Are Party Activists the Party Extremists? The Structure of Opinion in Political Parties

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Marthe Narud ◽  
Audun Skare
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Activists

scholarly journals Campaigning across continents: how Latin American parties link up with migrant associations abroad

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Fliess
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Migrant Associations

AbstractEmigrant voting rights have opened new electoral arenas, and many political parties increasingly campaign across borders. Yet relatively little is known about the challenges parties confront when campaigning transnationally and the strategies they have developed in response to these challenges. This paper addresses these shortcomings. First, I investigate the hurdles Latin American parties face in linking up with organized migrant collectives in residency countries for campaigning purposes. Second, I probe into the transnational linkage strategies these parties deploy to tap into migrant associations’ resources and mobilization capacities. This study builds on a comparative research design and draws on almost 40 semi-structured interviews with Bolivian and Ecuadorian party activists as well as association leaders in Barcelona, Spain. Departing from the party interest group literature, I identify three transnational linkage strategies Bolivian and Ecuadorian parties implement: 1) Infiltration, 2) Co-optation, and 3) Cooperation. All parties execute these tactics informally in order to comply with local norms that require associations to remain apolitical. The analysis further demonstrates that differences between home-country electoral systems shape the types of linkage strategies Bolivian and Ecuadorian parties use. This article contributes to the study of migrant politics and political parties in important ways. This study highlights how political parties actively negotiate their entry into the transnational electoral arena, and sheds light on how migrants remain politically connected to their home countries.

Fighting Elections: Cross-Level Political Party Integration in Ontario

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 871-892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Lennox Esselment
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
The Other ◽  
Federal System ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Local Party

Abstract.Conventional wisdom about the structure of political parties in Canada has emphasized their confederal nature. In other words (and the New Democratic party excepted), parties with identical partisan complexions at the federal and provincial levels are thought to operate in “two political worlds.” This paper argues that election campaigns are a key integrating link between parties. How they fight elections reveals extensive cross-level co-operation, particularly through shared activists (local party activists, party staff and party professionals) and technological expertise. This has the effect of shrinking the space between party cousins and forges unity between them. While there are certain obstacles to electoral collaboration, there are also incentives for these parties to work to maintain and strengthen their ties with their partisan cousin at the other level. These findings make an important contribution by directly challenging the notion that Canada's federal system has led to increasingly disentangled political parties.Résumé.L'opinion communément admise au sujet de la structure des partis politiques au Canada a mis l'accent sur leur nature confédérale. En d'autres termes (exception faite du Nouveau Parti démocratique), on considère en général que les partis à caractère partisan identique au palier fédéral et provincial fonctionnent dans «deux mondes politiques à part». Le présent article avance que les campagnes électorales constituent un facteur d'intégration clé entre les différents niveaux d'un parti. La façon dont un parti dispute une élection révèle un haut degré de coopération entre les organisations provinciales et fédérales, surtout du fait qu'ils partagent des militants communs (militants locaux, personnel politique et professionnels du parti) et leur expertise technologique. Ce phénomène tend à rétrécir l'espace entre cousins du même parti et à bâtir l'unité d'organisation entre les deux niveaux. Même s'il y a des obstacles inévitables à la collaboration électorale, les partis cousins ont de bonnes raisons de veiller à maintenir et à renforcer leurs liens réciproques. Ces conclusions apportent une contribution importante à l'étude des partis politiques, en contestant directement l'idée que le système fédéral au Canada a encouragé les partis politiques de même allégeance à mener leurs activités de manière indépendante.

scholarly journals Dual Partisanship in the South: Anachronism, or a Real Barrier to Republican Success in the Region?

1993 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 487-500
Author(s):  
Jay Barth
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Recent Survey ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Politics ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Important Barrier ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Party Activists

This paper employs contemporary polling data to determine the degree to which dual partisanship is preponderant in the mass public of the eleven southern states. Because dual partisanship shows a lack of connection between the national political parties and the parties at lower levels, widespread dual partisanship could be seen as an important barrier to the “trickling down” of Republicanism in the region. While dual partisanship is not found to be present in large numbers in the contemporary southern electorate, differences in the partisan commitments of southern voting groups - of age, gender, and subregion - have important implications for the present and future workings of southern voting groups - of age, gender, and subregion - have important implications for the present and future workings of southern politics. The paper goes on to discuss how this absence of dual partisanship from the thinking of most members of the mass electorate in the region could coexist with evidence of dual partisanship among southern party activists reported in recent survey results.

Opinion Structure Among New Democratic Party Activists: A Comparison with Liberals and Conservatives

1990 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Archer ◽  
Alan Whitehorn
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Ideological Clarity ◽  
Mass Publics ◽  
Consistent Manner ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
New Democrats ◽  
New Democratic Party

AbstractThere is substantial disagreement over the extent to which political parties in Canada can be distinguished on ideological grounds. Research on mass publics has usually concluded that ideology plays only a modest role in structuring orientations towards parties. However, a growing body of survey data on party activists suggests a greater degree of ideological clarity and policy cohesiveness. This note extends earlier research by Blake, Johnston and Perlin on Liberal and Conservative convention delegates and compares them with delegates to the 1987 federal New Democratic party convention. Survey data on convention delegates suggest that political activists array themselves in a relatively consistent manner across a range of issues in ways that are compatible with a left/right ideological typology. Our findings also suggest that New Democrats display the greatest consensus and ideological distinctiveness of the three parties studied.

scholarly journals Partidos conectivos durante la pandemia. La estrategia de comunicación de Podemos en Twitter

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano De Marco ◽  
Juan Antonio Guevara Gil ◽  
Ángela Martínez Torralba ◽  
Celia García-Ceca Sánchez ◽  
Alejandro Echániz Jiménez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Communication Patterns ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Redes Sociales ◽  
Interaction Rate ◽  
External Communication ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Party Activists

Desde el punto de vista comunicativo, los partidos conectivos se definen por su inclinación hacia modelos participativos donde los flujos conversacionales posean una estructura horizontal y bidireccional entre la élite de la formación y el activismo de base. Esto es posible gracias a que ceden parte de su organización a herramientas de la Web. Dentro de esta taxonomía se encuentra el partido español Unidas-Podemos como ejemplo de partido conectivo. En esta investigación se analiza la vertiente comunicativa externa, basada en el uso de redes sociales online, de los principales partidos políticos españoles durante el periodo de Estado de Alarma provocado por el COVID-19. Para ello, se observará la tasa de interacción y respuestas en Twitter de los representantes del Congreso de los Diputados. Los resultados muestran que los patrones comunicativos a nivel externo de Unidas-Podemos responden a criterios verticales, propios de los partidos convencionales. From a communicational point of view, connective parties are based on horizontal and bidirectional structure of conversational flows between the elite of the formation and the party activists. This is possible because they delegate part of their organization to digital and online platforms. In this paper we use the Spanish party Unidas-Podemos as a case of study of connective parties. Drawing upon the Twitter response and interaction rate between Spanish representatives and citizens, this research analyzes the external communicative aspect of the main Spanish political parties during the Lockdown caused by COVID-19. The results show that the external communication patterns of Unidas-Podemos respond to vertical criteria, typical of conventional parties.

Activism of Political Parties in Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
George M. Bob-Milliar
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
High Intensity ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Sub Saharan

Since the early 1990s, African states have been democratizing. Political parties now dominate the public spaces in many African democracies. The past 26 years have witnessed the growth and consolidation of “party democracy” in Africa. This is the longest period of uninterrupted growth of electoral politics in many countries on the continent. Recent Afrobarometer surveys show that almost two-thirds (63%) of Africans support pluralistic politics. Party identification in sub-Saharan Africa has also been on the rise. Across 16 states Afrobarometer surveyed, a majority of Africans (65%) claim they “feel close to” a political party in their country. The mass public who identified with a particular political party increased by 7 percentage points between 2002 and 2015. Political parties are the vehicles for citizens to engage in party activism. The women and men who join a political party become the party activists. Party activists are the lifeblood of the party organization. And political party activism in sub-Saharan Africa is geared toward the election of the party and its candidates into office. Consequently, party activism is a continuum of high-intensity and low-intensity political activities. Party activists vary in their levels of involvement. Thus, it is a mixture of fanfare and aggressive participation. Political party activism is a multifaceted process where party members undertake any of the following political activities: display a poster, donate money, help with fund-raising, deliver election leaflets, help at a party function, attend party meetings, undertake door-to-door campaigning, and run for party office. The involvement of party members usually varies from active engagement to passive attachment to the party. There were several motives for party activists getting involved in “high-intensity participation.” Because of the crucial role party activists play in the intra- and inter-party competition, the parties provide some incentives to get members commitment. At the organizational level, party activists present themselves for election into party offices at the grassroots, regionally or nationally. They devote their time and financial resources in furtherance of the party agenda. In return, party activists expect the party to reward them with selective incentives when power is won. That said, more research is required at the country level to enable us to construct the profile of the African party activists.

Porting the political campaign: The NationBuilder platform and the global flows of political technology

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 901-918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fenwick McKelvey ◽  
Jill Piebiak
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Campaign ◽  
Reciprocal Influence ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Global Flows ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Political Technology ◽  
Global Platform

Political parties rely on digital technologies to manage volunteering, fundraising, fieldwork, and data collection. They also need tools to manage web, email, and social media outreach. Increasingly, new political engagement platforms integrate these tasks into one unified system. These platforms pose important questions about the flows of political practices from campaigns to platforms and vice versa as well as across campaigns globally. NationBuilder is a critical case in their study. It is a leading non-partisan platform used in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The case of NationBuilder in Canada analyzes how political engagement platforms coordinate the global flows of politics. Through interviews, we find reciprocal influence among developers, party activists, consultants, and the NationBuilder platform. We call this process porting. It results in NationBuilder becoming a more portable global platform in tandem with becoming an imported, hybridized part of a campaign’s digital infrastructure.

Local Party Activists in Dublin: Socialization, Recruitment and Incentives

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Garvin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Function ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Local Party

Definitions of the political party in the context of Western competitive electoral politics have usually centred on the notion that the critical function of the political party is power-seeking or power-wielding. In practice, of course, Western parties of the unpaid voluntary kind cannot be solely concerned with power-seeking in the sense of vote-getting; they must also take the opinions and wishes of their own activists into account, at least to some extent. Thus, Epstein's emphasis on the nomination and electoral functions of political parties, although fundamentally correct, should not be allowed to obscure other central preoccupations of party leaders, in particular the problems they often face in attempting to keep an organization in being between elections without recourse to extensive material payoffs in the shape of patronage or regular salaries for large numbers of activists.

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