Contemporary Meanings of Party Membership

The decline of party memberships across European democracies and beyond has been well documented in the comparative party literature and has prompted many scholars to question the role of parties as representative and participatory vehicles in contemporary democracies. However, the association between membership decline and party organizational decline is one that is often taken for granted, and similarly the concept of party membership itself is often treated uncritically. This workshop aims to interrogate the notion of party membership in contemporary society and to shed some of the normative and empirical assumptions that are associated with the mass party model. Moving beyond the notion of formal (or financial) party membership, the workshop aims to explore the ways in which political parties and citizens engage today. In asking the central question, ‘what does party membership mean?’, we ask workshop participants not only to consider the ongoing relevance and function of formal membership (for example, in providing legitimacy to political parties), but also to analyze other forms of affiliation (for example, party supporters and friends) and engagement (online participation, donations and campaigning activities) as functional alternatives. We welcome both theoretical and empirical papers that consider how we might re-conceptualize the concept of party membership to better reflect changing patterns of political participation, that analyze the differences and similarities between membership and supportership, that assess the impact of technology in structuring the ways in which citizens engage with parties, and that explore the implications of multi-faceted modes of membership for activism, participation and representation. Papers that examine synergies between party membership, interest group membership and social movement participation are also welcome.