The Changing Political Economy of Party Membership

• Main Author: Pelizzo, Riccardo
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2004
• Subjects: Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/49; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/1048/viewcontent/ChangingPoliticalEconomyPartyMembership_2004_wp.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Although few scholars would dispute from an empirical point of view the fact that parties change their electoral strategies, ideological stances and organizational structures over time, there is not much agreement on how these changes, above all party organizational change, have to be understood from a theoretical point of view. This is especially true with regard to the transformations that party organizations have undergone from the early 1970s on. In fact, although party organizational changes in the past three decades have generally been considered to be signs of the so called party crisis, the agreement on this analytical perspective is far from being unanimous. The party crisis interpretation of parties’ organizational changes has recently been challenged by Katz and Mair. These scholars remarked that the party crisis is predicated on the assumption that the mass party of social integration represents the only model of party organization and that any departure from the experience of the mass party model indicates the failure of the party tout court.