Contemporary Meanings of Party Identification and Party Membership

Abstract

Since the seminal works The Voter Decides and The American Voter by Campbell et al. party identification is one of the most frequently debated and controversial concepts in electoral research. In the last decades, both the orthodox as well as the revisionist view on party identification have undergone numerous improvements in terms of conceptualization and measurement. These came at a time when Western democracies have actually witnessed a steady decline in party identification rates (a process known as ‘dealignment’). However, despite different understandings of party identification in the causal order of the decision-making process of voters, both representatives of the orthodox as well as the revisionist view agree, and empirically show, that party identification still has a strong impact on voting decision. Taking into consideration recent research emphasizing that party identification works differently for various segments of the electorate in heterogeneous societies, the panel includes papers that deal with different meanings of party identification, their determinants and consequences for voting behavior and political participation in Western democracies. The heterogeneity in the motives, meanings and consequences is not only relevant for party identification, but also for institutionalized party membership. In times of declining party membership rates in Western democracies and an increasing tension between old and young party members, the motives of different groups to join, leave or to actively participate in a political party are of increasing importance. The panel encourages paper submissions that deal with these heterogeneous motives of party members or certain subgroups within parties, their expectations, their diverse levels of activity, their attitudes towards other party members and their influence in the intra-party decision-making process. Papers that analyze these aspects in a comparative perspective for different parties or in varying institutional contexts are especially welcomed.

Title	Details
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