The management of party affiliation: an organisational perspective

A recurrent conclusion of longitudinal studies on membership figures has been party membership decline (Mair & van Biezen 2001; van Biezen, Mair & Poguntke 2011; Whiteley 2011). These studies bring forward systemic institutional or structural explanations for this decline (Norris 2002). However, when disaggregating the figures, at the party level, the trends are far less linear (Delwit 2011; Kölln 2014). All parties do not face the same difficulties in recruiting and mobilizing members. This calls for other explanatory factors of membership fluctuations, especially at the party level. The goal of this paper is to shift the focus back on parties. We want to analyse how parties manage affiliation, and how it may impact their affiliation and mobilization levels. Parties greatly differ in this regard, with various degrees of openness, professionalization and centralization in the management of affiliation. The management of affiliation is also something that is undergoing rapid changes with the development of new technologies. We have very sparse comparative knowledge about affiliation management by parties, and no knowledge at all about how it matters for affiliation and mobilization levels. To shed new light on this, our paper relies on new data collected in the framework of the MAPP project.