7
0.4
2.2
3.3
36.1
33.2
22.6
1.6
0.7
1.1
2.3
0.3
0.7
1.3
Source: Internet Survey, 2008 and Electoral Commission.
differences were not large. However, when it came to using variables
from internet-based surveys in models of voting turnout and party
choice, there were no significant differences in the size of the statistical
relationships between variables in the two types of survey.7 In other
words, while percentages responding to particular questions did vary
to some extent between the two modes of data collection, relationships
between the variables did not. This is a relatively reassuring finding for
social researchers who use the internet for survey analysis. More to the
point, it suggests that an internet-based survey of party members can
provide a fairly accurate picture of the state of the grassroots party
organisations in Britain.
Table 1 shows the percentage of members of each party in the
survey, and it is compared with the vote shares obtained by these
parties in the General Election of 2005. The table is based on the
1,230 party members identified in the survey, and Labour had the
largest share of them. It appears that the party had a slightly bigger
share of the party members in Britain than it had voters in the general
election of 2005. In the case of the Conservatives, the survey suggests
that it was the other way round. However, the discrepancies between
votes and party members were not large for either party. The same
point cannot be made about the Liberal Democrats, however, since in
their case the discrepancy between members and voters is quite large.
The Liberal Democrat vote share was almost twice as large as their
share of party members. In the case of other parties, the Scottish
National Party did well in terms of having a greater proportion of
members than voters, as did UK Independence Party (UKIP), the
Greens and the British National Party. Clearly, there is an association
between electoral success and the ability of a party to recruit members,
although this association is far from being perfect.
Table 2 shows the demographic profile of party members in the
survey compared with the rest of the population. It is clear that party
members are more likely to be retired and less likely to be in full-time
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Party
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
245
2. The social backgrounds of party members and electors
Demographics
Electors
55.0
3.9
6.3
27.7
2.7
4.3
59.2
3.9
8.5
18.9
6.5
3.0
35.9
23.4
15.5
2.0
5.7
6.2
24.3
18.5
26.6
3.3
6.8
8.9
7.7
19.0
20.7
16.3
12.7
23.6
9.8
22.6
23.1
16.2
11.3
17.1
67.2
32.8
50.1
49.9
94.0
6.0
95.1
4.9
11.4
14.8
17.4
6.7
49.6
49.4
13.9
22.4
21.3
7.6
34.7
44.6
Source: Internet Survey, 2008.
occupations than voters in general. They are also much more likely to
have high occupational status, work in professionals positions, and
they are less likely to be working class than the rest of the population.
This confirms earlier research which suggests that party members are
of higher status and more middle class than the population in general.8
Because of this, members had higher average incomes than voters in
general, with nearly a quarter of them having household incomes of
£50,000 or more compared with 17 per cent in the wider population.
Their educational experience follows a similar pattern, with about half
of the members having left full-time education after the age of 20 compared with only a third of voters. The largest discrepancy in Table 2
relates to gender, with some two-thirds of party members being male
compared with only half of the wider population. The ethnic status of
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Employment status
Full-time job
Student
Unemployed or disabled
Retired
Home-maker
Volunteer
Occupational status
Professional
Managers
Clerical workers
Foremen & supervisors
Skilled manual workers
Semi or unskilled manual
Income
Under £10,000
£10,000 to £20,000
£20,000 to £30,000
£30,000 to £40,000
£40,000 to £50,000
£50,000 plus
Gender
Male
Female
Ethnicity
White
Non-white
Age leaving education
Under 16
16
17 or 18
19 or 20
21 plus
Average age
Party members
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3. The social backgrounds of members by party
Demographics
Conservative
Liberal
Democrats
61.8
4.9
5.5
23.6
1.5
2.8
45.3
4.5
4.3
36.0
3.5
6.4
60.9
2.4
7.1
23.7
2.4
3.6
35.2
24.2
12.5
1.9
5.7
7.6
32.7
28.7
18.1
1.3
4.8
3.7
49.7
17.2
14.2
2.4
4.1
3.6
4.7
19.1
20.5
16.3
13.8
25.6
8.1
14.6
20.7
16.2
14.2
26.2
5.7
19.7
21.7
17.8
12.7
22.3
69.0
31.0
60.5
39.5
71.0
29.0
94.3
5.7
93.9
6.1
98.8
1.2
11.9
15.9
12.1
4.5
55.6
47.4
9.3
16.3
25.1
10.1
39.2
51.9
8.9
5.3
14.2
6.5
65.1
48.5
Source: Internet Survey, 2008.
party members was rather similar to that of the general population, but
on average they were about five years older than the rest of the
electorate.
Table 3 examines the social background characteristics of members
for each of the three major parties and there are some interesting differences among them. The Conservative members were much more likely
to be retired and less likely to be in full-time employment than their
Labour and Liberal Democrat counterparts. With respect to employment status, Labour and Liberal Democrat members were quite similar
to each other, with roughly the same proportions in full-time work.
However, the same point cannot be made about occupational status,
since half of the Liberal Democrats were in professional occupations
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Employment status
Full-time job
Student
Unemployed or disabled
Retired
Home-maker
Volunteer
Occupational status
Professional
Managers
Clerical workers
Foremen & supervisors
Skilled manual workers
Semi or unskilled manual
Income
Under £10,000
£10,000 to £20,000
£20,000 to £30,000
£30,000 to £40,000
£40,000 to £50,000
£50,000 plus
Gender
Male
Female
Ethnicity
White
Non-white
Age leaving education
Under 16
16
17 or 18
19 or 20
21 plus
Average age
Labour
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
247
4. The strength of partisanship of party members in Britain
Strength of partisanship
Labour
Conservative
Liberal democrat
Very strong
Fairly strong
Not very strong
Don’t know
61.2
34.3
4.1
0.4
55.7
39.5
4.5
0.3
57.4
33.1
9.5
0
Source: Internet Survey, 2008.
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compared with only about a third of Labour and Conservative
members. Occupational status is particularly revealing in the case of
Labour, since only about 13 per cent of its members were in manual
occupations compared with about 8 per cent of Conservatives and
Liberal Democrats. It is clear that when it comes to the grassroots
organisation, Labour is a long way from being the party of the
working class.
In relation to income, the Conservatives were slightly more affluent
than their rivals, although the differences in incomes were not large.
One surprise is that the Conservatives had a higher proportion of
ethnic minority members than their competitors, although the differences between them and Labour were relatively modest. However, the
same point cannot be made about the Liberal Democrats, since there
appears to be very few non-white members of the party. The third
party has clearly failed to reach into the ethnic minority community in
the same way as its rivals. In relation to the gender balance, the
Conservatives are closer to the national average than either Labour or
the Liberal Democrats, both of whom are dominated by men. The
Liberal Democrats are clearly more highly educated than Labour, but
the latter are more educated than the Conservatives who have the smallest proportion of members with a background in higher education.
Finally, Conservative members were older than the members of the
other two parties, but the age discrepancy between the three major
parties has declined since the early 1990s when Conservative members
were very much older than their rivals.9
One important political consideration is the extent to which
members identify with and feel attached to their party. In the wider
electorate party identification, or the extent to which people feel psychologically attached to a party, there is an important factor in
explaining why people vote. Strong partisans are very likely to vote,
whereas weak partisans are much less likely to turn out on polling
day.10 In the case of party members their strength of attachment can be
taken as an indicator of their willingness to support their party by
voting for it, donating money to it and, in some cases, working for it
in an election campaign. Table 4 shows the strength of partisanship of
Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party members. Not surprisingly, the level of attachment of party members is much higher
than the rest of the population11, but it is also clear that Labour party
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5. Former party membership in Britain in 2008 (n ¼ 2,288)
Percentage of ex-members
Labour
Conservatives
Liberal Democrats
Scottish National Party
Plaid Cymru
Green Party
UKIP
Respect
British National Party
Other Parties
42.9
27.8
13.2
2.9
0.9
1.8
2.6
0.2
0.4
7.2
Source: Internet Survey, 2008.
members have stronger attachments than do Conservatives or Liberal
Democrats. More than 61 per cent of Labour members have a very
strong attachment compared with only 56 per cent of Conservatives
and 57 per cent of Liberal Democrats. At the other end of the scale,
the Liberal Democrats have more than twice as many members who
are not strongly attached than their main rivals. So of the three parties
the Liberal Democrats are the most weakly attached, which has implications for the amount of money they can raise from members and the
number of volunteers they can mobilise during election campaigns.
The fact that about twice as many respondents in the survey were
former party members than are currently members suggests that membership in Britain is in decline. This issue is examined in more detail in
the next section.
Former party members
Some 2,286 respondents in the survey no longer considered themselves
to be party members, although they were members in the past. The
percentages of ex-party members broken down by party appear in
Table 5, which is the counterpart to Table 1.
The striking finding from Table 5 is that more than 40 per cent of
the ex-members were formerly in the Labour party. While Labour may
have more current members than any of the other parties, it also has
very much more former members. This is an interesting finding, and to
put it in perspective, there are 472 current Labour party members in
the sample, and no less than 1,093 former Labour party members, a
ratio of 2.3 ex-members to every member. The equivalent ratio for the
Conservatives is 1.9 to 1.0 and for the Liberal Democrats 2.0 to 1.0.
Since there are more ex-members than members in the survey as a
whole, the former numerically outnumber the latter for every party in
Table 5 with one exception. This is the British National Party which
appears to be the one party growing in size.
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Party
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
249
6. Year leaving the party by former party membership
When leaving former party
1.6 (1.6)
4.9 (4.9)
25.6 (6.4)
21.2 (5.3)
13.2 (2.6)
19.8 (1.5)
12.0 (–)
1.7
Conservatives
Liberal Democrats
1.3 (1.3)
10.6 (10.6)
22.8 (5.7)
11.2 (2.8)
14.4 (2.9)
20.1(1.5)
18.0 (–)
1.7
1.2 (1.2)
9.0 (9.0)
23.9 (6.0)
14.6 (3.7)
12.2 (2.4)
23.3 (1.8)
14.3 (–)
1.5
Source: Internet Survey, 2008.
Respondents in the survey were asked when they left their respective
parties and they were given a series of dates coinciding with Labour
and Conservative governments to choose from when answering. This
information appears in Table 6, and since the time intervals are variable, the average percentage of members who left the party each year
were calculated and these figures appear in brackets. It shows that the
number of Labour party members who left the party peaked in the
second term of the Labour government between 2001 and 2005. This
coincided with the start of the Iraq war and the upsurge in protest
demonstrations which occurred throughout Britain, and the growing
unpopularity of the Prime Minister. However, it is also true that many
individuals left the party in the first term of the Labour government
between 1997 and 2001. Part of the reason for this may be that Tony
Blair led a campaign to recruit new members after he became party
leader in 1994. This was quite successful and it increased the size of
the party membership by some 40 per cent.12 However, many of these
new recruits were not strongly attached to the party and so left once
the party leadership became pre-occupied with governing after 1997,
and so paid much less attention to the grassroots party.
More generally, party members left in greater numbers after Labour
came into power than when the party was in opposition. However, it
would be wrong to conclude that parties will always have difficulty
retaining members when they are in government. This is because the
Conservatives’ loss of membership peaked in 2006 when 10.6 per cent
of the sample of its former members left the party. This coincided with
the first full year of David Cameron’s leadership, suggesting that many
people in the grassroots party were dissatisfied with his modernisation
strategy. It is also apparent that the Liberal Democrats lost a lot of
members in that year and again this roughly coincided with the period
when Menzies Campbell became the leader.13 He was generally considered to be an unsuccessful leader and as a result was replaced by
Nick Clegg in December 2007.
Table 7 provides a breakdown of the social background characteristics of ex-party members. It is useful to compare this with Table 3 to
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This Year
Last Year
Between 2001 and 2005
Between 1997 and 2001
Between 1992 and 1997
Between 1979 and 1992
Before 1979
Don’t Know
Labour
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The implications of the findings
What then are the implications of these findings for British politics in
general and for political parties in particular? The Houghton committee was established a generation ago to investigate financial aid to political parties (HMSO, 1976). This committee was important because it
set out the positive case for party government in Britain, arguing that
‘the existence of political parties is an essential feature of our parliamentary democracy’ (HMSO, 1976: 19). It reviewed the various functions performed by political parties in a modern democracy such as
Britain. These include: aggregating the many and diverse interests in
society into reasonably clear political programmes, simplifying electoral choices for citizens, providing coherence to Parliamentary parties
thereby facilitating government, selecting candidates for election to
Parliament and other bodies, enabling ordinary citizens to participate
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see if there are any major differences between the members and
ex-members. In fact the profile of ex-members is rather similar to the
profile of members with one or two exceptions. It appears that fewer
of the former Labour members had full-time occupations or were in
professional occupations than the ex-members. Similarly, the
ex-Labour members were less affluent, less educated and less likely to
be men than the current members. Finally, they were slightly older
than the current members. So the party is gradually becoming more
professional in occupational status, more affluent and more male.
If we compare Conservative members with ex-members, it is also the
case that no large differences existed between the two groups.
However, former Conservatives were more likely to be in full-time
occupations and slightly less likely to be retired than the current
members, although there were no significant differences in ages
between the two groups. One other interesting development is that
ex-Conservatives were less likely to be members of an ethnic minority
group than current Conservatives, suggesting that the party has been
relatively successful in recruiting ethnic minorities in recent years.
The social background characteristics of current and former Liberal
Democrats are rather similar to that of Conservatives. Former party
members were less likely to be in full-time occupations, to be professionals and to be male than current members. The largest difference
between the two groups related to education; some 65 per cent of
current party members left full-time education after the age of 21 compared with only 44 per cent of former members. Thus it appears that
the Liberal Democrats are rapidly becoming a grassroots organisation
made up of people with a background in higher education, something
which is certainly not true for the Conservatives and less true for
Labour. Finally, former Liberal Democrats were slightly older than
current Liberal Democrats.
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
251
7. The social backgrounds of ex-party members
Demographics
Conservative
Liberal
Democrats
56.6
1.8
8.4
26.4
2.9
3.9
50.6
2.6
5.4
33.9
3.7
3.8
54.1
2.5
9.6
29.0
1.9
2.9
32.7
23.2
17.2
3.9
6.8
6.6
30.4
31.3
19.8
1.6
4.2
3.2
41.3
20.6
21.6
3.2
3.2
1.6
8.4
19.4
22.1
15.7
13.9
20.4
7.0
22.2
20.5
13.5
10.9
25.9
7.2
18.6
24.6
13.6
12.5
23.5
63.6
36.4
61.3
38.7
64.6
35.4
95.6
4.4
97.8
2.2
94.9
5.1
15.7
19.5
15.8
6.2
42.7
49.7
12.8
14.9
23.5
10.7
38.2
52.1
9.9
19.1
20.1
6.7
44.3
51.3
Source: Internet Survey, 2008.
in the policy-making process and helping to provide political education
in the broadest sense.
Other important functions of parties can be added to this list, such
as ‘organising disappointment’ or getting citizens who are on the losing
side in elections and policy debates to accept defeat.14 An effective
party system encourages citizens to believe that while they may be on
the losing side on one occasion, they may be on the winning side on
another. This helps to reconcile losers in the political process to their
situation and thereby keep politics non-violent. Political parties also
help to keep rent-seeking by special interest groups in check. Narrowly
focused interest groups, who seek benefits for themselves and their supporters, impose the costs of their activities on the wider society.
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Employment status
Full-time job
Student
Unemployed or disabled
Retired
Home-maker
Volunteer
Occupational status
Professional
Managers
Clerical workers
Foremen & supervisors
Skilled manual workers
Semi or unskilled manual
Income
Under £10,000
£10,000 to £20,000
£20,000 to £30,000
£30,000 to £40,000
£40,000 to £50,000
£50,000 plus
Gender
Male
Female
Ethnicity
White
Non-white
Age leaving education
Under 16
16
17 or 18
19 or 20
21 plus
Average age
Labour
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A proliferation of such groups can lead to policy gridlock, institutional
sclerosis and ineffective government, which in turn can reduce economic prosperity.15 Since parties seek support from a majority of the
voters, they are not narrowly focused, and this serves to act as a
counter-weight to such special interest groups.
Since the Houghton report two developments have been extensively
discussed by students of party politics, and both of them have weakened the role of the voluntary party organisations. The first is the
growth of the ‘catch-all’ party16 along with the emergence of the ‘electoral professional’ party organisation.17 The idea here is that parties
are increasingly focused on electoral success, even if it comes at the
expense of programmatic coherence or support for fundamental principles; so they end up attempting to be all things to all people. An
extreme version of this idea is associated with the work of Anthony
Downs.18 In his model of party competition, parties adopt policies
solely in order to win elections, rather than winning elections in order
to implement policies. The catch-all party acquires a very top-down
organisational structure, and it needs powerful leaders who can rapidly
change the direction of the party in their search for electoral success. In
this model party activists are reduced to the role of cheerleaders, who
are willing to more or less support the leadership in whatever it decides
to do. Such a model creates incentives for leaders to eliminate internal
party democracy in case this should interfere with the strategy. There is
a curious irony in this, since it makes political parties highly undemocratic internally, in order to seek democratically elected office.
The second development highlighted by party researchers is the ever
closer relationship between political parties and the state, exemplified
by the ‘cartel party’ thesis.19 This is the view that parties are increasingly dependent on the state in the form of subsidies and regulatory
benefits to the point that they become part of a state-sponsored cartel.
The aim of such a cartel is to share public subsidies among the
members, and to make it very difficult for new parties to compete. In
this way party competition becomes increasingly symbolic rather than
substantive, with few significant differences between the insiders.
Outsiders are excluded by various devices such as the electoral system
and public subsidies to members of the cartel. One researcher argues
that this process of cartelisation has gone so far that parties are increasingly becoming ‘public utilities’.20 Again, the voluntary organisations
become increasingly irrelevant within political parties because leaders
no longer need members to provide funds and voluntary labour to keep
the party organisation going. Instead they can rely on the state to
provide sufficient funding to give all the important positions to fulltime professionals.
One problem with these developments is that recent research into
social capital has suggested that the loss of volunteers may be a serious
problem for political parties, not to mention the wider society. Putnam
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
253
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defines social capital as ‘features of social organisation, such as trust,
norms and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating co-ordinated actions’.21 For Coleman, social interactions in a
voluntary settings help to generate ‘credit slips’ of obligations, to foster
norms of reciprocation and to create interpersonal trust.22 The creation
of trust between citizens allows these credit slips to be utilised to solve
social and political problems. According to Putnam social capital can
have many effects, such as improving community health, educational
performance, crime, life satisfaction and rates of political participation
among citizens.23 In the standard model social capital is created in
voluntary organisations, and since political parties are the most important voluntary organisations in democratic politics, the loss of volunteers means that parties are no longer contributing to the creation of
social capital and are becoming increasingly detached from the wider
society.24 Social capital helps to build trust, so a weakening of the
social capital generated by parties means that they are less likely to be
trusted. So as the great mass of citizens cease to have any direct contact
with parties, they become increasingly mistrusted and irrelevant to
their day-to-day lives.
From the point of view of the present paper, the interesting question
is the extent to which the functions of parties explored in the Houghton
report are supported by the voluntary activities of the party members.
Clearly, political parties can continue to aggregate interests and provide
coherence to Parliamentary organisations in the absence of local party
members. Broadly speaking, parties at the centre can continue to function without the volunteers. But it is hard to see how parties can function effectively in the wider community without their voluntary
organisations. As the earlier discussion indicates volunteers at the local
level select and socialise candidates for elective office, they stimulate
citizen participation in politics and they help to provide political education by acting as ‘ambassadors in the community’.25 Equally, there is
a growing literature which shows that campaigning by activists stimulates turnout and increases electoral support for parties in elections.26
Equally, in a world in which party finance is increasing tightly regulated and where there is public resistance to further state aid to political
parties, they will increasingly depend on their volunteers to raise
money. Clearly, there are many important functions fulfilled by party
members which will not be effectively performed if they disappear.
At first sight it seems that if parties at the centre can continue to
operate without volunteers, then effective government will still be possible. However, there is evidence to suggest that this is not the case. It
turns out that effective governance is closely related to the extent to
which parties can attract loyalty from the voters in the form of sustaining high levels of partisan attachments in the electorate. As mentioned
earlier, partisanship measures the extent to which voters are psychologically attached to political parties, and it is a key factor in explaining
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Figure 1. The relationship between partisanship and government effectiveness in 36 countries
(r 5 10.54). Source: ISSP Citizenship Survey, 2004 and the World Bank.
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why people vote. Low levels of party identification in a particular
country mean that parties face difficulties fulfilling the functions
described earlier because they are weak. For example, if parties are
unable to aggregate interests properly, then lobbying groups are likely
to be strong and the problems of governance will arise.
The evidence for this argument appears in Figure 1. It shows that
there is a surprisingly strong relationship between levels of partisanship
in the electorate and the effectiveness of government in the world’s
democracies. The data in this figure come from the International Social
Survey Programme Citizenship survey of 2004 and from the World
Bank. It was conducted in 36 countries27 and the figure compares the
percentage of the electors who are partisans, in the sense of feeling
attached to a political party, with an index of government effectiveness.
The latter is taken from the World Bank governance indicators and is
built from multiple indicators of government effectiveness. The
measure is defined as: ‘The quality of public services, the quality of the
civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressure,
the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies’.28 The
relationship between the variables shows that where parties are widely
supported they are able to fulfil their various functions effectively, and
government in general is more effective. If parties are weak, because
large numbers of people feel no attachment to them, then government
is much less effective.
The relationships in Figure 1 do not relate directly to party
members, but they have an important role in sustaining partisanship in
these countries. Figure 2 shows that there is a positive relationship
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
255
Figure 2. The relationship between party identification and party membership in 36
countries (r 5 10.37). Source: ISSP Citizenship Survey, 2004.
Conclusions
Party membership and activism continue to decline in Britain with
almost all parties having many more former members than current
members. Long-term developments in centralising power in parties and
in professionalising the important positions are contributing towards
these trends. Research shows that members need incentives if they are
to participate, and cheer-leading is not an adequate incentive to
promote their involvement. The single biggest change that can be made
to Britain’s rather antiquated constitution that might help to turn this
situation around is to devolve power to local government and local
communities. Whitehall’s accretion of power at the centre has been
continuing for a generation or more and the dysfunctional
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between party membership and partisanship among voters. In countries
with many party members it turns out, not surprisingly, that there are
also many partisans in the electorate. Thus high levels of voluntary
activity in grassroots party organisations are likely to stimulate partisan
attachments in the wider electorate, as well as helping to build social
capital. So it is easy to see why this relationship should exist.
The implications of this finding for Britain are not good. It means
that if party membership in Britain continues to decline, this is likely
to further weaken partisanship in the electorate, and this in turn will
undermine the effectiveness of government. It is fairly clear that the
political parties need their volunteers to be effective and that if action
is not taken to reverse the current trends then governance in Britain
will suffer in the long run.
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Parliamentary Affairs
Funding
This was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.
University of Essex
UK
[email protected].
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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12
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16
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Whiteley and Seyd, op. cit., n. 1; Whiteley, Seyd and Billinghurst, op. cit., n. 1.
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consequences of this are now readily apparent. If local government had
real authority over taxing and spending instead of being overwhelmingly dependent on the centre, this would provide a significant stimulus to voluntary party organisations in Britain. It would change the
incentives for talented people to get involved in politics and in the long
run make governance more effective. In the absence of a change of this
type voluntary parties will continue to whither and in the end governance is likely to become less and less effective.
The Dynamics of Party Membership in Britain
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A. Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, Harper and Row, 1957.
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The ISSP is a continuing annual programme of cross-national collaboration on surveys covering topics
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26
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