Oh, Jeremy Corbyn! Why did Labour Party membership soar after the 2015 general election?

This article investigates the remarkable surge in individual membership of the Labour Party after the general election of May 2015, particularly after Jeremy Corbyn was officially nominated as a candidate for the leadership in June of that year. Using both British Election Study and Party Members Project data, we explain the surge by focussing on the attitudinal, ideological and demographic characteristics of the members themselves. Findings suggest that, along with support for the leader and yearning for a new style of politics, feelings of relative deprivation played a significant part: many ‘left-behind’ voters (some well-educated, some less so) joined Labour for the first time when a candidate with a clearly radical profile appeared on the leadership ballot. Anti-capitalist and left-wing values mattered too, particularly for those former members who decided to return to the party

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

Honesty above all else? Expectations and perceptions of political conduct in three established democracies

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the ESRC (grant number RES-000-22-3459) and British Academy (grant numbers SG-101785 and SG-52322). They would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions

Whose primaries? Grassroots’ views on candidate selection procedures

Opening-up processes of candidate selection is often viewed as a means for political parties to regain legitimacy, and perhaps more crucially, members and voters. Despite a widespread belief that citizens want more democracy, including within parties, little research has questioned what sort of opening-up is desired—e.g. open or closed primaries—if at all, and by what type of citizens. Using data of the 2014 PartiRep voter survey in Belgium, we examine the diversity of preferences regarding candidate selection, and the extent to which preferences for open or closed primaries relate to voters’ participation in party organisations. Given the diversification of party affiliation types, we operationalise participation through two distinct variables: the formal party membership status of the respondents, and their party activism. We show that both membership and activism influence individual preferences, and that their effects are in fact conditional upon each other. Findings also raise crucial issues regarding the consequences of the multiplication of affiliation modes, the motivations and direction of intra-party reforms, as well as feed the debate on their expected versus genuine consequences.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The changing nature of activist engagement within the Conservative Party: A review of Susan Scarrow’s task-orientated approach to party membership

Scarrow highlighted two questions concerning party members: The level of engagement required and the extent to which this occurred within formal party structures. She proposed a task – rather than a people-orientated interpretation. Her framework is applied here to the British Conservative Party. A qualitative research design was adopted, which focused on the views and behaviour of local activists. This permitted an understanding of how the party organisation actually functioned. The findings revealed notable deficiencies in activity levels, member skills, member attitudes towards performance improvement and local managerial capacity. This meant reduced fitness for purpose. Hence, a shrinking of activists’ responsibilities and a simplification of their role has occurred, thereby changing the nature of engagement, but equally modifying the nature of political voluntarism. Increasing emphasis is being placed upon developing networks of supporters, with the implication that there has been a movement towards the American model of party organisation, but with the continuation of membership parties in a looser form. As such, the findings also reveal how the party is managing its declining membership organisation. Overall, Scarrow’s task-orientated approach was found to be apposite for the purpose of measuring local activist engagement