Parties, Activists and Elections

Abstract

In modern democracies, campaigning for elections has become increasingly capital intensive and less labour intensive. Parties rely more and more on the party leadership, experts, and professionals to manage their electoral campaigns, and they apply new tools including political marketing and new information and communication technologies that allow for new ways both to campaign and mobilize. At the same time party membership figures are in general in decline. On this basis we welcome papers analyzing the current role of party members in party campaigning and its impact on party organizations and democracy. In the perspective of parties, we seek analyses of what types of activism parties encourage party members to engage in, the role of party members promoted by the parties in this new context, and the impact on the mobilization capacity of parties. In the perspective of party members, we seek analyses of how party members themselves fill out their role by participating in various campaign activities within and for their parties, and of the impact of these campaign activities on turnout and electoral results. We encourage comparative analyses exploring differences among parties across the political spectrum, as well as original methods such as field experiments.

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