1
The Dynamics of Decline: Political Parties in the
European Democracies, 2002-2010.
By
Paul Whiteley
Department of Government,
University of Esssex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester CO3 4SQ
Paper Presented at the ‘Contemporary Meanings of Party Membership’ workshop.
ECPR Joint Sessions at the University of Salamanca, Spain, 10th
-15th
April 2014
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Abstract
Party membership and activism has been declining in the advanced industrial
democracies for many years. It is a development that has the potential to weaken democracy
because it undermines political parties which are the core institutions of civil society. This
paper tests the ‘state capture’ hypothesis which explains this development in terms of the
growth in the state regulation of parties over time. The hypothesis is that growing regulation
reduces the incentives for individuals to join and become active in political parties. It is
tested by modelling trends in party involvement in some thirty advanced democracies over a
period of eight years with the assistance of the European Social Survey cumulative file.
Using a multi-level modelling approach in a dynamic setting, the results show that state
capture has weakened both party activism and party membership. In addition there is
evidence to suggest that it has weakened partisanship in the wider electorate as well, although
this effect is indirect and works through incentives to participate in voluntary activities.
[Keywords: Party Members; Participation; Civil Society; Multi-Level Modelling]
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The Dynamics of Decline: Political Parties in the European Democracies, 2002-2010.
Introduction
Party membership and activism has been declining in the advanced industrial democracies for
many years (Katz et al.,1992; Scarrow, 1996, 2000; Mair and Van Biezen, 2001; Biezen Van
and Kopeck , 2007; Dalton, 2005; Biezen Van, Mair and Poguntke, 2012). This
development has the potential to weaken democracy because it undermines political parties
which are the core institutions of civil society. At the same time an ever closer relationship
between the state and political parties has developed over time, something which has been a
topic of considerable interest to party researchers (Katz and Mair, 1995; Detterbeck, 2005).
This relationship involves a bargain in which parties receive state aid and support of various
kinds in exchange for accepting increased regulation, particularly with respect to the conduct
of elections. This is the essence of the ‘cartel party’ thesis (Katz and Mair, 1995), which
argues that collusion takes place between the state and established parties, in part, for the
purpose of excluding potential competitors.
These two developments have been linked together by the suggestion that states
which heavily regulate their parties reduce the incentives for volunteers to join and become
active in the grassroots party organisation. This happens because the activists become legally
responsible for monitoring and implementing a heavy burden of regulation and in the process
effectively become unpaid state officials (Whiteley, 2011, 2014). At the same time state aid
reduces the incentives of party leaders to recruit and retain party members since they do not
need them for fundraising. In the long run this developments risks turning parties into ‘public
utilities’ (van Biezen, 2004) that fulfil important functions but are more concerned with
representing the interests of the state to its citizens, than the interests of the citizens to the
state.
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However, the claim that state capture is weakening voluntary activity in parties rests
purely on cross-sectional evidence, and it is well known that this can be a poor guide to
trends over time (Gelman, 2005). Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to test the ‘state
capture’ hypothesis by modelling trends in party involvement in some thirty advanced
democracies over a period of eight years. This is done with the assistance of the European
Social Survey cumulative file (ESSCF)1. The aim is to analyse what has happened to parties
during these years in which dramatic changes occurred in the political economies of some of
these states. The modelling tests the ‘state capture’ hypothesis in a dynamic setting and
utilises a multi-level modelling strategy to capture the influence of the regulatory
environment in which parties operate.
The analysis focuses on political parties at three levels: party membership, party
activism and partisanship in the wider electorate, and utilises four theoretical explanations of
changes in support for parties over time. These explanations arise from different theories of
political participation. They are the ‘civic voluntarism’; ‘social capital’, ‘cognitive
engagement’ and ‘valence’ models of participation. Variables associated with these theories
are used to test changes in party activism and party support, alongside the ‘state capture’
hypothesis. Thus the overall objective is to try to explain the developments in political
parties as voluntary organisations, in the context of the worst recession since the 1930s.
The paper begins by examining trends in the key party-related variables over this
period, and discusses the theoretical ideas used for testing the state capture hypotheses,
together with the models of participation. The third section presents results and a final
section discusses the implications of the findings for the future of political parties as
voluntary organisations in the advanced democracies.
5
Changes in Party Activism, Membership and Partisanship 2002-2010
The ESSCF includes five cross-sectional sets of surveys conducted every two years
between 2002 and 2010, and consists of almost 240,000 cases. The surveys include questions
about party activism, party membership and partisanship in the electorate2. The decline of
party membership and activism has been charted over much longer periods than this of course
(see Katz et al. 1992; van Biezen et al. 2012). But the surveys cover thirty countries in which
citizens were interviewed at least twice during these years, and sixteen countries where they
were surveyed five times3. So the ESSCF can take into account the dynamic as well as the
comparative forces influencing voluntary party organisations and partisanship. We begin by
looking at trends in the party variables in the countries surveyed five times in order to ensure
comparability, but the subsequent analysis examines respondents from all thirty countries.
-- Figure 1 about here –
Figure 1 shows trends in party membership and party activism during the eight years
of the cumulative file4. It can be seen that there is very clear evidence that membership and
activism declined during this period. In the 2002 survey some 5.1 per cent of respondents
were party members and 4.7 per cent stated that they had worked for a party in the previous
year5. By 2010 the figures were 4.7 per cent and 4 per cent respectively. Put another way,
party membership in these sixteen countries declined by 8 per cent and activism by 15 per
cent during this period.
-- Figure 2 about here –
Figure 2 shows the trends in partisanship in the same set of countries6. In this case
there is no clear trend evident in the data, except for the marked decline in partisanship in the
2010 survey compared with earlier. It is noteworthy that the 2010 survey was undertaken at
the height of the recession which overtook Europe and much of the rest of the world and so it
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is clearly important to examine the impact of the economic crisis on trends in party support.
This issue is discussed more fully below.
A more detailed analysis by countries reveals some interesting trends. Membership
declined in thirteen countries with marked reductions occurring in Switzerland, Ireland,
Poland and Portugal. Both Ireland and Portugal suffered rather badly from the economic
crisis in the Eurozone, although this is not true of Switzerland (Reinhart and Rogoff, 2009;
Krugman, 2012; Turner, 2012). In contrast, membership rose in Denmark, France and the
Netherlands, but they were modest changes in all three countries. The party activism data
follows a similar pattern, with a decline occurring in twelve of the sixteen countries, and
large reductions appearing again in Switzerland, Ireland, Poland and Portugal. However,
activism did not always follow the same pattern as party membership, since it declined rather
dramatically in Norway compared with a relatively modest decline in membership, and in the
case of Spain activism rose at a time when membership fell.
The changes in partisanship over this period appear quite different from party
membership and activism. Partisanship increased in nine countries and fell in seven. None
of the increases were particularly large, but there were rather dramatic reductions in party
identification in Ireland and Portugal, implying that the citizens of these countries had
become fairly disillusioned with their party systems. Overall, the evidence suggests that
there was no general decline in partisanship in these countries comparable to the decline in
membership and activism, but some of them have clearly been dramatically affected by
recent events.
Clearly, there are many factors which might explain the patterns observed in these
figures. In the next section we discuss four different theoretical models which have been
used to explain political participation in the past, and which can be applied to the task of
understanding trends in party support.
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Theoretical Models of Party Support
The civic voluntarism model provides the best known account of political
participation in political science. It originates in the work of Sidney Verba and his colleagues
who initially studied political participation in the United States (Verba and Nie, 1972), and
subsequently they and others applied the model to a variety of countries (Verba, Nie and Jae-
On Kim, 1978; Barnes and Kaase, 1979; Parry, Moyser and Day, 1992; Verba, Schlozman,
and Brady, 1995). The core argument is that individual resources drive political
participation, where these are defined as ‘time, money and civic skills’ (Verba, Schlozman
and Brady, 1995: 271). Their analysis took into account the individual’s psychological
engagement too, which largely relates to their sense of political efficacy (Verba, Schlozman
and Brady, 1995: 272). Participation in voluntary organisations such as religious or sports
groups plays a role in the analysis too, since this is where individuals learn some of the civic
skills required for effective participation.
If the civic voluntarism model concentrates on individual resources, the social capital
model focuses on community resources. Putnam defined social capital as ‘features of social
organization, such as trust, norms and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by
facilitating co-ordinated actions’ (1993: 167). If individuals are embedded in a dense set of
social networks which involve frequent interactions that are not based on financial
relationships, this fosters interpersonal trust and builds social capital (Fukuyama, 1995:
Putnam, 1993, 2000; Brehm and Rahn, 1997; Whiteley, 1999). Such trust encourages
individuals to get involved in cooperative activities with strangers beyond their immediate
family or community. Individuals who live in communities with high levels of social capital
appear to have better health, educational attainments and subjective well-being and they are
more likely to participate in politics (Putnam, 1993; 2000). Accordingly, we might expect
them to be more likely to support and participate in political parties.
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Cognitive engagement theory takes a different approach to understanding
participation from the other two models. In this case the central idea is that participation
depends on the individual’s access to political information and on their ability and
willingness to use it to understand politics and government (Norris, 2000; Dalton, 2005;
Clarke et al. 2004; Whiteley et al. 2013). Cognitively engaged individuals are informed
members of the community who are likely to participate and to understand the processes of
government. Such individuals are politically knowledgeable, take a keen interest in current
affairs and are ‘critical citizens’ (Norris, 1999). We might expect them to support a political
party and in some cases join it and become active.
The valence model originates from Donald Stokes’s (1963, see also 1992) seminal
critique of the Downsian spatial model of party competition (Downs, 1957). In this critique
Stokes emphasised the importance issues over which there is broad agreement about what
should be done, rather than issues which divide the electorate. For example, the great
majority desire a buoyant economy in which inflation and unemployment are low, and
standards of living are improving rather than stagnating. Similarly, large majorities prefer
efficient and effective public services to poorly performing ones. In this situation voters will
support a party which they think is most likely to deliver such outcomes (Clarke et al. 2004,
2009; Whiteley et al. 2013). In contrast, the spatial model emphasises the importance of
divisive issues with an assumption that voters will support a party which takes a similar
position to their own views.
The key implication of the valence model for political parties is that an effective
performance should strengthen support for incumbent parties and weaken it for opposition
parties. Successful incumbents should recruit more partisan supporters, but also more party
activists and members. For opposition parties their support will stagnate or weaken if
incumbents are successful. Furthermore if performance is really bad it may well reduce
9
support for all the major parties and open up electoral opportunities for fringe parties. Thus
the economic crisis may have influenced the contours of the party system itself. We examine
indicators in the ESSCF which measure key variables associated with these models next.
Modelling Party Support
The variables which can be used to test these theoretical ideas are discussed in outline in this
section. In the case of the civic voluntarism model occupational status, educational
attainment, hours worked in the average week, religiosity and political efficacy are all
measured in the surveys. Thus there is a broad range of indicators which can capture the
individual resources that are central to the model. The expectation is that highly resourced
individuals are more likely to be party supporters, members and activists than low resourced
individuals.
The social capital model is captured by indicators of interpersonal trust, institutional
trust, voluntary activity and social integration in the ESSCF. Interpersonal trust is captured
by three items which relate to the trustworthiness of other people and are combined into a
single scale. Institutional trust measures trust in state and non-state institutions such as
Parliament, the courts and political parties, another aspect of social capital (Warren, 1999,
Lin and Erickson, 2008). Again, these are combined into a single scale. Finally social
integration is measured by the frequency with which respondents meet with friends and
family. The expectation is that positive scores on all of these variables are likely to increase
support for and possibly participation in political parties.
The cognitive engagement model measures the respondent’s educational attainment, a
variable which it shares with the civic voluntarism model. However, in the cognitive
engagement model it refers to the individual’s ability to make sense of the political world
rather than to their social status. There are also questions about the respondent’s use of
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information relating to politics and current affairs in the media, captured by a media
consumption scale. The model also includes a scale measuring the respondent’s interest in
politics. Finally, there is an item which measures the extent to which the individual uses the
internet in their day to day lives which is relevant to the cognitive engagement model (see
Gibson and Ward, 2000). Overall, the expectation is that all these indicators will have a
positive impact on party support, membership and activism.
The valence model is captured by two measures of policy performance in the ESSCF
along with a broader measure of satisfaction with the performance of the political system.
The policy items relate to the economy and to health care and so measure attitudes to the key
valence indicators of prosperity and the quality of public services. As the earlier discussion
indicated an effective performance should boost support for an incumbent party, but have the
opposite effect for an opposition party. This suggests that the modelling should focus either
on the supporters of incumbent parties, or alternatively opposition parties if the effects are not
to cancel each other out. Accordingly, the valence variables are evaluated for supporters of
incumbent parties.
We use a multi-level modelling strategy to examine the ‘state capture’ thesis, because
the regulatory system for parties operates only at the national level. Most applications of
multi-level modelling in comparative politics measure aggregate effects at the country level
(Brady et al. 2009; Jamal and Nooruddin, 2010). But the strategy of using countries can
reduce the sample size below levels required to achieve adequate statistical power7. With this
in mind we use country/year variables at the aggregate level to estimate effects (see for
example Solt 2008). This has the added advantage of incorporating dynamics into the
models.
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The thirty countries surveyed at least twice in the 2002-2010 ESSCF provide a total of
123 country-years for aggregate analysis. With this point in mind, it is worth spelling out
what the state capture thesis implies. It applies most obviously to party activists, since these
are the people who keep the party organisations running at the local level as well as
campaigning in elections. Imposing an excessive regulatory burden on them reduces their
incentives to participate. Furthermore when activism declines, this is likely to have a knock-
on effect on party membership, since the activists help to recruit and retain members.
. To illustrate this point, we can examine an example of the regulatory burdens imposed
on party volunteers by the UK Electoral Commission, the independent body which regulates
parties and elections in Britain. One of its publications: ‘Overview of Party Campaign
Spending’ spells out the reporting requirements imposed on party activists in relation to
election spending. The regulations cover: ‘advertising of any kind; unsolicited material sent
to voters; market research; press conferences and dealing with the media; rallies and party
meetings; and any transport connected with the campaign’ (Electoral Commission, 2013: 6).
Local parties are required to name specific individuals who are tasked with recording,
verifying and reporting on any spending associated with these activities. It warns that: ‘If you
do not comply with legal or regulatory requirements you or your organisation may be subject
to civil or criminal sanctions’ (Electoral Commission, 2013; 1).
The Leiden Database on Party Laws provides a record of all legislation governing the
regulation of political parties in thirty-three democracies since the Second World War
(Biezen and Borz, 2009)8. It shows that regulatory burdens are quite onerous in many
countries. It is of course understandable why the state should want to regulate parties,
particularly if they receive a lot of state aid. Given this, it is reasonable to collect a mass of
detailed information to ensure that elections are conducted fairly and freely and in line with
legal requirements. Indeed it can be argued that state regulation might boost support for
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parties if voters if they are reassured by this. However, it is also apparent that little or no
thought has been given to the incentives of unpaid volunteers to take on such a role,
particularly when they could end up with a criminal record if things go wrong.
The effects of regulation are captured in this analysis by the World Bank index of
regulatory effectiveness, which is published in the same years as the European Social Survey
(Kaufmann, Kraay and Mastruzzi, 2006). This index is a broad measure of state regulation in
various countries and it correlates closely with a more specific party regulation index
available from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance9 (Whiteley,
2011). Unfortunately, the latter cannot be used since it is not available over time.
Results
The analysis begins by examining the impact of aggregate regulation on the individual level
party variables for all thirty countries between 2002 and 2010. It is important to separate out
the country effects from longitudinal effects and this is done with dummy variables. These
identify data collected each year between 2004 and 2010, with the 2002 survey acting as the
reference category. In effect, the estimates capture the changes described in Figures 1 and 2,
while at the same time controlling for two additional variables.
-- Table 1 about here --
Table 1 shows the impact of regulation on party support, membership and activism,
controlling for the Gross Domestic Product per capita (in dollars) and a dummy variable
measuring if a country was formerly a communist state. The control for GDP takes into
account varying standards of living and also the impact of the recession on individual
countries during this period. The communism variable captures the residual effects of one
party rule in the past on contemporary party involvement.
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Table 1 confirms the results in Figure 2, that there are no clear trends in partisanship
among the electorate in these countries over time, since none of the year dummy variables
have a significant impact on party support. It is also evident that standards of living did not
influence partisanship either, although support is lower in former communist countries
compared with the others. The party regulation variable appears to have a small positive
impact on partisanship in the Table, suggesting that regulation can boost party support. But
this effect is only weakly significant, and as we shall see below the result is not robust.
In contrast to partisanship, the regulation variable has a strong negative impact on
both party membership and party activism, which supports the state capture thesis. High
levels of regulation appear to discourage individuals from both joining and being active in
political parties over time. As in the partisanship model both membership and activism were
significantly lower in former communist countries than elsewhere. In this case countries with
higher standards of living or which avoided the worst of the recession had more party
members and activists, an effect consistent with the civic voluntarism model. These results
show that party membership and activism were clearly weakened in countries like Greece and
Portugal which were seriously affected by the financial crisis.
One striking finding is that party activism declined both in 2008 and 2010 according
to the year dummy variables, although the same point cannot be made about party
membership. This suggests that the decline in party membership evident in Figure 1 is less
dramatic than party activism and can be explained in large part by the three aggregate
variables. The same is not true for party activism, however, so that other factors must be at
work in explaining these trends, and we explore this issue next.
-- Table 2 about here --
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Clearly, additional individual level predictors arising from the theories of
participation could explain the trends in party activism. Table 2 contains individual level
logistic regression models of the party variables for the four models examined earlier using
pooled data. Each model is estimated with controls for ideology, age, gender, citizenship and
ethnic minority status. The estimates are based on very large samples and so quite modest
effects can be statistically significant. With this in mind the subsequent multi-level
modelling will utilise only those variables which make a really significant contribution to
explaining party involvement.
The estimates of the civic voluntarism model in Table 2 show that the resource
measures, such as occupational status and education, behave as expected with high status
individuals being more likely to participate in and support political parties than their low
status counterparts. The number of hours worked in the average week has a positive effect,
suggesting that full-time workers are more likely to get involved than their part-time or
economically inactive counterparts. Both efficacy and religiosity have strong positive
effects, although ideology does not appear to be important except in the case of party
activism. Males are more likely to participate in political parties than females, and older
people are more involved than the young although the quadratic specification of the age
variable shows that this effect declines with age. Finally, while citizenship is important,
ethnic minority status appears not to be.
With regard to the social capital model, it appears that voluntary activity,
interpersonal trust, social integration and citizenship all contribute to stimulating
participation. Ideology appears to play a more important role than in the civic voluntarism
model with respondents on the left being more likely to be active than those on the right.
However, the effects of ideology on partisanship and party membership are reversed, with
15
individuals on the right being more involved. Finally, the demographic control variables in
the social capital model have a similar effect as in the civic voluntarism model.
In the cognitive engagement model, interest in politics is a very strong predictor of
party involvement, but educational attainment appears to have a negligible impact. The
exception to this relates to the party activism model, where education is a positive predictor
of participation. The media consumption scale and internet usage both have positive effects,
although the latter is not significant in the membership model. Once again, ideology plays a
role in explaining party involvement in the same way as in the social capital model, and the
demographic controls are similar to the other models.
In the valence model, surprisingly, economic evaluations appear to play no role at all
in explaining party involvement although the health policy satisfaction measure and
satisfaction with democracy are both important positive predictors of participation.
Intriguingly, ideology is not a significant predictor in the valence model, suggesting that the
effects found in other models are related to the performance measures. Once again, the
demographic variables have similar effects as those found in the other models.
The findings in Table 2 show that there are some strong, robust predictors such as
efficacy, interest in politics, and age. In addition there are predictors which are important in
some models, such as ideology, but not in all. Finally, there are predictors which appear to
have little effect in any model, notably ethnic minority status. Viewed overall, there are two
classes of variables which are clearly important for explaining party involvement. The first
relates to resources, which are associated particularly with the civic voluntarism and social
capital models. Thus age, social integration and citizenship play a consistently important
role. The second relates to the engagement variables such as interest in politics, voluntary
activity and political efficacy.
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For the multi-level modelling we define a parsimonious individual level composite
model, by utilising the two most important predictors from each of the models, together with
the control variables. In the case of the civic voluntarism model these are efficacy and
religiosity; for social capital they are voluntary activity and social integration; in the
cognitive engagement model they are interest in politics and internet usage; and finally, for
the valence model they are evaluations of health care and democratic satisfaction. This
produces a ‘civic engagement’ model, which combines broadly defined resources with
measures of engagement as predictors of party involvement.
--- Table 3 about here –
Table 3 shows the multi-level models of the party variables using a random intercept
specification (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002: 26-27)10
. Looking at the aggregate level
variables first, it appears that regulation has no impact on partisanship, suggesting that the
earlier finding in Table 1 is not robust. This is perhaps not surprising since the regulatory
environment in a country is unlikely to have much of a direct impact on the consciousness of
voters. In contrast, regulation continues to have a very clear negative impact on both party
members and activists. Regulations which reduce the incentives to participate clearly affect
party activists, and the findings suggests that have a knock on effect on party membership as
well. Since activists help to recruit and retain party members, factors affecting their
behaviour are likely to spill over and influence the inactive members.
In Table 3 none of the year dummy variables are significant in the party activism
model, so the individual level variables explain the dynamic effects found in Table 1. As
regards this composite model, the effects are very similar to those in Table 2. The
coefficients have the same signs and are similar in magnitude as those in the earlier table,
although there are a few minor differences. It appears that internet usage has no significant
17
impact on partisanship although it did in Table 2, and it has reversed signs in the party
membership model. This suggests that any conclusions about the role of the internet in
influencing participation are not very robust. In other respects the effects at the individual
level are the same.
Given that regulation clearly inhibits party membership and activism and these effects
are present in dynamic rather than purely cross sectional models, this begs the question of
how they work. The random intercept multi-level model does not show which variables are
affected by regulation. Accordingly a specification is needed which looks at the cross-level
interactions between the regulation variable and the slope coefficients of the individual level
model in order to explore this further (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002: 27-29).
Identifying How Regulation Influences Activism and Membership
As the earlier discussion indicates party membership and activism can be effectively
analysed using a ‘civic engagement’ model which combines motivational and resource
variables in the specification. When addressing the question of how regulation might inhibit
involvement, it seems plausible that the mechanisms will operate through the motivational
variables rather than the resource variables. Enduring characteristics such as an individual’s
religiosity or their social integration into the community are unlikely to be directly affected
by the national regulatory environment. On the other hand their sense of efficacy or the
extent to which they are involved in voluntary activities outside parties may very well be
influenced by the regulatory climate of a country. Accordingly, we will investigate the
relationship between regulation and the motivational variables, that is, efficacy, voluntary
activity, interest in politics and internet usage. In addition we will examine the interaction
between age and regulation, given that earlier work suggested that age plays an important
role in explaining the decline of parties (Whiteley, 2011).
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Negative cross-level interactions between the regulatory climate in a country and the
motivational variables mean that the effects of variables such as political efficacy on party
activism will be weaker in high regulation compared with low regulation countries. The
individual level models mean that citizens with a strong sense of efficacy are more likely to
become party activists in all types of country. But efficacy will have a weaker impact on
party activism in high regulation countries.
The earlier discussion suggested that the regulatory climate is most likely to influence
party activism. It seems plausible that party activists faced with a complex and demanding
regulatory environment might very well feel disempowered by this, and as a consequence the
impact of political efficacy on the party variables will be reduced in high regulation
countries. As far as voluntary activity is concerned, the burden of regulation is unlikely to be
confined to political parties, but rather cover a broad range of non-party volunteering as well.
This means that the effects of volunteering on party activism in particular may well be
weakened by over-regulation. Similarly, regulation may turn people off politics and so
weaken the impact of interest in politics on party involvement. Finally, it is possible that
regulatory burdens weaken the impact of internet usage on the party variables.
-- Table 4 about here --
Table 4 repeats Table 3 but this time with the cross-level interactions included in the
modelling11
. All three party variables were modelled despite the fact that the regulation
variable did not appear to influence partisanship in Table 3, since interactions can exist with
slope coefficient even if they do not influence intercepts (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002).
Table 4 shows that regulation weakens the impacts of efficacy, voluntary activity and internet
usage in the party membership and activism models. It clearly serves to de-motivate people
from getting involved in party politics. However, regulation has a positive interaction with
19
interest in politics in these models, implying that it strengthens the impact of political interest
on activism in high regulation countries. To be fair the impact of this interaction in the party
membership model is rather weak, and also the measure is quite broadly defined in the
ESSCF. In the surveys, interest in politics refers to politics in general, not just party politics,
and so it is possible that had the question been about the latter, the effects would have been
different.
There is also a positive interaction between the regulatory environment of a country
and the age variable, which means that age has a stronger impact on activism and
membership in high regulation countries than in low regulation countries. Young people are
less likely to be party members or activists in all types of country, but the effects are more
marked in the high regulation countries. We cannot be sure if this is a period or cohort effect
since eight years is not enough to distinguish between the two (see Yang and Land, 2013).
But if it is a cohort effect, then party membership and activism have a bleak future in the
absence of any changes to the political environment in these countries. This is because the
weak involvement of the young in political parties will carry forward into the future and
voluntary activity in parties will decline further.
Turning finally to the partisanship model in Table 4, it is apparent that the cross-level
interactions are rather different from those in the membership and activism models. The
climate of regulation has no direct influence on any of the motivational variables or on age in
this model, with one clear exception. This is the cross-level interaction between regulation
and voluntary activity outside of parties. The negative coefficient means that the impact of
voluntary activity on partisanship is weakened in high regulation countries. Once again
volunteers are more likely to be partisans in all types of country, but the effect of
volunteering on partisanship is undermined in high regulation countries. It is possible that
20
voluntary activity in general, not just in political parties, is weakened by over-regulation, and
so this is one example of what may be a broad phenomenon.
Discussion and Conclusions
The present findings suggest that one of the factors which explain the trend decline in
voluntary parties across the democratic world is government regulation, which is the product
of an ever closer relationship between the state and political parties. State capture appears to
be weakening key motivational variables which encourage individuals to get involved in and
support parties. The effects are strongest for party activists and members but they also have
an indirect influence on partisans in the wider electorate.
Incorporating dynamic variables into the analysis shows that there is a clear trend of
declining party activity and membership over the eight years of the Cumulative European
Social Survey, although there is no strong evidence to support the idea that partisanship in
general is weakening in these countries. It appears that party activism is most affected,
although party membership has also declined. These changes are explained with the
assistance of a ‘civic engagement’ model, which combines resource and motivational
variables to explain party involvement at the individual level. The regulatory climate in these
countries affects the motivational variables and it serves to weaken their impact on
participation in political parties, with the exception of a generalised interest in politics
measure. Age effects are important too, with the regulatory environment influencing the gap
between youth participation in parties and the involvement of older citizens.
The broad lesson from these findings is that the ever closer relationship between the
state and political parties comes at a cost. The more the state captures political parties by
funding and regulating them, the more likely it is that the voluntary party organisations will
suffer a decline. In so far as state regulation influences voluntary activity beyond parties, this
21
serves to weaken partisanship in the wider electorate as well. Since parties are the most
important institutions linking the state and civil society this is a serious problem. These
findings suggest that state regulation may be damaging social capital more generally in
society, but that is another story.
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Endnotes
1 See http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org
2 Note the questions on party membership were dropped in the 2012 round of surveys so this
analysis cannot be extended beyond 2010.
3 See the appendix for the list of countries and variables included in the modelling.
4 Party Membership is measured with the question: ‘Are you a member of any political
party?’ and party activism with the question: ‘During the last 12 months have you done any
of the following? Have you worked in a political party or action group?’
5 Note party activism is not nested within party membership, since some non-members are
active, particularly at election times.
6 The wording is: ‘Is there a particular political party you feel closer to than all other
parties?’ 7 Snijders and Bosker in their well-known text on multi-level modelling advise researchers to
adhere to a ’30-30’ rule in which at least thirty cases are available at each level in order to
provide adequate statistical power (1999: 154). 8 See http://www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl.
9 See (http://www.idea.int/parties/).
10
This means that the aggregate level variables can influence the intercept of the individual
level model.
11
Country level regulation can influence both the intercept and the slope coefficients of the
variables in the individual level model in this specification.
23
Figure 1 Party Members and Party Activists as a Percentage of Electorates in the
European Social Survey Countries Surveyed Five Times, 2002-2010
Source: European Social Survey Cumulative File, 2002-2010
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
2002 2004 2006 2008 2010
Per
cen
tages
Percentage Members Percentage Activists
24
Figure 2 Partisans as a Percentage of Electorates in the European Social Survey
Countries Surveyed Five Times 2002-2010
Source: European Social Survey Cumulative File, 2002-2010
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
2002 2004 2006 2008 2010
Per
cen
tag
es
25
Table 1 Aggregate Level Predictors of Individual Level Party Variables, 2002-2010
Predictors Partisanship Party
Membership
Party
Activism
Aggregate Level
World Bank Regulation Index 0.16* -0.24*** -0.28***
Real GDP per capita ($) -0.00 0.00002*** 0.00002**
Former Communist Country -0.49*** -0.48*** -0.29**
2004 -0.02 -0.12 -0.17
2006 0.10 -0.01 -0.12
2008 0.06 -0.12 -0.25**
2010 -0.08 -0.17 -0.28**
R-Square 0.28 0.18 0.26
Source: European Social Survey Cumulative File, 2002-2010, World Bank Governance
Indicators, and Penn Database
26
Table 2 Individual Level Logistic Models of the Party Variables, 2002-2010
Models Partisanship Membership Activism
Civic Voluntarism
Occupational Status 0.08*** 0.05*** 0.09***
Educational Attainment 0.04** 0.05*** 0.12***
Hours Worked in the Average Week 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.00
Religiosity 0.15*** 0.34*** 0.16***
Efficacy 0.18*** 0.25*** 0.30***
Ideology 0.01 0.02 -0.06***
Male 0.17*** 0.43*** 0.38***
Age 0.03*** 0.05*** 0.04***
Age Squared -0.0002*** -0.0003*** -0.0003***
Citizen -0.65*** 1.29*** 0.78***
Ethnic Minority -0.08 -0.07 0.15*
Pseudo R-Square 0.05 0.06 0.06
Social Capital
Voluntary Activity 0.70*** 1.35*** 2.20***
Interpersonal Trust 0.03*** 0.01** -0.00
Social Integration 0.06*** 0.09*** 0.08***
Ideology 0.02** 0.03*** -0.05***
Male 0.25*** 0.49*** 0.40***
Age 0.05*** 0.06*** 0.05***
Age Squared -0.0004*** -0.0004*** -0.0005***
Citizen 0.67*** 1.25*** 0.67***
Ethnic Minority -0.04 0.02 0.26
Pseudo R-Square 0.05 0.08 0.10
Cognitive Engagement
Educational Attainment -0.00 -0.01 0.06***
Interest in Politics 0.68*** 0.88*** 1.08***
Media Consumption of Politics 0.02*** 0.02*** 0.02***
Internet Usage 0.02*** 0.01 0.04***
Ideology 0.02** 0.03*** -0.04***
Male 0.10*** 0.35*** 0.26***
Age 0.03*** 0.04*** 0.03***
Age Squared -0.0002*** -0.0003*** -0.0003***
Citizen 0.66*** 1.29*** 0.81***
Ethnic Minority -0.07 -0.07 0.12*
Pseudo R-Square 0.10 0.10 0.12
Valence
Economic Evaluations 0.01 0.20 0.01
Health Care Evaluations 0.02** 0.04*** 0.02***
Satisfaction with Democracy 0.13*** 0.06*** 0.06***
Ideology 0.00 0.02 -0.07
Male 0.26*** 0.56*** 0.54***
Age 0.06*** 0.07*** 0.07***
27
Age Squared -0.0004*** -0.0005*** -0.0006***
Citizen 0.83*** 1.44*** 0.91***
Ethnic Minority 0.01 0.00 0.15*
Pseudo R-Square 0.07 0.05 0.03
Source: European Social Survey Cumulative File, 2002-2010. Note: robust standard errors
with observations clustered by country/years.
28
Table 3 Multi-Level Logistic Models of the Party Variables, 2002 to 2010
Predictors Partisanship Party
Membership
Party
Activism
Aggregate Level
World Bank Regulation Index -0.03 -0.37*** -0.52***
Real GDP per capita ($) -0.00001** 0.00 -0.00
Former Communist Country -0.33** -0.26 -0.06
2004 ---- ---- -0.13
2006 ---- ---- -0.19
2008 ---- ---- -0.19
2010 ---- ---- -0.13
R-Square 0.02 0.04 0.53
Individual Level
Efficacy 0.07*** 0.08*** 0.11***
Religiosity 0.16*** 0.28*** 0.00
Voluntary Activity 0.38*** 1.11*** 2.05***
Social Integration 0.02*** 0.06*** 0.07***
Interest in Politics 0.64*** 0.75*** 0.91***
Internet Usage 0.01 -0.02*** 0.02***
Health Care Evaluations 0.11*** 0.04*** 0.02***
Satisfaction with Democracy 0.18*** 0.04*** 0.01
Male 0.05*** 0.28*** 0.12***
Age 0.04*** 0.04*** 0.03***
Age Squared -0.0003*** -0.0003*** -0.0003***
Citizen 0.77*** 1.34*** 0.56***
29
Table 4 Multi-Level Models with Cross-Level Interactions
of the Party Variables, 2002-2010
Predictors Partisanship Party
Membership
Party
Activism
Aggregate Level
World Bank Regulation Index 0.33* -0.59** -0.74***
Real GDP per capita ($) -0.00002*** 0.00 -0.00
Former Communist Country -0.02 -0.26* -0.02
Cross-Level Interactions
Regulation * Efficacy -0.00 -0.04** -0.04**
Regulation * Voluntary Activity -0.16*** -0.43*** -0.61***
Regulation * Interest in Politics -0.00 0.07* 0.18***
Regulation * Internet Usage 0.01 -0.03*** -0.02***
Regulation * Age -0.02 0.01*** 0.004**
Individual Level
Efficacy 0.08*** 0.14*** 0.16***
Religiosity 0.16*** 0.27*** 0.01
Voluntary Activity 0.61*** 1.76*** 2.89***
Social Integration 0.02*** 0.06*** 0.07***
Interest in Politics 0.66*** 0.70*** 0.73***
Internet Usage - 0.01 0.02 0.05***
Health Care Evaluations 0.11*** 0.04*** 0.02***
Satisfaction with Democracy 0.18*** 0.04*** 0.01*
Male 0.05*** 0.29*** 0.12***
Age 0.04*** 0.04*** 0.03***
Age Squared -0.0003*** -0.0003*** -0.0003***
Citizen 0.77*** 1.35*** 0.58***
Source: European Social Survey Cumulative File, 2002-2010, World Bank Governance
Indicators
30
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