Examining the ‘demand’ side of the market for political activism. Party and civil
society grassroots activists in Spain
Luis Ramiro (University of Murcia)
Laura Morales (University of Leicester)
Introduction
Citizen participation in civil society and political organizations is key to the functioning
of democratic polities. Civil society organizations (CSOs) ⎯ particularly those devoted
to advocacy goals ⎯ and political organizations are one of the main channels available
for citizens to express, communicate and get enacted their political preferences. In the
last decades, we have seen an increase in the study of citizen involvement in
organizations, and of its different varieties and determinants. This interest stems from
its inclusion in standard definitions of political participation, which comprise, among
other forms of political activity, citizen engagement in organizations (Nie and Verba,
1975; Verba et al. 1978; Barnes et al. 1979; Verba et al. 1995; Van Deth et al. 2007).
The recent debates around the importance of associations for democracy — particularly
their role in the production of social capital and as ‘schools of democracy’ — as well as
the discussion around the alleged crisis of political involvement in contemporary
democracies, have provided many insights to this field and kept the study of
organizational involvement at the forefront of the discipline (Cohen and Rogers 1992;
Putnam 1993; Rogers and Cohen 1995).
In parallel, the focus of scholarly interest in political parties has also moved
towards the study of membership engagement and activism, partly due to the concern
1
regarding the decline in the capacity of political parties to perform traditional functions
of societal linkage. The study of members’ recruitment, social characteristics, activities
and beliefs has extended in recent years from the well-researched British case (Seyd and
Whiteley 1992; Whiteley and Seyd 2002; Whiteley et al. 1994, 2006) to other countries
(Gallagher and Marsh 2002; Heidar and Saglie 2003; Pedersen et al. 2004; Cross and
Young 2004; van Haute and Carty 2011), and to comparative studies (Scarrow and
Gezgor 2010; Whiteley 2011; van Biezen et al. 2011). Both areas of research ⎯ the
study of involvement in CSOs and of party activism ⎯ are closely related and share
common hypotheses and models. But they are also linked in a more substantive manner.
One of the more frequent explanations to the phenomenon of party membership decline
experienced by Western parties in the past decades is that political parties have to
compete for the recruitment of members with a now more extended plethora of
associations and single-issue groups (Richardson 1995, Seyd and Whiteley 2004: 357358).1
In fact, Richardson (1995) likens these dynamics to that of a ‘market’ of
participation where citizens constitute the demand and organizations the supply and,
hence, multiple organizations compete for the activists just as firms compete for
clients.2 In this context, single-issue groups and CSOs are often thought to be more
attractive and rewarding than parties not only because they focus on narrower interests
1
This is one among several social modernization accounts of declining party membership.
The use of the market analogy is not without problems. First, multiple goods are exchanged. Citizens
can supply monetary contributions, voluntary work and human resources, or just their sheer numbers.
Organizations can supply identity, monetary compensations (e.g. jobs and positions), power, moral goods,
policy goals, etc. To the extent that multiple goods and units of value can be exchanged, it is difficult to
identify a single market. For this reason, scholars attach differently the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ labels to
the same actors in the ‘marketplace’. For example, Seyd and Whiteley (2004) argue that citizens form the
supply (in the form of activists) and organizations the demand (requiring members), while Richardson
(1995) and Jordan and Maloney (1997: 77) think that organizations form the supply (offering policy goals
and other goods) and citizens the demand. The choice depends on the angle from which the exchange
between citizens and organizations is examined. We follow the latter angle in this article.
2
2
but also because they can offer ⎯ particularly some of them ⎯ a more direct
involvement in organizational activities (Heidar 2006). Their increasing success is also
due to the fact that many of them follow marketing strategies to make their
organizations more attractive to the public, shifting perceptions about costs and
effectiveness (Jordan and Maloney 1997).
Thus, the problems facing political parties in their incapacity to attract and retain
members are manifold. On the one hand, according to Richardson (1995), parties are
unable to attract new members in an ever-more competitive marketplace for activists
because they offer an ‘old product’ that is not sufficiently appealing for an increasingly
sophisticated public. On the other hand, their efforts to ‘rebrand’ their product are not
very successful, as even if they are widening channels for participation these remain
limited (Scarrow et al. 2000). This latter argument is consistent with recent empirical
work that suggests that parties’ state entrenchment can dis-incentivise party
membership (see Whiteley 2011), as party members are no longer needed as the key
source of party resources.
However, amidst this burgeoning literature, the examination of the specific
elements that shape this alleged competition for members have been largely neglected.
Are political parties and CSOs competing for the same potential activists? Or has the
‘market’ become too segmented for parties to be able to compete realistically with
CSOs? These are the main research questions this paper seeks to address.
The ‘competitive’ relation between political parties and CSOs is affected by
multiple contextual, political and organizational factors. Many are linked to national
3
specificities of the ‘market of participation’ and to distinct organizational traditions both
within parties and associations. In this regard, we lack studies that focus on the
commonalities and differences among those who join CSOs and parties in terms of their
socio-demographic features, political socialization and political beliefs; on who joins
parties instead of associations and vice versa; on how they are recruited into parties or
CSOs; and, on differences in the intensity of their involvement.
Consequently, to address the broader issue of the existence of a single market of
political activism, we examine the following empirical questions: Which are the profiles
of party members and of the political CSO members in terms of their social and
attitudinal features? Are they recruited through different pathways? Is the intensity of
participation different in parties and political CSOs? In answering these questions we
will analyze the features of these different types of activists, and this will also help us
clarify the crucial issue of the degree to which there is a single market within which the
competition between certain political CSOs and certain parties takes place.
This study is restricted to one national setting and, within it, to a distinct set of
organizations. The analyses employ data on party members of small Spanish Green
parties and of political advocacy CSOs — including new social movement organisations
(NSMOs) — in Spain. The political organizations chosen for the analyses, irrespective
of their different goals and political preferences, are relatively similar on a number of
organizational features that are potentially relevant for the study of the core issues of
interest in this article: their goals are mainly political, they are small organizations, and
they foster members’ involvement in the daily business of the organizations.3 As such,
they are likely to recruit their members and activists among the pool of citizens who are
3
We follow Morales’ (2009: 47-48) definition of political organizations as those that seek collective
goods and whose main goal is to influence political decision-making processes.
4
(somewhat) interested in politics and express a high demand for political participation.
This choice of cases has the advantage of reducing the variability in aspects that are not
of interest for this article, while allowing us to focus on the effects of the type of
organization (parties versus political CSOs) on the profile, recruitment pathways and
engagement of activists. Indeed, if we tried to compare the activists of very large, highly
institutionalized, and not very participatory mainstream parties with those of the usually
small and very little institutionalized CSOs we would not be very surprised to find large
differences between both sets of activists. Hence, the article connects with current
debates on citizen involvement in politics that bridge the gap between the study of more
conventional channels of participation, as political parties, and the study of new social
movements and civic associations (Norris 2002).
The paper proceeds as follows: the first section provides an overview of
hypotheses and findings related to the questions that guide this article. Then we present
the data and the cases, describing the organizations analyzed. The third section presents
descriptive findings focusing in particular on activists’ social and attitudinal
characteristics, the routes into activism and their levels of activism. The fourth section
presents a multinomial multivariate model that assesses the precise commonalities and
differences among CSO and party members. In the final section, the main findings are
summarized and the implications for the wider literature are discussed.
Organizations and activism
5
There are not many pieces of research theorising about the differences and similarities
in the socio-economic profiles, attitudes and participatory patterns of CSO activists, on
the one hand, and party members, on the other. Several studies have highlighted the
relevance of gender, age, education and higher social status as factors affecting political
participation (Verba et al. 1995; Topf 1995; Schlozman et al. 1999; van Aelst and
Walgrave 2001). The availability of certain resources favours political participation and
organizational engagement. Members of voluntary associations are more likely to be
men, with higher-status jobs, highly educated and middle-aged (van Deth and Kreuter
1998). Education is key also in fostering engagement in organizations, as well as
participation in their internal decision making processes (Van Deth and Maloney 2010;
Lelieveldt 2010). The expectation is that the skills acquired through education enable a
better understanding of the political process, thus increasing the likelihood of political
participation. However, it is more difficult to imply from this that higher levels of
educational attainment should favour party membership as opposed to political CSO
membership. There is, thus, no clear expectation regarding the socio-demographic
differences between party and CSO activists on most individual level variables and, in
fact, some studies have not found significant differences among them (Norris 2002:
131-132). Indeed, the social background of Green party members resembles very much
the previously mentioned description of those engaged in CSOs. Green party members
are more frequently male (although only slightly), middle-aged, and remarkably highly
educated (Kitschelt 1989; Rüdig et al. 1991). Considering that the associations that we
will examine are political CSOs (including NSMOs), the differences in the social
background of the members of these groups and of Green parties are expected to be
relatively small.
6
A similarly well-developed strand of scholarly work shows that various
organizational traits have important consequences in terms of membership profiles and
activities. Knoke’s (1981, 1990) influential work argues that key organizational features
(e.g. goals and organizational capacity) shape the involvement of members. Our focus
in this article is on parties and political CSOs, which are organizations with, primarily,
advocacy and political goals. Yet, according to Kriesi and Baglioni’s (2003)
classification, these organizations differ in important ways: while political parties are
more likely to pursue their goals with limited involvement from members, CSOs tend to
promote membership involvement and mobilization. Consequently, we should expect
substantial gaps in the levels of participation and involvement of party and CSO
members respectively. It is, however, reasonable to assume that ⎯ given the social
movement origin of many Green parties ⎯ the participatory gap would tend to narrow
down due to the adoption by the latter of models of organization that promote grassroots
participation.
Other organizational factors, such as membership size, professionalization,
formalization, differentiation, or the existence of formal representative rules, have been
shown also to influence members’ engagement. However, the impact of some of these
traits is far from clear. For example, membership involvement is expected to be
negatively related to professionalization and institutionalization (Kriesi 2007) and to
size (Knoke 1990, Schulz 2010). In fact, group size has been placed among the main
determinants of participation since Olson’s (1965) work, and Torpe and Ferrer-Fons
(2007) relate greater member mobilization not only to smaller membership sizes, but
also to less differentiation of the management and less formalization of representation
and delegation rules. However, in a recent study, Lelieveldt (2010) does not find clear
7
evidence of the impact of factors such as formalization, and only very limited effects of
size and professionalization in lower levels of membership participation in
organizational decision-making activities.
Instead, Lelieveldt (2010), confirming Knoke’s results, finds a strong correlation
between feelings of internal efficacy ⎯ referred to the internal working of the
organization ⎯ and involvement in decision-making. We should, thus, expect to find in
our analyses this relation between internal efficacy and participation: members who
think they are more efficacious will be more active, and more active members will show
higher feelings of efficacy. We should also expect that organizational features that
promote members’ involvement (a small size and limited professionalization and
institutionalization) should also favour their efficacy. Given that the organizations we
analyse differ in these aspects—particularly in their level of institutionalization—, we
can assess whether or not these organizational differences relate to diverse degrees of
efficacy and of engagement.
Regarding other attitudes we know that CSO activists tend to be relatively more
interested in politics, more left-wing and more satisfied with democracy compared to
the general population (Van Deth and Maloney 2010: 13). This, however, does not help
to anticipate which differences should be expected in this regard among the members of
political CSOs and Green parties. We might expect that party members ⎯ even of the
less mainstream Green parties ⎯ will hold more positive evaluations of how democracy
performs, but the expectations are unclear, as Badescu and Neller (2007: 184) find that
people with ‘high levels of dissatisfaction with the way democracy works tend to be
8
more involved in organisations’, and Poguntke (1993: 94) showed very high levels of
dissatisfaction with democracy among German Green party delegates.
In sum, research in this area is somewhat theoretically ambiguous and
empirically underdeveloped. This article seeks to start filling that empirical gap and
contribute to further theorising by examining the socioeconomic, attitudinal and
participatory differences between the members of political CSOs and Green party
members.
Membership of political organizations in Spain. Cases and data
Compared to other West European countries, Spain stands out with one of the lowest
levels of political participation (Teorell et al. 2007). This situation has remained
remarkably stable in the last three decades. Engagement in the more conventional forms
of participation has remained relatively trendless: electoral participation in national
elections has fluctuated around moderate (68 per cent) to high (80 per cent) levels of
turnout, and participation in political rallies has oscillated between 5 and 15 per cent of
the adult population since the 1980s (Ramiro and Morales 2010: 77-78). The European
Social Survey confirms this comparatively low level of conventional participation. In
2002, 12 per cent of Spaniards contacted a politician or government official —
compared to an average 16 per cent in all European countries and of around 17-18 per
cent in Belgium, France and the UK — whereas in 2008 10 per cent did. In contrast,
engagement in certain forms of protest — such as signing petitions, or participating in
9
demonstrations — has increased gradually by around 10 percentage points since the
early 1980s (Morales 2005).
The picture is not very different when we focus on associational involvement.
Spain shares with other South European societies a pattern of low membership in
organizations. The Citizenship, Involvement and Democracy (CID) surveys conducted
between 1999 and 2002 show that only 42 per cent of Spaniards were members of any
association (compared to an average of 59 per cent for 13 societies), 32 per cent
participated in associational activities (compared to 42 per cent), and 16 per cent
(compared to 28 per cent) did any voluntary work (Morales and Geurts 2007: 138).
Moreover, when they join associations, Spaniards are more likely to join only one than
citizens in most other western societies, who tend to join several at a time: the average
number of memberships is 1.6 for Spain, compared to more than 3 in the Netherlands,
Switzerland or Denmark (Morales and Mota 2006: 85).
What about engagement in political organizations? Levels of political
membership in Spain are among the lowest in established western democracies, and this
has remained the case throughout the last 25 years. Membership of Spanish unions and
parties is particularly reduced (in both cases between 2 and 3 per cent according to
survey data), and it has remained stable since the 1980s.4 Membership of other types of
political organizations is also low, as NSMs have not been very successful in attracting
4
Aggregate data on party membership — for which the sources are parties — suggest that it has
increased (especially for mainstream parties) gradually, and more rapidly since the late 1980s (Verge
2007, Ramiro and Morales 2010). However, one needs to be very cautious about parties as reliable
providers of membership figures in Spain, as there is no transparency in relation to their membership
records and they are periodically disputed by internal factions. Survey data suggest that party membership
has remained stable over time and — given the vested interest of parties in claiming ever-increasing
memberships — we think surveys are more reliable in this case.
10
members, with only around 3 and 4 per cent of followers during most of that same
period.
This empirical evidence aside, political membership in Spain is notably underresearched and, particularly, party membership is rarely studied (but see Méndez and
Santamaría 2001, Baras 2004, and Méndez et al. 2004). Given that CSOs and political
parties are the main channels of interest articulation and political intermediation, and
that they are essentially membership organizations, this large gap in scholarly research
about who are the members of these organizations and what they do in the specific
Spanish case is disappointing. Hence, this study addresses these relevant questions for
the first time for the Spanish case.
The data used in this article come from surveys conducted in Spain to the
members of political parties and CSOs. Given the low levels of engagement in
organizations in Spain, this is the only way to ensure a sufficient number of members of
these specific types of groups in a survey sample, as general surveys to the public
render very few cases. We use two sources of information: a survey to members of
CSOs conducted within the Spanish study of the cross-national CID project in 2002,
and a survey to Green party members in Spain within the Comparative Green Parties
Members research project (2003-2006). Both surveys are targeting non-nationally based
organizations, which suits well our needs, given that Green parties in Spain are not
nationwide organizations.
The fieldwork of the CID survey to CSO members was conducted in three
stages: first, all the associations in 6 Spanish towns and districts of large cities were
11
searched, identified and listed;5 second, a questionnaire on the activities and
organization of each of the associations identified was sent to its representative; and
third, a questionnaire was sent to up to 20 members of the associations that responded in
the previous step.6 Overall, 256 associations that responded to the questionnaire in step
two collaborated with the survey to their members, and a total of 1,272 members of
those associations responded in step three. The response rate for the collaboration of
associations was 67 per cent, while the response rate for individual members was 27 per
cent.
The data from both questionnaires were pooled into a single dataset, so the
answers provided by the associational leaders enables us to classify the organizations
according to two key aspects that allow distinguishing ‘political’ CSOs: the areas in
which the associations act, and the kind of activities they regard as more central to
them. We selected those associations that: (1) declare as their main area of activity one
linked to the NSMs fields (peace, environment, animal rights, human rights, women
rights and homosexual rights), or (2) declare that two of the most important activities of
the association were either (i) representing interests and mobilizing members, or (ii)
lobbying public authorities and mobilizing members. From this selection, we excluded
the few local branches of political parties and shopkeepers’ associations that were
interviewed by the CID project as part of the local civil society.7 This selection of
‘political’ CSOs produces a total of 198 respondents. Hence, from the CID study of
5
The locations where the surveys were conducted were: Alcalá de Henares, in the region of Madrid;
Andoain and Deusto (a district of Bilbao), in the Basque Country; and Caldes de Montbui, Sabadell and
Gracia (a district of Barcelona) in Catalonia.
6
For methodological details see van Deth and Maloney (2010), and Montero et al. (2006).
7
The number of individuals excluded due to disregarding local party branches in our selection of
‘political’ CSOs is very small (15). Since the goal of our study is to compare the profiles of CSO
members to those of Green party members in Spain, they introduced inconsistency in our definitions.
Shopkeepers’ associations were excluded as they are too different from the CSOs generally regarded as
‘competing’ with Green political parties for activists.
12
Spanish local associations we are selecting only those politically-oriented organizations
that foster membership involvement and that can be regarded as closest to the Spanish
Green parties in terms of the citizens that are likely to be attracted to them. Once this
selection is made, our analyses focus on the responses provided by the individual
members of this subsample of political organizations gathered through the questionnaire
conducted in step three of the CID survey.8
Turning to the survey of Green party members, three small regional Green
parties are included in our analyses: Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV, Initiative for
Catalonia Greens), Los Verdes de Andalucía (LVA, The Greens of Andalusie) and Los
Verdes del País Valenciano (LVPV, The Greens of the Valencian Country). Spain is a
case of failure in the process of building a nationwide Green party9, and the three cases
we study are among the most successful regional Green parties in Spain. They have
obtained representation in the national (ICV and LVA), regional (ICV, LVA and
LVPV) and European (ICV and LVPV) parliaments, and all of them have gained
representation at the local level. ICV and LVA have been included in governing
coalitions of their respective regions: ICV was allocated up to two regional ministers,
whereas LVA was allocated subministerial positions. In addition to their relative
success in gaining elected office, these three parties are relatively similar in terms of
their organizational stability when compared to the (mis)fortunes of other Spanish
8
It is important to clarify that in a first step we select the types of CSOs defined as ‘political’ and in a
second step all members from those CSOs that were interviewed are added to our subsample for CSO
members. We do not do a further selection of individuals to ensure that they are only CSO members. In
fact, 17 per cent of them were involved in some way with a political party (donated, participated in
activities or volunteered time), but none was a member of a political party at the time of interview.
Equally, all members of ICV and the smaller Green parties that responded to the survey are included in
our analyses, and indeed some of them are also members of ‘political’ CSOs.
9
In 2011 a new nationwide Green party called Equo stood for the Spanish general elections.
13
regional Green parties.10 Moreover, all three parties favour democratic internal
procedures that promote grassroots involvement more than most other Spanish parties.
This is part of their core ideological principles, and whereas LVA and LVPV can
implement them easily — given their extremely small membership size and
organizational informality — the record of ICV in this regard is also remarkable given
its greater institutionalization.
However, these parties are also different in several important regards. Their
trajectories are very diverse: while ICV is the result of the process of transformation —
between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s — of the former Communist party of
Catalonia into a Green party; LVA and LVPV are small Green parties created originally
around a handful of environmental activists in the 1980s. ICV is much larger and
stronger — in membership, experience of government at the local level, and
representation in parliaments and local councils — than the other two Green parties.
ICV had in 2006 some 5,000 members,11 while LVA and LVPV only had a few
hundreds. While ICV has been a continuously relevant actor in the Catalan party system
on its own merits, LVA and LVPV have gained access to office mainly through
electoral agreements with the radical left-wing Izquierda Unida (IU, United Left) and
with the PSOE (the Spanish Socialist Workers Party). Therefore, even if ICV is a small
organization, it is far more institutionalized than the extremely small and not very
formalized LVA and LVPV.
10
Some readers might view this as ‘selection bias’, yet these three cases are the only ones for which a
study of party membership is feasible, given the extreme weakness and absence of organizational
formalization of other small regional Green parties.
11
The membership of ICV (formerly IC) has fluctuated. In 1989 they claimed 11,428 members, the figure
dropped to 6,056 in 1991, increased to 7,197 in 1996, dropped again to 4,025 in 2000, and stabilised
around 5,000 in the mid-2000s (Rius 2005: 15).
14
The data on these parties’ members come from separate membership surveys
that share a large proportion of the questionnaire. In the case of ICV we undertook a
postal survey to a simple random sample of members. In the case of LVA and LVPV,
given the looseness of their organizations and the absence of a reliable centralized
membership file, we followed a more flexible selection strategy. For the LVA a
questionnaire was sent to all the members by post or, in some cases, it was delivered in
hand with the help of party activists. In the case of LVPV a questionnaire was
distributed to every party member during the party conference to which all party
members were called. The response rates were 38 per cent for LVPV (38 questionnaires
over a total membership of around 100), 24 per cent for LVA (73 questionnaires out of
300 members) and 25 per cent for ICV (304 questionnaires over a sample of 1,200
members).12 In all analyses we show the results for LVA and LVPV jointly under the
label ‘small Greens’ and the ones for ICV and the political CSOs separately.
In summary, both the CSOs and the political parties that we focus on are similar
in several regards, while still sufficiently distinct for comparisons to be interesting.13
First, they expect and offer the possibility of direct member involvement, in sharp
contrast with many other political parties and ‘checkbook’ CSOs. Second, they are
relatively small in size, and not very professionalized. Yet, there is some variation in
12
The LVA and LVPV surveys were part of the Comparative Green Parties Members project led by Prof.
Wolfgang Rüdig and funded by The British Academy. For the LVA and LVPV we used the common
questionnaire of that project. For ICV, not included in that project, that questionnaire was adapted to
make it more similar to the CID questionnaire. Therefore, in some parts of our analyses, when the
questions studied were not asked for LVA and LVPV, the comparison will only be between CSO activists
and ICV activists. The surveys were conducted in 2003 (LVA and LVPV) and 2006 (ICV).
13
The comparison of CSO members stemming from the CID survey to activists with the members of the
three Green parties (ICV, LVA and LVPV) is not intended to suggest that these specific organizations are
competing for these particular individuals in the samples. Our intention is, rather, to examine the
underlying socio-demographic and attitudinal profiles of both pools of activists, in the understanding that
the fact that the surveys were conducted in non-fully overlapping regions in Spain is insubstantial for our
purposes. Previous scholarship has concluded that the differences across regions in levels and patterns of
participation and associational activism, as well as in the activities and functions performed by
associations are, at best, modest (Font et al. 2006a: 336-337; Font et al. 2006b: 255).
15
this respect, as 70 per cent of political CSOs in our sample have up to 300 members —
and, hence, a minority have larger memberships — and, among the three parties, LVA
has around 300 members, LVPV around 100, while ICV has around 5,000.14 Equally,
they all are hardly professionalized, but ICV counts with numerous paid party staff
compared to the political CSOs (with a mean number of two members of paid staff) and
to the extremely weak LVA and LVPV. We expect that these differences in size and
professionalization will have consequences on members’ involvement and internal
efficacy. Finally, in most cases, the similarities extend to their ideological outlook.
Green parties and many of the political CSOs included in our study — especially those
related to NSMs — share an ideological preference and emphasis for participatory and
democratic internal functioning (Kitschelt 1989, 2006).
We now turn to the analysis of the socioeconomic, attitudinal and participatory
profiles of the members of all these Green parties and political CSOs. Is this a single
‘market’ of potential activists for which parties and CSOs compete?
Who are the members? Background, attitudes and pathways to activism
Are members of Green parties and political CSOs extracted from the same pool of
citizens? Or, are they different in terms of their socio-demographic profiles, political
attitudes, socialization and pathways to activism?
14
The size of Spanish associations is relatively small, as most of them have less than 250 members
(Méndez and Mota 2006).
16
Table 1 describes the socio-demographic characteristics of the activists of these
organizations, and some important differences between all Green parties and the
political CSO memberships arise. One of the most striking ones is their radically
different composition in terms of gender. While the gender composition is balanced in
political CSOs, women are considerably under-represented in the parties to an extent
similar to female under-representation in most other Spanish parties (Valiente et al.
2003). That women are a minority in political parties’ rank and file is a very well
documented phenomenon; what is more surprising is that this under-representation is
also sizeable in small parties with a strong ideology of gender equality. This might be
partly due to Spanish parties — as in other countries — not adapting the timing of
activities to the needs of women with families, but this is clearly not the only relevant
factor. Whereas for ICV there is close to a gender balance for the cohort between 16 and
30 years old (48 per cent women and 52 per cent men) — equivalent to the gender
distribution in that cohort for CSOs (49 per cent female) —, the smaller Green parties
show a large gender gap among the youngest, with only 36 per cent of women. Thus,
the gender gaps are not just a matter of problematic conciliation between politics and
family life. The share of women dramatically drops to 26 per cent for the 31 to 44
years-old cohort in all Green parties, while 53 per cent of the CSO members in that age
group are women.
An equally noteworthy difference between CSOs and parties is the higher
proportion of university graduates among party members. All activists are
disproportionately highly educated, but more than 3 out of 4 party members are
graduates whereas only 1 out of 2 in CSOs are. The differences in the employment
situation and age structure of the members is less sharp. A large majority of activists
17
work full time, and there are small variations around the success in attracting retired
people and students. Equally, all organizations attract fundamentally the middle-aged
groups and display a relatively similar age structure of their membership base, though
ICV is less able to attract younger individuals — although members of the youth
organization of ICV were included in the sample. This suggests that the young are more
appealed by more direct forms of political involvement — such as those offered by
political CSOs and the very small Greens — and are more reluctant to join the
somewhat larger and more professionalized Green parties, such as ICV.
***** TABLE 1 AROUND HERE *********
How and when did the activists join these organizations? Is their political
socialization background different? Table 2 shows the responses to some items that
address these questions.
There are no substantial differences in the political socialization background of
the members of Spanish Greens and political CSOs, either in terms of the frequency of
political discussion at home during childhood or their parents’ engagement in voluntary
organizations. Moreover, there is a common pattern with regard to which are the three
main pathways to political activism: a suggestion from a friend/relative, the individuals’
own initiative, and while attending a local meeting. However, social contacts
(requests/suggestions by a relative or friend) are more frequent pathways for joining
political CSOs, whereas personal initiative is a more common second path to party
membership. This suggests the existence of a more proactive behaviour by political
CSOs and their social networks to attract members, and a more passive behaviour from
18
parties who rely more on their greater visibility to the general public. Indeed, Spanish
parties don’t issue periodical membership recruitment drives as parties do in other
countries (Méndez et al. 2004), and very rarely citizens get asked directly to join a
political party, unless they happen to visit the party website.
************ TABLE 2 AROUND HERE **************
With regard to length of membership, as Table 2 shows, the three organizations
differ notably. The majority of members of the smaller Greens have joined very recently
(despite the existence of these parties since the late 1980s), while the majority of ICV
members have been affiliated for more than 10 years — a sign of membership loyalty
for a small and rapidly changing party. The political CSOs have a more stable
membership than the organizationally loose and weak small Greens, but markedly more
recent than the more institutionalized ICV.
However, it is in relation to some political attitudes that the differences between
members of political CSOs and all Green parties are largest (Table 3). Activists are leftleaning in all cases — with ICV and Green members expressing slightly more leftist
positions — but the differences in their feelings of internal political efficacy and
satisfaction with democracy are remarkable. Party members show very high levels of
internal political efficacy, which sharply contrast with the feelings of inefficacy of
political CSOs activists. Even accounting for wording differences across the two items
(see footnote to Table 3), the distribution of responses is vastly different, hence
indicating that party members and political CSO activists are partly choosing
19
organizations based on their feelings of what is politically efficacious action.15 This
conclusion is reinforced by the fact that members of both the smaller Green parties and
of ICV believe that working in a political party is a more effective way of influencing
decisions in society than working in voluntary organizations.16 In contrast, the members
of the smaller and less institutionalized political CSOs and the smaller Green parties are
more ‘critical’ with democracy than the members of the more institutionalized and
formalized ICV, thus suggesting that political efficacy and satisfaction with democracy
lead citizens to different choices.17
************ TABLE 3 AROUND HERE **************
In summary, Green party members do not differ much from political CSO
members in their social background, except for the under-representation of women
among the former and the younger age profile of the latter. However, there are sharp
differences in the attitudinal outlook of both types of activists, with political CSO
members more closely resembling the stereotypical ‘critical’ citizen (Norris 1999).
15
The existence of large differences in political efficacy between CSO and party members are
corroborated when we replicate the analyses with a nationally representative sample of Spanish residents
undertaken by the CID project (CIS study 2450) and the same item is used for all respondents. On a 0-10
scale to the question “How large possibilities do ordinary people have to present their opinions to
politicians?”, the average value for CSO members is 3.1, whereas it is 4.9 for party members. In this
regard, CSO members are as pessimistic as the vast majority of Spaniards with no such organisational
affiliations (average value of 2.8).
16
In a 0-10 scale of efficacy, ICV members assign an average value of 7.0 to voluntary groups and 7.7 to
political parties (significant for p≤0.001) and smaller Green party members 6.8 and 7.2 respectively
(significant for p≤0.1). Unfortunately, this question — included in the international CID questionnaire to
activists — was dropped by the CID Spanish team, and is not available for CSO members. Yet, the same
question was included in the nationally representative sample to Spanish residents cited in the previous
footnote (CIS study 2450), and the results indicate that CSO members attribute a very low efficacy to
working in political parties (4.6 in a 0-10 scale, compared to 7.6 scored by party members), whereas they
afford a much higher efficacy to working in voluntary organizations (7.3, compared to 7.8 assigned by
party members). Hence, there is a huge gap in the views that CSO members hold of the efficacy of
voluntary associations and of parties, whereas party members find both types of organisations similarly
effective in bringing about changes in society.
17
The questionnaires to the three Green party members did not include the item on political interest.
However, it is safe to assume that a large majority of Green party members will indeed be very interested
in politics. For the members of political CSOs, 58 per cent were very or fairly interested in politics.
20
What do they do? The internal and external activity of party and political CSO
members
The actual relevance of political organizations for the representation of citizens’
preferences will depend on the degree to which members are really involved in their
functioning (Pedersen et al. 2004). We are primarily interested in learning whether
members’ degree of activism differs across political organizations that share the goal of
promoting members’ involvement. As we show, political CSOs and Green parties
attract members with relatively similar backgrounds, but we should expect that different
organizations will steer differently the intensity and forms of activity according to their
own organizational traditions (Heidar 2006), and depending on their size and degree of
institutionalization.
Figure 1 displays the distribution of the time spent in organizational activities
monthly. The results indicate that, as expected, the larger Green party, ICV, hosts a
greater number of relatively passive members: one third spends less than one hour per
month, and almost half spends less than 4. Although these results would indicate high
levels of passivity, they are not such when compared to the degree of party activism in
other countries and parties. For example, in Britain the percentage of members devoting
no time to party activities frequently exceeds 50 (Seyd and Whiteley 2004: 359), and in
the Denmark, for most parties, more than half of party members spend no time at all on
party activities (Pedersen et al. 2004: 375).18 Given that political parties increasingly
18
For the Danish Red-Green Alliance — the party most similar to the ones we study — members who
devote no time to the party are 37 per cent.
21
rely in capital intensive activities, finding relatively high proportions of passive
members is hardly surprising. However, we should also expect, as the results confirm,
that the smaller Green parties should rely more than other parties in activist work as
they are more labour-dependent: although 20 per cent of their members are passive, the
majority of them devote more than 10 hours per month to their parties. Also, in line
with expectations, the distribution of the time devoted by political CSO members to
their organizations is symmetrically the reverse to that of ICV, with increasing
percentages of members spending a growing number of hours on organizational
activities. Therefore, although it relies on a relatively active rank and file, the larger and
more institutionalized Green party (ICV) is much less participatory than the small
political CSOs and the smaller and more loosely organized Greens.
********* FIGURE 1 AROUND HERE **************
The members of political CSOs also show a stronger belief in their chances to
influence organizational decisions: in a 0-10 scale the average for political CSO
members is 6 whereas it is 4 for ICV members.19 Consequently, political CSOs not only
have a more active membership but also a more participatory functioning that fosters
feelings of efficacy vis à vis the organization. This is particularly relevant because
perceptions of organizational influence have been found to be fundamental in
accounting for degrees of activism in Spain (Medina and Ramiro 2006: 299). Our
findings are consistent with the hypotheses that suggest that feelings of efficacy within
the organization are related to internal involvement, as both are higher in political CSOs
and lower in the more institutionalized ICV. At the same time, they are also consistent
19
The item was not included in the questionnaire to the smaller Green parties.
22
with previous findings that smaller and less professionalized organizations produce
stronger feelings of efficacy.
However, this portrayal of members’ internal engagement must be
complemented with an examination of involvement in multiple forms of political action.
Most of these must be viewed as external rather than strictly internal organizational
activities. We consider a range of actions, from the very traditional and conventional to
some increasingly common but ‘newer’ and non-conventional actions (Table 4). For
most of the activities the percentages of members involved are high, confirming that
these are indeed notably politically engaged grassroots members and organizations.
Nevertheless, the members of the three Green parties are more active than the members
of the political CSOs in most activities. In fact, there are only three activities in which
the members of political CSOs participate more than the members of ICV: strikes,
illegal protests and violent protests.
The result for participation in strikes is unexpected, given the close relations that
the Catalan Greens of ICV maintain with the labour movement as a result of their EcoSocialist ideology and their roots in the Catalan Communism. ICV has always
supported the unions and the general and strikes called in Spain. The relatively higher
participation in some non-conventional, illegal and violent actions of political CSOs
members is explained by the inclusion in our sample of political CSOs of a full range of
NSMOs. Although ICV is a Green party, it is an institutionalized one, with participation
in regional and local governments, and accordingly its members are less involved in the
more confrontational forms of political action. Thus, the results shown in Table 4
23
suggest that party members — despite their greater passivity in organizational activities
— are no less prone to engage in political action than members of political CSOs.
************ TABLE 4 AROUND HERE ************
Similarly, the members of political CSOs engage in political discussion much
less than the members of ICV (Table 5). This variable is often considered a ‘proxy’ for
political interest (van Deth 2000), but also as a politically relevant behaviour through
which social and political activists can shape the political views of their peers. Our
results support the view that party members behave more frequently as opinion formers
(Seyd and Whiteley 2004: 362). This divergence between both groups of activists is
particularly large in the frequency of political discussion with other members of the
organization: in political CSOs 34 per cent discuss politics with other members, while
the figure is 83 per cent for ICV rank and file.
************ TABLE 5 AROUND HERE ************
In summary, the members of the larger Green party face the known constraints
for internal activism of the more formalized and institutionalized political parties, and
hence their levels of involvement in internal activities are much diminished when
compared to the members of the smaller and more loosely organized Greens or the
political CSOs. Yet, this is solely a reflection of the organizational dynamics that
pervade larger parties, as Green party members are more politically engaged and active
than CSO members in most forms of political action and in daily political
conversations.
24
The differences between Green parties and political CSO members. An assessment
In previous pages we have described the social and attitudinal backgrounds of Green
parties and political CSO members, their pathways to membership, and some patterns of
their political behaviour. Some of these variables are also important in ascertaining
whether they indeed form part of the same ‘market for activism’ in which Green parties
and political CSOs are thought to compete for the recruitment of members.
For this purpose, we have created a pooled dataset with the common variables in
all the surveys. This pooled dataset includes only the variables that can be safely
identified as antecedents to organizational membership: the indicators on their social,
economic and attitudinal backgrounds. We have excluded the behavioural indicators
related to the activities of the individuals once they have become members, as viewing
these as antecedents of membership is problematic. We, then, employ multivariate
analysis to assess the degree of similarity among members of the three types of
organizations.
Table 6 presents the results of multinomial logistic models. The dependent
variable is a categorical indicator of membership in each of the three types of
organizations: political CSOs, the larger Green party ICV, and the smaller Greens. We
provide the three contrasts produced by the model. As we expected from previous
descriptive
results,
and
despite
differences
in
professionalization
and
institutionalization, ICV and Green members resemble each other more on a number of
25
traits than they do to CSO members. In terms of their socio-demographics, the members
of all parties are more likely to be male, and less likely to be students. Additionally,
ICV members tend to be older and better educated than CSO members. In contrast,
Green and ICV members are hardly distinguishable from their socio-economic profile,
thus indicating that they recruit from the same pool of citizens.
************ TABLE 6 AROUND HERE ************
Yet, the sharpest and (possibly) more interesting differences between party and
CSO members lie in their political attitudes and orientations. Even when controlling for
socio-economic characteristics, party members are hugely different to CSO members in
their much stronger feelings of political efficacy, which are again stronger for the
smaller Green parties than for ICV members. This seems to indicate that citizens who
believe they can make a difference are much more likely to join political parties,
whereas those who are sceptical about their political influence are more likely to join
CSOs, regardless of which of the two types of members are more realistic about their
ability to influence the political process. Moreover, our data (not shown here) suggest
that length of membership does not significantly modify the perceptions of personal
political efficacy, hence indicating that these different views are not the result of
socialization processes within the organizations and rather pre-existing at the time of
joining.
In contrast, satisfaction with democracy plays a very different role in the
segmentation of the market for grassroots political activism in Spain. ICV members
express a greater satisfaction with democracy than both CSO members and smaller
26
Green party members, and members of the smaller Green parties are much more
dissatisfied than both CSO and ICV members. This suggests that, while feeling
politically efficacious about themselves and about joining political parties, people who
join smaller Green parties are much more critical and disgruntled than those who join
the larger and more institutionalized ICV. Yet, some feedback effect of the more
institutionalised role of ICV and of its more central role in Catalan mainstream politics
might be at play, as in separate analyses (not shown) we have found that satisfaction
with democracy moderately increases with longer membership tenures in ICV, while it
is unaffected by length of membership for smaller Green parties and CSO members.
This suggests that these differences in attitudes pre-dated the moment of joining, even if
they are partly also shaped by some of their experiences as members.
Finally, ideological differences are evident between ICV members and both the
members of CSO and smaller Green parties, whereas they are not significant between
the latter two. Clearly, citizens who join ICV are more left-wing than those who join
smaller Green parties and CSOs, particularly because the self-positioning on the leftright scale is unaffected by the length of membership.
Overall, the differences between party members and CSO members are
numerous, and in some cases notable; whereas they are much more reduced between the
three Green parties. Thus, while all Green parties seem to share the same segment of the
market for political activism it is much more questionable that these parties are
competing for the same share of the activists’ market than politically-oriented CSOs.
We discuss the implications of these findings in the concluding section.
27
Conclusions
In the last decade, scholars and pundits have questioned the vitality of the civil
society and of political organizations, and have pointed to the undesirable consequences
of these weaknesses. There is a widespread consensus among party scholars that party
membership is in decline in most of Western Europe. Besides other supply- and
demand-side explanations, many have argued that there is an increasing competition
between parties and CSOs for the recruitment of members and activists. For multiple
reasons, the latter are thought to be more attractive for the citizens and this would
accelerate the drop in party membership figures.
Yet, there are very few empirical studies that assess this claim. Is there really a
single market for political activism in which parties and CSOs compete? Or is the
market already so segmented that it is of little value to continue using this analogy? Our
study of the membership of political and NSM-related CSOs and of several Green
parties suggests that there are some commonalities, but also some important differences
between party and CSO members in Spain. Members of all these organizations resemble
each other in their age structure, employment situation, political socialization and
recruitment pathways. However, they also differ in relevant socio-economic features,
such as gender and educational attainment, and substantially in their political attitudes
and degree of politicization. Spanish political parties — even the more grassrootsoriented ones in the ‘market’ — are still only (or primarily) successful in attracting
mostly highly educated middle-aged men who feel they can make a difference in
politics. Some of these parties will be able to cater for the more critical and dissatisfied
28
with how democracy works — the smaller and less institutionalized parties are more
successful in this than the larger and more institutionalized ones — but they seem to
have a real (maybe insurmountable?) difficulty in attracting and retaining women and
those who feel that politicians won’t listen to them. In fact, given their size and limited
professionalization, one would expect the smaller Green parties to be precisely the sort
of parties that can offer a ‘new product’ in the marketplace for political activism. Yet,
this does not seem to be the case in Spain, and when these parties become larger and
more institutionalized — as is the case of ICV — the pool of citizens they are able to
recruit is clearly different to that of CSOs.
What does all this tell us about the larger picture of the current crisis of party
membership? In our view, this paints a rather gloomy picture for the chances that
political parties have of being able to counterbalance the current trends in declining
membership — if they are, indeed, concerned about this at all, which is a related but
different matter. Green parties, with their emphasis in grassroots activism and internal
participatory democracy are possibly among the best placed to compete in this market
for political activists with CSOs, and even they don’t seem to fare that well. It might be
that if political parties keep trying (harder) to ‘rebrand’ themselves they might still be
able to convince citizens that they are still worth their time and efforts, but it seems
more likely that it might be as futile as trying to convince vegetarians to buy meat. And
if this is the case, we might wonder whether conceiving the current challenges that
political parties are facing with declining memberships as one of a market for political
activism in which they compete with CSOs is heuristically useful.
29
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36
TABLES AND FIGURE
Table 1. Socio-economic background of political CSOs and Green parties activists
(percentages)
Political
CSOs
Small
Greens
ICV
Male
Female
N
49
51
(196)
74
25
(110)
68
32
(304)
16-30
31-44
45-64
65 or over
N
Mean
21
28
36
15
(197)
46
20
35
42
3
(110)
41
16
22
53
10
(304)
48
Highest level of education attained
University
Other degree
N
49
51
(195)
78
22
(110)
77
23
(287)
Gender
Age
Current employment status
Employed full-time
54
64
68
Employed part-time
8
6
3
Self-employed
-6
6
Unemployed
4
6
3
Homemaker
5
4
1
Retired
19
0
14
Student
9
12
4
Other
2
1
2
N
(195)
(110)
(302)
Note: The self-employed are contained in the ‘Employed full-time’ and ‘Employed part-time’ categories.
37
Table 2. Political socialization and recruitment pathways (percentages)
Political
CSOs
Frequency of political discussion/conversations at home
during childhood/adolescence
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
Parental involvement during respondents’ childhood
/adolescence in any association or organization?
Yes, both of them
Yes, the father
Yes, the mother
No, none of them
Did not grow with parents
How respondent joined the organization
A family member/friend suggested to join
After reading published material about the organization
As result of a telephone or mail campaign
At a local meeting
In an event organized by the organization
Contacted the organization and requested membership
form
After watching a TV show
Other
Small
Greens
n.a.
29
31
21
19
(198)
ICV
35
26
25
13
(302)
n.a.
12
18
4
65
1
(197)
12
14
3
70
1
(299)
n.a.
47
6
0
20
4
12
35
2
0
14
4
29
0
11
(196)
1
15
(269)
Length of membership (in years)
0-2
3-5
6-10
11-15
More than 15
Mean
n.a.= item not available in questionnaire.
38
23
21
28
15
13
(188)
8
56
10
12
12
11
(103)
5
18
14
15
12
41
(294)
11
Table 3. Political attitudes
Political
CSOs
Small
Greens
ICV
Mean
3
(190)
2
(106)
2
(300)
Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
0
1
26
34
37
(198)
30
56
11
4
(108)
18
64
11
6
1
(294)
3
23
48
25
(196)
3
13
51
33
(111)
4
53
39
4
(299)
Self-positioning in the left-right scale (0-10 range)
Internal political efficacy, %
Satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in Spain, %
Very satisfied
Fairly satisfied
Not very satisfied
Not at all satisfied
Note: The wording of the question on internal political efficacy for the three Green parties was “People
like me can have a real influence on politics if they are prepared to get involved”, with the response set
shown in the table. The wording of the question on internal political efficacy in the CSOs questionnaire
was “How large possibilities do ordinary people have to present their opinions to politicians?” and
respondents were presented with a 0-10 scale that we recoded into these five categories (0-1=Strongly
disagree; 2-3=Disagree; 4-6=Neither agree nor disagree; 7-8=Agree; 9-10=Strongly agree).
39
Table 4. Engagement in political activities in the last 12 months, percentage
Contacted a politician or civil servant
Contacted an association or organization
Worked/helped in a political party
Worked in a political action group
Attended a political meeting or rally
Signed a petition
Took part in a demonstration
Took part in a strike
Boycotted or bought certain products for political, ethical or
environmental reasons
Political
CSOs
44
(196)
69
(197)
12
(195)
56
(196)
31
(195)
71
(195)
56
(194)
48
(195)
41
Small
Greens
n.a.
n.a.
81
(108)
89
(110)
74
(110)
94
(106)
n.a.
71
ICV
56
(292)
79
(294)
67
(297)
90
(294)
85
(295)
78
(300)
14
(291)
50
(195)
(106)
(297)
49
n.a.
68
(191)
(294)
Participated in illegal protest activities
17
n.a.
9
(195)
(296)
Participated in any form of violent protest
4
n.a.
1
(195)
(297)
Note: For LVA and LVPV, we have adapted several questions in which respondents were asked for the
frequency with which they did certain activities; the original four categories scale (Never, Rarely,
Occasionally, and Frequently) was transformed into a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response (Never/Rarely=No;
Occasionally/Frequently=Yes).
Donated money
40
Table 5. Frequency of political discussion (percentages)
Political CSOs
ICV
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
33
38
16
12
(194)
60
37
3
1
(300)
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
25
43
18
14
(191)
38
49
11
1
(297)
17
43
23
17
(185)
39
45
15
2
(293)
34
28
21
17
(189)
83
12
2
3
(295)
With friends
With family
With co-workers, colleagues, or fellow students
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
With other members of the organization
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
41
Table 6. Multinomial logistic models of membership in parties and CSOs (logit
coefficients)
ICV vs CSOs
Small Greens vs Small Greens vs
CSOs
ICV
Intercept
-4.73 (0.87) **
-6.49 (1.04) **
-1.76 (0.80) *
SES variables
Gender=male
0.87 (0.34) *
1.36 (0.41) *
0.49 (0.31)
Age (ref.=45-64 years)
16-30
1.13 (0.61)
1.28 (0.68)
0.15 (0.42)
31-44
-0.62 (0.41)
0.03 (0.46)
0.66 (0.31) *
65+
1.92 (0.95) *
1.47 (1.57)
-0.46 (1.34)
University degree
1.43 (0.40) **
1.09 (0.46)
-0.34 (0.34)
Retired
-1.42 (0.81)
-2.87 (1.31) *
-1.44 (1.12)
Student
-1.81 (0.82) *
-2.08 (0.92) *
-0.26 (0.67)
Attitudinal variables
Internal pol efficacy
8.93 (0.87) **
10.99 (1.07) **
2.06 (0.78) **
Satisfaction w/ democracy
1.79 (0.77) *
-2.66 (0.90) **
-4.45 (0.63) **
Left-right ideol. scale
-0.63 (0.13) **
-0.24 (0.14)
0.38 (0.10) **
No of cases
Pseudo R2
* p≤ 0.05 ** p≤ 0.01
565
0.496
42
Figure 1. Time spent on the organization per month
35
30
percentage
25
20
15
10
5
0
Less than 1 hour
1-4 hours
ICV
5-10 hours
Greens
43
11-20 hours
Political CSOs
More than 20
hours