What can political parties do to involve more women in party politics?

In most political parties the majority of members are men, which has implications for achieving equal representation at all levels of politics. Aldo F. Ponce, Susan E. Scarrow and Susan Achury find that this gender gap varies considerably between parties, and that having more women MPs helps to increase women’s participation at the grassroots level

Carrots and Sticks, Chickens and Eggs: Understanding Variations In Party Finance Regulatory Regimes

Abstract The past four decades have witnessed a widespread growth in state intervention in political party finance, both in the "carrots" of direct public subsidies for political parties, and in the "sticks" of political finance regulation. What is the relationship between the growth of legislation in both areas? Why do some countries adopt strict limits on party fundraising and party spending, whereas others take a much lighter regulatory approach? This paper examines the spread of regulations and subsidies, looking first at patterns of usage in 66 electoral democracies, and then investigating the sequence of adoption in European democracies. The examination of usage finds little support for theories that have linked political finance regulation to institutional and social factors, but it finds evidence that the adoption sequence for subsidies and regulations has a long-term effect. Despite pressures for regulatory convergence, countries that start with the carrot of public subsidies are much less likely to subsequently impose regulatory sticks. The paper concludes with a discussion of the wider effects of state intervention into party finance: while established parties derive some obvious benefits from this new "public utility" status, like traditional telephone companies and electricity providers they also face new risks in a deregulatory age

New parties, new movements: but how much say do party members get?

The Political Party Database Project has analysed the workings of 122 political parties in 19 parliamentary democracies. Remarkably, the vast majority share a common model of subscriber democracy: members join at a local level and enjoy a certain amount of say in the party's direction. But in recent years a wave of new political movements, such as République en Marche ..

Party organization and satisfaction with democracy: inside the blackbox of linkage

This article investigates the way in which party organizational resources and processes may affect perceptions of democracy, looking at the impact of parties’ top-down communication mechanisms and bottom-up internal processes. Our examination breaks new ground by pairing party organizational data from the Political Party Database (PPDB) with individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), and shows clear evidence of the link between parties’ organizational resource capacity and their ability to inspire satisfaction with democracy (the 'top-down' path from party organization to democratic evaluations). However, it does not appear that the degree of intra-party democracy practised (the 'bottom-up' path) has a similar impact. Overall, these results provide substantial evidence for the importance of party organization and agency in fostering the popular legitimacy of democratic political systems

Intra-party decision-making in contemporary Europe: improving representation or ruling with empty shells?

Political observers agree that parties in European parliamentary democracies are more likely than previously to give party members opportunities to vote in decisions about party policies or personnel. Observers are less agreed about the implications of these apparent procedural trends. Some, including Peter Mair, saw them as evidence of the hollowing-out of party democracies; others have seen them as enhancing citizens’ opportunities for meaningful political participation. Because this is ultimately an empirical question as well as a normative one, these radically conflicting interpretations make it crucial to examine which interpretation is best supported by usage to date This is the task we undertake in this article. We use data from the Political Party Database Project (PPDB) to investigate the extent to which parties in 26 European countries have adopted and employed intra-party ballots. We also ask whether there is evidence that such procedures are changing intra-party relationships. We find that balloting of party members is indeed widely used, but it is by no means universal. We find much less support for the implication that such ballots are associated with less competitive contests, or that the new devices are generally used in ways that devalue party-member bonds

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally

Liberal market economies, business, and political finance: Britain under New Labour

The extent and nature of business financing of parties is an important feature of political finance. Britain’s transparent and permissive regulatory system provides an excellent opportunity to study business financing of parties. Business donations have been very important to the Conservative party over the last decade, and of only marginal importance to Labour. Unlike other Conservative contributors, business donors are more likely to contribute when the party is popular. In contrast to the previous period of Conservative government, the biggest British businesses tended to abstain from political finance under New Labour. However, their bias towards the Conservatives is affected by the party’s popularity and the closeness of an election. Britain shares the political importance of business financing of parties and its mixture of ideological and pragmatic motivations with other liberal market economies. However, in Britain the bias towards the right is much stronger and the role of big business more marginal

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