What does party membership mean from the standpoint of the party? The aim of this paper is to address the meaning of party membership from the perspective of parties as non-unitary actors. Indeed, a relevant strand of literature on political organizations has widely pointed out the composite and non-monolithic nature, as well as the intrinsic dynamics of cooperation and competition, that characterize the “internal life of parties” (Daalder, Kitschelt, Katz and Mair, Bolleyer). Based on this definition, the paper proposes to analyze how the party membership is perceived and conceived by the various intra-party actors. At least two perspectives on party membership may be detected within the party organization: the one of “dominant coalition” and the other of medium stratum/intermediate level elites, composing the lower ranks of the party apparatus. While the principle aim of the dominant coalition is to gain or maintain political power at national level by winning elections, that of the medium stratum is either to climb up the party organization or to preserve its narrower, predominantly local power. For the latters, the registered party members are a substantial source of power and a reservoir of loyalty, whose control they are interested to maintain. For the former, party membership has merely a legitimizing role, contributing only to its public image and thus justifying national party elites´ stress on more open and nuanced forms of participation. Therefore, in terms of organizational reforms directed to redefine party membership’s boundaries (i.e. introduction of primaries for the selection of leadership and/or candidates), the different intra-party perspectives may collide. The paper deals with the case of Portugal and tries to contribute to the recent literature on intra-party reforms involving the notion of party membership.
