The expanding party universe: Patterns of partisan engagement in Australia and the United Kingdom

Although membership is declining, parties continue to perform roles central to democratic governance in modern societies. Given this seeming paradox, we suggest that partisan identification, in complementing studies of formal membership, is a promising way of assessing the strength of parties’ democratic linkage. Using data from an original survey of voters in Australia and the United Kingdom, we analyse the participatory and demographic profiles of party supporters. We show that there are significant differences between supporters and those not committed to any party, as well as between supporters based on the strength of their party identification, substantiating the idea that parties can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles of increasing engagement but declining representativeness. Stronger supporters are more likely to engage with parties online, volunteer and donate, but are older, more likely to be male and less likely to be foreign-born. Our findings have important implications for democratic practice as parties seek to expand and rejuvenate their networks of affiliates

What does the new charities (protection and social investment) act mean for the voluntary sector?

The Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 was passed this year, and introduced a range of measures including the empowerment of the Charities Commission to ‘crack down’ on potential abuses of the sector from financial abuses. Here, Nicole Bolleyer and Anika Gauja look at the practical impact of the legislation, and ask what the bill means for the voluntary sector

Partiforskning i komparativ politik

How are party organisations studied within political science, and in particular, within comparative politics? In this article, we sketch out the tradition and main research contributions and provide theoretical reflections on how parties organize. We address the thesis of party decline of the 1980s and 1990s, and point to the focus on party change, rather than decline, from then on. We show the wealth of party organization studies and focus on the comparative studies, the specialization into subfields of party leadership, candidate nomination, party membership and party financing, and in the final section we point to the newest tendencies of personalization, new forms of affiliation and links to social movements. The overall conclusion is that the research field of political party organizations within comparative politics is, like political science in general, becoming more heterogeneous, specialized and quantified. Fewer general monographs and more journal articles dealing with a limited number of party organization characteristics are published, and while the qualitative research methods have not disappeared, they have given way to much more quantitative studies. There is a link between, on the one hand, how parties of the real world organize as well as the data that researchers have access to, and on the other hand, how the research field develops

Justifying the constitutional regulation of political parties : a framework for analysis

What are the main reasons behind the regulation of political parties by contemporary constitutional practices? This article presents a framework for analysis which identifies types of justifications and actors involved in the process of regulation and their further influence on the outcomes of constitutionalization. The empirical focus is on the revelatory case of Luxembourg, which amended the constitution for the sole reason of giving parties constitutional status. The analysis suggests that the constitutional regulation of political parties depends on their current interests and power status. Additionally, the paper draws attention to the involvement of external actors and nevertheless to the changing nature of contemporary constitutionalism

Party rules, party resources, and the politics of parliamentary democracies: how parties organize in the 21st Century

This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database (PPDB) project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project’s first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this paper we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focussing on parties’ resources, structures and internal decision-making. We examine organizational patterns by country and party family, and where possible we make temporal comparisons with older datasets. Our analyses suggest a remarkable coexistence of uniformity and diversity. In terms of the major organizational resources on which parties can draw, such as members, staff and finance, the new evidence largely confirms the continuation of trends identified in previous research: i.e., declining membership, but enhanced financial resources and more paid staff. We also find remarkable uniformity regarding the core architecture of party organizations. At the same time, however, we find substantial variation between countries and party families in terms of their internal processes, with particular regard to how internally democratic they are, and in the forms that this democratization takes

Ni crisis ni panaceas: dinámicas y transformaciones de los sistemas partidarios en América Latina

A nivel global, tanto en la literatura especializada como en el debate público, la desafección ciudadana hacia la cosa pública, el debilitamiento de los partidos políticos y el aumento de la abstención contribuyeron a asentar la idea de una crisis de los sistemas de partidos y de la democracia. Diferentes indicadores darían cuenta de esta crisis: el desarraigo social de los partidos que consagró el modelo del partido cartel (Katz y Mair 1995); el declive de la militancia (Van Biezen, Mair y Poguntke 2012; Whiteley 2011); la erosión de las estructuras partidarias tradicionales capturadas por el lobby corporativo (Crouch 2004 [2014], 112) o la tecnocracia; la pérdida de capacidad de los líderes para construir partidos programáticos que expresaran identidades políticas duraderas (Cheresky 2006; Dalton 2004; Luna 2014b); o su incapacidad para responder con una mayor deliberación interna a los desafíos de la representación política (Accetti y Wolkenstein 2017).Fil: Alenda, Stéphanie. Universidad Andrés Bello; ChileFil: Varetto, Carlos Augusto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Escuela de Politica y Gobierno. Centro de Estudios Federales y Electorales; Argentin

The UK could take some lessons from Australia on fixed terms for party leaders so that election winners are guaranteed a full term in office

The Australian Labor Party has approved proposals from the party’s new leader Kevin Rudd, that the party’s leadership selection rules be changed so that parliamentarians and party members are able to elect party leaders. Anika Gauja writes that the UK’s political parties could consider another aspect of the reforms that ensure party leaders cannot be removed if they have won an election, unless it is demanded by 60% of the party. This would increase the public legitimacy of elected leaders and help to create greater party stability

Enforcing democracy? Towards a regulatory regime for the implementation of intra-party democracy

Anika Gauja considers the need for regulations requiring political parties to adopt internal democracy. Drawing on examples from abroad, she concludes that, in spite of objections, the arguments for requiring greater intra-party democracy are compelling