Trigger or Treat? The Impact of Intra-Party Democratic Reforms on Membership Levels

Most of the empirical literature on party membership has focused on the decline of national party membership figures across Europe (Mair and Van Biezen, 2001; Weldon, 2006; Van Biezen et al., 2012). However, when disaggregating the figures at the party level, the trends are far less linear (Delwit 2011, Kölln 2014). While recent longitudinal analyses (Kölln, 2014; Paulis et al., 2015; Spier, 2016) have emphasized the role of contingent environmental factors (such as electoral results, the intensity of political competition and party lifecycle) on party’s recruitment ability, little attention has been devoted to the agency of political parties in membership recruitment (Faucher, 2015). This is surprising as many political parties have entered processes of intra-party democracy reforms designed to bring the members back in (Cross and Katz, 2013; Hopkin, 2001). Not only have parties diversified their membership types and ties (Scarrow, 2015), but they have also significantly increased members’ say into internal decision-making processes such as leadership selection or manifesto approval (Gauja, 2013; Cross and Pilet, 2016; Sandri et al., 2015). Not only are these reforms likely to alter the number of members recruited but also their involvement. Yet, few empirical studies have systematically investigated the link between intraparty reforms and party membership recruitment patterns (Hazan and Rahat, 2010; Kosiara-Pedersen et al., 2017). The goal of this paper is to address this gap by exploring how intra-party reforms account for unequal recruitment trajectories. Using data collected in the framework of the Members and Activist of Political Parties (MAPP) project, the Political Party Database (PPDB) and the European Social Surveys (ESS), this paper addresses this gap, by examining through a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), the joint influence of party organization and enrolment rules in the case of parties recruitment pattern in 6 European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Portugal and Spain).