Low membership in Czech political parties: Party strategy or structural determinants?

Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 259-275

  Linek, Lukáš ^a   Pecháček, Štěpán ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34249324836     PISSN: 13523279     EISSN: 17439116     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13523270701317539     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. In addition to direct and individual membership, some parties employ indirect membership (sometimes also called collective membership), which is mediated through an organization that is associated with the party. For more on this see, for example, Maurice Duverger, Political Parties(London: Methuen, 1965; originally published in 1951).
2. Susan Scarrow, Parties and their Members: Organizing for Victory in Britain and Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
3. Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
4. Richard Katz and Peter Mair (eds.), How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi: Sage, 1994).
5. Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party', Party Politics Vol.1, No.1 (1995), pp.5-28.
6. Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen, 'Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980-2000', Party Politics, Vol.7, No.1 (2001), pp.5-21.
7. For a brief overview see Richard Katz et al., 'The Membership of Political Parties in European Democracies, 1960-1990', European Journal of Political Research, Vol.22, No.3 (1992), pp.329-45.
8. Per Selle and Lars Svansand, 'Membership in Party Organizations and the Problem of Decline of Parties', Comparative Political Studies, Vol.23, No.4 (1991), pp.459-77.
9. Paul Whiteley and Patrick Seyd, High-Intensity Participation: The Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press, 2002).
10. See Petr Kopecký, 'Developing Party Organizations in East-Central Europe: What Type of Party is Likely to Emerge?', Party Politics, Vol.1, No.4 (1995), pp.515-34.
11. Paul Lewis, 'Introduction and Theoretical Overview', in Paul Lewis (ed.), Party Structure and Organization in East-Central Europe (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996), pp.1-19.
12. See for example, Scarrow, Parties and their Members.
13. However, newly created parties built upon different resources as well. The Civic Democratic party inherited party bureaucracy and membership base from Civic Forum: See, for example, Magdalena Hadjisky, 'The Failure of the Participatory Democracy in the Czech Republic', West European Politics, Vol.24, No.3 (2001), pp.43-64; the Social Democrats drew resources from other social democratic parties in Europe, mainly Austria and Germany, and regained valuable real estate in Prague owned by the party before 1948.
14. For more detail on the transformation of the membership base, see Lukás. Linek, 'České politické strany a jejich členové. K postupné proměněcharakteru členství', in Jiří Kabele, Martin Potůček, Irena Prázová and Arnošt Veselý (eds.), Rozvojčeske společnosti v Evropské unii I - Sociologie, prognostika a správa (Prague: Matfyzpress, 2004), pp.174-92.
15. Two basic measures are used to compare development of the party membership base: A change in the number of members between two terms expressed as a percentage or in absolute terms, and the percentage of party members in the total number of the electorate: See Katz et al., 'The Membership of Political Parties in European Democracies'; Mair and van Biezen, 'Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980-2000'. The advantage of the second measure is the fact that it takes into account changes in the number of voters; the number of people entitled to vote in the Czech Republic increased between 1990 and 2002 by 0.7 million, or 9.5 per cent.
16. The disadvantage of this measure is the fact that it is not possible to judge from the figures whether a falling tendency is caused by an increase in the number of voters or a fall in the number of members and vice versa. In Table 2 we can see a fall of this measure in KSC.M from 21.6 per cent in 1998 to 12.8 per cent in 2002, which suggests a fall in the number of members. Although the number of members of KSCM̌ fell, the increase in the absolute number of KSČM voters was a greater factor in this change.
17. Ingrid van Biezen, Political Parties in New Democracies: Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p.144.
18. Similarly Kopecký, 'Developing Party Organizations in East-Central Europe'.
19. Lewis, 'Introduction and Theoretical Overview'.
20. For the research undertaken within the incentives framework, see Richard Katz, 'Internal Life of Parties', in Kurt Richard Luther and Ferdinand Müller-Rommel (eds.), Political Parties in the New Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.87-118.
21. Whiteley and Seyd, High-Intensity Participation.
22. This and the following portion of the text draw mainly on the statutes of individual parties valid between 1990 and 2005.
23. Estimate based on authors' calculations according to the financial annual reports for individual years and based on data on party members. In addition to an average we have also used the sliding average for the last three years.
24. Political parties that demand active involvement of party members in the party's activities face difficulties over the poor activity level of older members. ČSSD therefore established a Club of Seniors where an elderly member may be organized without the requirement to be actively involved. According to a statement of a high-ranking official in KSČM, this party has been contemplating for some time the introduction of honorary membership for elderly and less active members who would otherwise face the danger of their membership being terminated on account of insufficient activity.
25. Lars Bille, 'Democratizing a Democratic Procedure: Myth or Reality? Candidate Selection in Western European Parties, 1960-1990', Party Politics, Vol.7, No.3 (2001), pp.363-80.
26. Peter Mair, 'Party Organizations: From Civil Society to the State', in Katz and Mair (eds.), How Parties Organize.
27. Susan Scarrow, 'Parties and the Expansion of Direct Democracy', Party Politics, Vol.5, No.3 (1999), pp.341-62.
28. For more detail on candidate selection see Jan Outlý, Strany a stát, volby a finance. Vybrané aspekty primárních voleb a financování politických stran (Olomouc: Periplum, 2003); Lukás.
29. Linek and Jan Outlý, 'Výběr kandidátů do Evropského parlamentu v hlavních českých politických stranách', Politologicky časopis, Vol.12, No.1 (2005), pp.3-26.
30. Steven Saxonberg, The Czech Republic Before the New Millennium: Politics, Parties and Gender (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003).
31. The president of the republic is elected by the parliament; only parliamentary party groups are allowed to nominate candidates.
32. See, for example, Russel J. Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg (eds.), Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
33. Kay Lawson and Peter Merkel, When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
34. Howard L. Reiter, 'Party Decline in the West. A Sceptic's View', Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol.1, No.3. (1989), pp.325-48.
35. Hermann Schmitt and Sören Holmberg, 'Political Parties in Decline?', in Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs (eds.), Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.95-133.
36. For example, Ola Listhaug and Matti Wiberg, 'Confidence in Political and Private Institutions', in Klingemann and Fuchs (eds.), Citizens and the State, pp.298-322.
37. Mattei Dogan, 'Erosion of Confidence in Advanced Democracies', Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol.32, No.3 (1997), pp.3-29.
38. Russel J. Dalton, 'Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies', in Pippa Norris (ed.), Critical Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
39. Also Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam, Disaffected Democracies: What's Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
40. Thomas Poguntke and Susan Scarrow, 'The Politics of Anti-Party Sentiment: Introduction', European Journal of Political Research, Vol.29, No.3 (1996), pp.257-62.
41. Mariano Torcal, 'Institutional Disaffection and Democratic History in New Democracies', Central European Political Science Review, Vol.3, No.10 (2002), pp.40-77.
42. Mariano Torcal, Richard Gunther and José Ramón Montero, 'Antiparty Sentiments in Southern Europe', in Richard Gunther, José Ramón Montero and Juan Linz (eds.), Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.257-90.
43. Matti Wiberg, 'Wrong Persons are Making Right Decisions Without Hearing Us: Political Trust, Responsiveness of Politicians and Satisfaction with Governmental Policies in Finland', Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol.9, No.2 (1986), pp.141-56.
44. For similar results for post-communist countries in the course of the 1990s, see Richard Rose, 'Mobilizing Demobilized Voters in Post-Communist Societies', Party Politics, Vol.1, No.4 (1995), pp.549-63.
45. Procedure according to Torcal, Gunther and Montero, 'Antiparty Sentiments in Southern Europe'.
46. Van Biezen, Political Parties in New Democracies, p.144.