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Granting significant powers to this group can result in a break in policy linkage with the party’s policies becoming unattractive to voters. Party members can become, ‘more of a nuisance, less willing merely to shout their approval of elite policies and more prone to make electorally costly demands’ (Katz, 1990).

For the Labour Party in Britain, party activists have, at times, been viewed as such a nuisance; becoming an impediment by imposing vote-losing policies on the party and creating an unattractive environment for recruiting new members. The party’s response has been to increase intra-party democracy and centralise membership, the increase in

‘ordinary’ members and expansion in membership rights created, paradoxically, an increase in central party control by undermining activist and local party organization (Webb, 1992; Scarrow, 1996). Given there is good evidence to suggest that empirically May’s Law (1973) does not hold in all cases and party activists are not the political extremists of the party compared to rank and file members or comparing members to party supporters (Kitschelt, 1989; Norris, 1995; Widfeldt, 1995; Narud and Skare, 1999;

Scarrow and Gezgor, 2010; Van Holsteyn et al., 2017), the need to ‘dilute’ the activists in the party to better reflect the wider public may not always be a concern. However, the Labour Party case highlights that parties’ decisions to expand selection procedures might not always mean a reduction in central control.

Understanding party members’ potential value to party organisation, functionally and symbolically, helps explain why elites continue to place a value on party membership recruitment. It explains why parties may try to make themselves attractive to potential new members, but it doesn’t entail that they are successful in that endeavour. Likewise, the costs and benefits of party members are not straightforward and parties are not always able to dictate the outcomes. And whilst parties may outwardly be trying to attract members, we do not always know their intention in this regard; we don’t know what value party elites see in membership.

2.5 Value of party to members (supply-side)

Parties’ organisational adaptations towards or away from membership are only one half of the picture. Whether parties see a value in membership is of course of little import if members see no value in joining parties.

Whiteley and Seyd’s general incentives model (Seyd and Whiteley, 1992; Whiteley et al., 1994; Whiteley and Seyd, 2002) goes a long way to explain the complex and numerous motivational factors behind party membership. The general incentives model builds on Clark and Wilson’s scheme (1961) which defined incentives as solidary (social) incentives such as being with like-minded individuals and having shared social or recreational

opportunities; material incentives from expectation of personal rewards or patronage; and purposive (political) incentives which derive from being part of advancing particular ideological goals (all of which are divided into inclusive or exclusive benefits). Whiteley and Seyd’s model brings together incentives that combine aspects of rational choice with social psychological models of participation and in doing so seeks to overcome the paradox of participation (Olson, 1995). They define these incentives as selective process incentives (perceived personal benefits from the process of participation itself regardless of outcome) and selective outcome incentives (such as furthering a political career). They add to the model collective incentives such as furthering collective goods or preventing the opposite, altruism, expressive attachment (which sees loyalty and affection for the party as a motivating factor), and social norms which sees political involvement stemming from the perceived expectations of family and friends.

Across a range of national surveys (Young and Cross, 2002; Gallagher and Marsh, 2004;

Pedersen et al., 2004; Heidar, 2014; Baras et al., 2015) ideological incentives (those related to political goals) come out as the strongest motivations for joining and several of these studies have supported the view that ideological incentives have far greater impact on party joining than selective incentives (Heidar, 2014; Pedersen et al., 2004; van Haute and Gauja, 2015). One exception to this is found specifically in the case of younger members, where there is evidence of younger ‘professionally minded’ members being driven by selective outcome/material motivations such as career opportunities (Bruter and Harrison, 2009).

However, this extensive literature on membership incentives is nearly entirely survey based and what we know of members joining activity is limited by the data. A more in-depth approach to understanding member’s motivations could provide a richer picture of what drives party membership.

The importance of ideological incentives in attracting members is consistent across different political systems and corresponds to a decline in parties’ scope to provide other incentives. As social and class ties have declined, the automatic, socially-conditioned reflex

to join a particular party has lost strength for some and collective solidary benefits have weakened. With expanding opportunities for leisure and social activities outside of parties, and an increasing desire for extra-party political participation in more

individualised activities (Norris, 2002), selective process and solidary incentives are much less in parties’ gift. Parties may provide material benefits to members through access to discounts and consumer benefits, but these are not necessarily valued by party members, and are widely available elsewhere. What remains in a party’s gift is access to its own democratic channels. It is political incentives that parties are still able to offer to potential members and are doing so.

If the incentives parties offer have changed, then it is possible that those joining have also changed. Given the declining appeal of solidary, selective and material benefits, it might be expected that those who do join parties are more ideologically driven (Scarrow and Gezgor, 2010). Who joins is an important question as the composition of party

membership may add or detract from a party’s organisational strength and legitimacy. If, by shrinking, parties become home to a minority of ideologically motivated citizens, the membership may cease to represent the wider electorate, damaging the party’s

representational and policy linkage. Party decline theories suggest that parties (in terms of their memberships) are becoming less representative of the wider electorate (Van Biezen et al., 2012). This is a problem if parties rely on members to campaign in their core constituencies and provide candidates as well as selecting them. As Anders Widfeldt argues: “If a party needs to explain party policies to women, young people and working-class electors, it might stand a better chance of doing so effectively if it has more women, young people and workers amongst its members” (Widfeldt, 1995).

Yet recent research suggests that whilst parties continue to be sociologically

unrepresentative (older, more male and (in some studies) more educated) (Widfeldt, 1995; Gallagher and Marsh, 2004; Scarrow and Gezgor, 2010; Baras et al., 2015), they are not necessarily ideologically unrepresentative. Whilst ideology attracts potential members to parties, there is little to suggest as May’s Law (1973) proposes, that party members are the political extremists in all cases (Kitschelt, 1989; Norris, 1995; Narud and Skare, 1999;

Van Holsteyn et al., 2017). Though studies have found that party members place

themselves further to the end of the ideological spectrum than party supporters (Webb et al., 2017) they have also been found to represent a diverse range of opinion (van Haute and Gauja, 2015). This suggests that party membership decline has not necessarily led to a break in representational linkage. And whilst membership numbers alone may represent a

decline in participatory linkage, this might be changing with the development of supporter affiliation.

2.6 Recruitment, retention and the revolving door

This twin picture of a decreasing demand for party members on the one hand, and a decreasing desire for party activity on the other, paints a picture of party membership decline at the micro-level; the individual decisions of party members and party elites about the costs and benefits of membership. Yet at the macro-level, a focus on aggregate national trends in membership has encouraged party system explanations of change.

These two types of analysis see parties either completely powerless to reverse

membership decline or all-powerful in shaping it. Missing from these micro and macro analyses is a party-level explanation for membership change. Paulis et. al. (2017) have remedied this gap by providing an explanation that takes into account the party’s position (vote share, competition, age) and internal variables such as leadership change and selection procedures (Paulis et al., 2017). This analysis finds ‘a bandwagon effect between electoral cycles and membership cycles’ (2017, p.15), with parties that are gaining votes also increasing membership ratios. This suggests that whilst parties may not be

completely at the mercy of system-level changes, they are not necessarily completely in control of membership recruitment either; parties may gain or lose members depending on the political environment. This presents opportunities for parties, though not ones in which they have absolute control.

The importance of electoral and political factors in shaping party membership is highlighted by Pemberton and Wickham-Jones (2013). Looking at Labour Party

membership and recruitment strategies during the 1990s, Pemberton and Wickham-Jones (2013) conclude that membership is much more like a ‘revolving door’ than a linear process. They point to the significant drop in party membership following the party’s recruitment drive in the mid-1990s and they argue that the wider political context had greater impact than party incentives on this decline. The incentives remained constant during this period, it was the political context that had changed. Whilst parties can shape some of the incentives to join (reduced joining rates, member benefits, political rights), the political context is largely out of their hands. Election campaigns, election defeats, and whether (and how long) the party holds government office, also affect the party’s attractiveness to members or potential members. However, parties do have the opportunity to utilise these key moments for member recruitment.