Party Organization, Party Institutionalization and Democratic Stability

Thomas Poguntke, Heinrich Heine University, Germany, poguntke@hhu.de Susan E. Scarrow, University of Houston, USA, sscarrow@uh.edu

Paul D. Webb, University of Sussex, P.Webb@sussex.ac.uk

ECPR General Conference, Oslo, September 2017

Abstract This paper investigates underlying links between party organizations and support for parliamentary democracy. It argues that public satisfaction with democracy may depend in part on the effectiveness with which parties are able to perform some tasks which are conventionally associated with their “linkage” role. In particular, we look at two aspects of how party organizations facilitate two-way communication between citizens and parties, using party data from the Political Party Database and individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. On the one hand, we investigate whether party organizational strength affects parties’ abilities to communicate their messages to voters. Do parties with more members and/or more total resources do a better job of contacting voters during election campaigns? If so, do citizens who receive and remember party communications tend to hold more positive views of the political system? On the other hand, we investigate the other direction of communication, asking whether citizens’ attitudes towards the political system are affected by the procedures through which parties incorporate citizens’ views into their key decisions. Specifically, we ask whether citizens have more confidence in democracy when the parties they support use more democratic decision-making mechanisms. Empirically, we find evidence to support the view that party organizational resources help foster satisfaction with democracy, albeit indirectly. Whether parties have a similar effect via their decision-making procedures seems to depend upon the particular type of intra-party democracy they practise.

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Party Organization, Party Institutionalization and Democratic Stability

1. Introduction.

Parties and party systems constantly change. Yet, the magnitude of change and the quality of the

challenges to established party systems have arguably reached new levels in recent years. A few

examples may suffice to illustrate this point. For instance, while the collapse of the Italian party

system in the early 1990s may be interpreted as a reshuffling of old forces under new names, this

can hardly be said about the more recent upsurge of the outsider Five-Star Movement. Similarly,

in 2017 none of the established party forces made it to the second round of the Austrian and

French presidential elections. Meanwhile, the Dutch Freedom party led by Geert Wilders

emerged as the second largest party in parliament after that country’s 2017 elections. In the past

decade even the hyper-stable German party system has been shaken, first by the success of the

Pirates Party, and more recently with the advances of the right-wing populist and, more recently,

the advance of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

However, while these changes are eye-catching, they are far from uniform. In some countries,

dominant parties have managed to retain their positions, possibly ceding some ground to

newcomers but maintaining their status as the most-plausible government parties (e.g., Ireland,

Sweden, UK, Germany). In other countries, once-dominant parties have altogether disappeared

(e.g., Italy), or have lost considerable ground. Other countries fall somewhere in the middle on

this scale. For example, Table 1 shows patterns for 19 Western European democracies between

1990 and 2015. This period encompasses party system responses to the end of the Cold War, the

expansion of the European Union, and the fallout from the Great Recession. The last of these

clearly made an impact, with 14 of the countries reporting their highest total volatility election in

2008 or after. In some countries, this was clearly due to support for new parties, such as the 5

Star Movement in Italy, Syriza in Greece, or Podemos in Spain. In the 2012 Greek vote almost

13% of the volatility was traceable to support for new parties. Yet at least for the first decade of

the new millennium, new party volatility was more about new parties entering and establishing

themselves than of constant turnover of new party vehicles that lasted for only one election

(indicated by the low average “new party” volatility, which mostly lies below 3%). The extent to

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which these new parties permanently displaced older parties has varied greatly, with some

proving quite resilient, and others vanishing altogether.

TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

Arguably, much of this party system change is driven by social change and changing voter

demand. Just as the rise of post-materialism has been an important driver of the establishment of

Green parties in the 1980s (Inglehart 1977; Müller-Rommel 1985, 1990), subsequent populist

party success is related to the growing importance of a cultural cleavage which divides those

who oppose globalization from those who embrace it (Kriesi 2008; Inglehart & Norris 2016).

However, political conflicts or even cleavages do not determine party system change. Parties are

actors in their own right and have means of stabilizing their electorates even when facing new

electoral demands.

Clearly, adapting the party programme is one strategy of reacting to new challenges. The

literature on party competition analyzes the effectiveness of parties’ attempts to respond to

voters’ demands. Yet, the literature makes also many references to the importance of party

organization. As a matter of fact, the major typologies of political parties emphasize the way

different types of parties connect via organizational means to their electorates. The nature of

their organizational linkage may go a long way in defining party types and their differential

ability to stabilize their electorates (Poguntke 2000). For this reason, much previous literature

asserts or assumes that there is a strong connection between what parties and party organizations

do and the stability of electoral behavior and, more generally, public support for democracy.

In one forceful portrayal, dominant parties are characterized as cartels which are able to

manipulate state resources such as public subsidies and ballot access in order to fend off

potential challengers; they are strong organizations which have become substantially detached

from society (Katz and Mair 1994). From a slightly different and somewhat more positive angle,

parties are portrayed as organizations which are responsive to voters and which provide linkage

between voters and the institutions of government (Sartori 1976: 25). Parties which do a good

job of this should be able to win and retain support even in the face of changing public attitudes

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(Lawson 1980; Poguntke 2000, 2002; Allern & Bale 2012). From this second perspective,

parties’ organizational differences matter because they may be related to how much linkage they

actually provide. For instance, some argue that traditional cleavage-based mass parties did a

much better job of making citizens feel represented than do more “consumer”-oriented party

models (whether those models are described as catch-all, franchise, electoral professional, or

something similar). Unfortunately, there is little empirical research on this second part of the

equation, on the extent to which differences in party organization may affect citizens’ attitudes

towards “their” parties (or any parties), or towards the political systems in which these parties

operate.

Our aim in this paper is to investigate the role of this aspect of party organization in directly or

indirectly contributing to political stability, asking whether we can find evidence that citizens’

attitudes towards the political systems and potential openness to new alternatives might be

affected by differences in how party organizations facilitate two-way communication between

citizens and those who govern. Our examinations pair newly-available party organizational data

from the Political Party Database (PPDB) with individual-level data from the Comparative Study

of Electoral Systems. We consider both sides of the linkage equation, looking at how party

organizational strength affects parties’ abilities to communicate AND to receive messages, and

then trying to draw lines between parties’ linkage efforts and citizens’ perceptions of how well

their polities are functioning. We begin by reviewing what we know from past studies about

how party organization facilitates linkage, both in terms of organizational capacity and

communication, and in terms of how citizens’ attitudes are shaped by party efforts. We then

present the data and explain our measurement strategies. Finally, we present our preliminary

results. These provide clear evidence of the link between party organizational capacity and

parties’ ability to convey their messages. They also provide some evidence as to whether

citizens’ feel more positively about their political systems when parties are more visibly

promoting two-way linkage. Overall, these results provide substantial evidence for the

importance of party organization and party agency in shaping the political systems in which

parties compete.

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2. Linking Party Organization with Voter Behavior & Attitudes: Past Efforts and Open

Questions

Can party organization affect political attitudes and behaviors in ways that help parties (and

democratic systems) to survive bad elections years, and party leaders who disappoint? Put

differently, can parties’ organizational features affect citizens’ attachments to parties and to the

political order, or is electoral stability primarily just a matter of the strength of enduring (or

eroded) social cleavages and/or the result of party competition? There are (at least) three

prominent approaches which affirmatively answer these questions and posit or deduce a

connection between parties’ organizational dimensions and their electoral fates: the literature on

parties and linkage, the literature on party institutionalization, and research on campaign impact.

Each of these traditions highlights the potential importance of parties’ organizational efforts, but

they collectively leave many questions unanswered about which organizational aspects can

matter, and in what ways.

One classic pillar of this approach is the functionalist-inspired literature on parties and linkage.

This literature starts from the assumption that parties can (and should) use their organizations to

strengthen democracy by providing “linkage”. While this concept was an omnibus idea with no

single definition, generally democratic linkage is discussed in terms of two-way communication.

Where party-based linkage works well, parties present voters with policy options, and citizens

have opportunities to influence (though not necessarily to decide) these options, including

parties’ candidate slates and their programs (Sartori, 1976; Lawson 1980; Poguntke 2002;

Dalton, Farrell & McAllister 2011; Allern & Bale 2012). In some cases party-based linkage is

viewed as a systemic property, whereas in other instances it is viewed as party specific: a party

which does a bad job of providing linkage is likely to run into electoral difficulties, and may

even disappear – party failure is linkage failure (Lawson & Merkl 1988).

The literature on linkage is generally not explicit or prescriptive about how parties need to

organize to provide such linkage; in contrast, other studies suggest that organizational styles may

matter for democratic quality. For instance, inspired by experiences of 1920s Europe Sigmund

Neumann posited that certain organizational styles enabled parties to become parties of

democratic integration (1956), similar to what Duverger and others called mass parties. For

Neumann, these parties were ones that provided some decision-making roles for members, in

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contrast to the more purely elite driven model of the cadre party (or party of individual

representation); they also provided programmatic representation of supporters. Yet a long line of

studies of mass parties raised doubts about traditional parties’ effectiveness in providing linkage,

though diagnoses of the problems varied. Some saw entrenched and isolated party elites as

blocking the transmission of policy ideas from the base to the top of the party (Michels 1911);

others worried about the distorting priorities of party activists (May 1973), or the short time

horizons of election-oriented politicians (Panebianco 1988). Indeed, these complaints were so

prevalent in discussions about democratic failures that New Politics parties entered the political

scene with the intention of radically improving and democratizing political linkage through grass

roots democracy (Poguntke 1987; Kitschelt 1988). Yet, these ideas about how parties facilitate

linkage tended to be asserted more than the foundational mechanisms were empirically tested. As

a result, there are relatively few linkage-inspired studies that provide empirical lessons as to

whether some types of party organizations or specific sets of party rules provide stronger linkage

than others (including Poguntke 2000; Allern 2010, Allern & Bale 2012), or whether they have

an effect on the stability of the vote (Poguntke 2002).

A more recent and more empirical approach to these questions is represented by the literature on

party institutionalization and on the closely related (and more studied) idea of party system

institutionalization. This literature has burgeoned since the 1990s, when the concept first started

to be used to draw conclusions about the likely stability of newly-established (or re-established)

democracies in Latin America and elsewhere (for instance, Mainwaring & Scully 1995; Randall

and Svasand 2002; Kuenzi & Lambright 2001; Bolleyer 2013; Hicken & Kuhonta 2014). The

premise is that party institutionalization promotes accountability and better public policy,

because voters can hold parties and political elites accountable for past performance.

Institutionalization can create a virtuous circle, in that politicians have a stake in their parties’

long-term success. There is not yet a single accepted measure of either party or party system

institutionalization. However, most discussions of party institutionalization identify permanent

organizational structures and independent organizational resources as indicators of stronger

institutionalization (for instance, Basedau & Stroh 2008; Bizarro et al 2017). While party

institutionalization is generally considered to be distinct from (and probably causal to) party

system institutionalization, some early definitions of systemic institutionalization did include

party organizational strength (for instance, Mainwaring and Scully 1995). In other words, both

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these literatures assume that party organizational characteristics can have a role in explaining

electoral stability/instability.

Finally, questions about the connection between party organization and electoral stability have

been tackled by the more general literature on vote choice. Some studies have incorporated party

organization as a possible explanation for variations in party success. Studies in this vein have

used a variety of measures to differentiate on the basis of party strength including: party

membership (e.g. Rohrschneider & Whitefield 2012); party staff and the ability to field

candidates in local elections (e.g. Tavits 2012); local party financial and volunteer resources (e.g.

Carty & Eagles 1999; Fisher et al 2013). Results in any election have multiple causes, so it is

difficult to disentangle the impact of party organization. Moreover, it is logical to assume that

there is a two-way relationship between parties’ organizational resources and their electoral

strength. Most basically, parties which are popular are more likely to attract volunteers and

donors; this effect may be magnified in systems which allocate subsidies based on past electoral

performance. This makes it difficult to disentangle the causal direction between resources and

electoral popularity. Despite these research difficulties, the studies cited in this paragraph have

all found evidence that relatively strong party organizations can boost the success of party lists or

party candidates.

These and other studies have included aspects of party organizational strength as variables in

larger models of electoral influences, focusing on quantifiable aspects such as campaign

spending or volunteers. Such a focus is understandable, because such factors are both

quantifiable and tend to display large variance. However, it overlooks the potential importance

of process: it is possible that voters’ views on parties (and their information about them) may be

influenced by how the parties make their choices, not just by how they publicize these choices

during a campaign. For instance, a party which picks its leader in a highly visible intra-party

vote potentially could gain from extra media coverage for the selection event, as well as from

favorable perceptions of its apparent willingness to defer leadership selection to its supporters: a

leadership primary is (or at least looks like) “linkage” in action.

To put it more bluntly, in an age that tends to regard plebiscitary decision-making as inherently

superior to representative variants of democracy (Pappi 2015), direct (membership) involvement

has assumed the status of a legitimizing myth. Similarly, a party may benefit from its

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membership strength both through the volunteer labor that members offer, and because in

today’s parliamentary democracies membership size is often assigned a normative value (Katz

and Mair 1995). These examples illustrate how parties’ organizational qualities could have

multiple impacts, possibly even by impressing supporters of other parties who might applaud a

party’s process without liking its choices. Figure 1 illustrates the combination of such effects,

with citizens’ attitudes towards specific parties, and towards the party system in general, being

affected both by the extent to which parties effectively communicate their messages, and by the

extent to which party structures are open for input from citizens.

FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

Such effects are plausible, but in practice we do not know much about how much citizens in

general know about, or are affected by, parties’ internal rules on such matters as how they pick

the leader or approve the manifesto. While we know from party membership studies that many

party members care about opportunities to influence party decisions (see the party member

surveys reported in van Haute and Gauja 2015), we have little evidence on whether either party

sympathizers or voters in general care much about these procedures. The same is true for a

possible effect of key party procedures on citizens’ views of the political process.

In short, there is much literature asserting that parties’ organizational characteristics can affect

the nature of the links between citizens and their representatives, and therefore could affect the

stability and legitimacy of electoral politics. But so far there is only limited investigation of this,

in part because it has been difficult to obtain cross-nationally comparable data on multiple

aspects of party organization.

3. Communication from Parties to Voters: The Effectiveness of Party Contacting

Parties’ ability to run effective campaigns is crucial to their electoral success, and by extension,

should affect party system stability. While public opinion polls track changes in parties’ general

standing, an often decisive element in election outcomes is who actually decides to cast a vote.

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Thus, a party’s electoral fate may vary widely depending on its ability to mobilize its core

supporters to vote rather than to abstain.

Despite the difficulties of determining which of a myriad of factors influences electoral

outcomes, there is mounting evidence that party organizational differences affect both the

strength of party campaigning and its apparent success. Most of this comes from single country

studies, and in particular from countries which use single member district systems, where it is

easier to disentangle campaign effects from other factors. Much of this research has been done

in the U.S., for instance Gerber and Green 2000, among many others. Studies beyond the U.S.

include for Canada, Carty and Eagles 1999; for Great Britain Denver et al 2003; Fisher et al

2013. There is also some evidence of such effects from countries with national-level PR voting

systems, including studies of campaign effects in sub-national elections, although in many cases

the effects are quite modest (Tavits 2012; Andre and Depauw 2016; Bhatti et al. 2016).

National level studies have used different measures of organizational capacity, depending on the

availability of data, but they are broadly similar in that they differentiate between three types of

organizational resources that might affect campaign effectiveness: professionalization, spending

and volunteer mobilization. In the past two decades, professionalization has received the most

attention conceptually. Researchers have identified broad cross-national shifts in the extent to

which campaigns have hired outside consultants and have adopted the latest techniques and

technologies, be these software for targeting social media campaigns or the latest style in

advertising approaches (Farrell and Webb 2000; Plasser 2001; Plasser and Plasser 2002). Money

is a big determinant of whether parties are able to hire skilled staff or consultants to deploy these

new techniques, and of the extent of their effective access to new and old media, so in lieu of

data that tries to define professionalization per se, studies of campaign effectiveness usually just

focus on party spending levels (without asking exactly how it is spent).

Volunteers can also affect campaign capacity. Much recent research has shown renewed interest

in the possible impact of more “old fashioned” approaches to campaigning; these involve

personal contacts of some kind, whether door-to-door canvassing, telephoning, or messages sent

through social media. Much of such contacting is done by campaign volunteers and supporters,

including (but not limited to) party members (cf. Fisher et al 2014). In lieu of cross-national data

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on campaign volunteering, studies assessing the impact of volunteer resources often use party

membership data as a proxy measure of a party’s overall volunteer strength.

In addition, a few cross-national studies have tried to diagnose broader patterns regarding the

ways that variations in party organizational capacity affect party linkage with citizens. Most

relevant for our study, Rohrschneider and Whitefield (2012) assessed whether party

organizational capacity seemed to affect the congruence between party and voter positions. They

hypothesized that parties with what they call mass party characteristics – “significant”

memberships, strong central organizations, and links with civic organizations -- would be better

able to communicate their messages, and would be more in tune with the preferences of potential

voters. The underlying rationale is that strong party organizations facilitate two-way

communication between voters and party elites. They find evidence that this type of

organizational strength is related to party-voter congruence in Western Europe; in contrast, they

find no relationship (or even a negative relationship) in Central and Eastern Europe

(Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2012: 128-131). Other cross-national studies examine similar

questions more indirectly. For instance, Karp and Banducci looked at campaign patterns in both

established and newer democracies. They found huge differences in the levels of party

contacting, and found modest impact of these efforts, particularly on citizens’ political

participation beyond simply voting (2007). Dalton, Farrell and McAllister found similar results

(2011: 71).

These cross-national studies are an advance over single country studies, because they are able to

multiply conditions at the national level (eg, different electoral systems, different patterns of

incumbency). However, they remain limited in what they reveal about party organizational

impact because they had limited measures of party organizational capacity. Rohrschneider and

Whitefield attempted to overcome the data problem by using four questions from an expert

survey. While they show that responses to these questions line up reasonably well with “official

story” data from Katz and Mair 1992, their organizational strength index is likely to compress

cross-party variation because it is based on binary responses (e.g., does the party have

“significant” membership numbers?).1 The studies on party contacting implicitly estimate party

organizational strength by looking at their outputs (i.e., parties’ success in contacting voters). 1 In another paper we will explore the congruence between this and other expert judgement data and the PPDB “official story” data, and consider the substitutability of different measures.

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These studies have advanced our understanding of the connection between party organization

and voter behavior and attitudes, and they suggest that party organizational strength matters

under some circumstances. However, because they use general or indirect measures of

organizational differences, they give only a limited sense of what aspects of organization are

driving the effects, or of why organization seems to function differently in different settings (for

instance, in newer vs. more established democracies).

4. Two Way Communication and Voter Attitudes towards Democracy

One side of the story of party organization and linkage is that strong organization helps parties to

communicate their messages. The other side is that organizational strength or certain

organizational practices may improve communication from voters to parties, thereby closing the

communication loop.

There is rather limited research on the extent to which party activities and party structures affect

the ways that citizens think about politics. For instance, Karp and Banducci (2007: 230) note

that because party contacting appears to stimulate increased political participation, it may

indirectly increase satisfaction with democracy, but they do not test this relationship. The

research on efficacy tells us that citizens who feel that they can have an impact on the course of

events are more satisfied with democracy and have higher levels of trust in the institutions of

democratic government. This perception is associated with personality traits such as cognitive

skills (Dalton 1984). Yet, it is also related to the opportunity structure of democratic politics. The

degree to which political parties provide for meaningful participation is an important element of

this opportunity structure. In other words, it is reasonable to expect that the quality of intra-party

democracy has an effect on voters’ satisfaction with democracy.

In order to obtain a more detailed picture of likely effects we need to distinguish between three

conceptually different types of intra-party democracy (IPD) (for an overview see Cross & Katz

2013). The standard model of IPD is what we have identified as assembly-based intra-party

democracy (AIPD). In processes of this sort, intra-party decisions are taken in assemblies of

members or of delegates which are characterized by the coincidence of discussion and decision.

Importantly, the substance of the decision can be amended or even changed by those who

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eventually take the decision. Another variant of IPD is plebiscitary intra-party democracy

(PIPD); the defining characteristics of these procedures are that they disconnect discussion from

decision, and they give all members a vote on a substantive or personnel decision, usually via

internet voting or a postal ballot. A third variant is the “open plebiscitary intra-party democracy

(OIPD), which opens up decision-making to non-members, emulating the US model of open

primaries. This variant remains rare in parliamentary democracies, although the few instances in

which it has been used have attracted widespread attention (von dem Berge & Poguntke 2017)

From the perspective of our current investigations, the different inherent decision logic of these

variants of IPD is not very relevant. Instead, it is their different degrees of inclusiveness that

should make a difference. While AIPD limits participation to active party members, PIPD invites

and mobilizes all party members and OIPD potentially allows all citizens (or even residents) to

participate in an intra-party decision.

Conceptually, we can distinguish between direct and indirect effects of these participatory

opportunities. Direct effects are based on actual experience. They are bound to be of limited

magnitude for AIPD and PIPD, given the generally low membership figures in most party

democracies (van Biezen, Mair, Poguntke 2012). Even in the still rare cases of open primaries,

those likely to use them -- supporters of the party which employed them -- have constituted only

a fraction of the general electorate. Indirect effects, on the other hand, influence citizens’

orientations vis-à-vis democracy via their perception regarding the quality of participatory

opportunities within a polity. These perceptions can be based on personal communication within

participants’ own networks and on media coverage. The latter is particularly likely to concentrate

on plebiscitary events and open primaries, but events such as party conferences also attract

media coverage, which is why we can also expect an, albeit more moderate, effect of high levels

of AIPD. In an age of widespread demands for open decision-making processes, higher levels of

IPD should be associated with more positive attitudes towards a country’s overall quality of

democracy and also specifically towards those parties who practise inclusive decision-making.

We do not know whether or when such effects do indeed occur, because they have been largely

ignored by the literature on different aspects of IPD. The possible effects of IPD on satisfaction

with democracy have remained outside the scope of major studies in this area, including studies

of leadership selection (eg,; Cross and Pilet 2015), candidate selection (eg,; Hazan and Rahat

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2010) or the growing literature on party primaries (eg.; Sandri and Seddone). One partial

exception is an earlier study with PPDB data, conducted by one of the current authors with a

different set of co-uathors, which shows that higher levels of AIPD are associated with higher

levels of trust in democracy (Bolin et al 2017: 177). In this paper we will further explore the

effects of different types of IPD on orientations towards democracy. In a subsequent paper we

will pursue the second relevant connection shown in Figure 1, namely the impact of intra-party

processes on the attitude of citizens vis-a-vis parties (both general and specific).

In short, previous research gives us some tantalizing glimpses of how party efforts and party

communication opportunities may affect the way that citizens think about their political systems,

but for the most part we lack studies focused directly on these relationships. In this paper we

take up some of the challenges of assessing these connections. To this end, the paper looks for

evidence of the impact of how -- and how well -- party organizations facilitate two-way

communication between citizens and parties. On the one hand, we investigate whether party

organizational strength affects parties’ abilities to communicate their messages to voters in

general, and to their sympathizers in particular. Do parties with more members and/or more

money do a better job of forging “campaign linkages” (in terms of Dalton, Farrell, McAllister

2011)? We also ask whether party organizational contact directly or indirectly fosters satisfaction

with the democratic process. On the other hand, we investigate the impact of party processes for

channeling the other direction of communication (“participatory linkage” mechanisms), asking

whether citizens’ general political attitudes are affected by how parties incorporate members’ or

citizens’ views into their key decisions. Specifically, we ask whether citizens have greater

partisan affinity and/or are more satisfied with democracy when the parties they support use

more inclusive internal decision-making mechanisms. Do opportunities for participation make

citizens feel more “linked in”? By joining the PPDB’s detailed measures of party organization

with the individual-level data from the CSES, this paper strives to gain more insight into whether

and when how parties organize has important implications for the democracies within which

they operate. In a nutshell, do these aspects of party organization matter for partisan affinity and

for satisfaction with democracy and related orientations? In the next section we set out our

specific hypotheses.

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5. Hypotheses

We focus on two types of independent variables, both of which pertain to party organization. The

first are measures of resource strength, the second are indicators of party decision-making

processes. Our first hypothesis examines the link between party resources and the effectiveness

of party top-down communication, which is one side of the linkage equation. This seems like an

intuitive expectation which requires little by way of elaboration.

H1: The greater a party’s organizational resources, the more likely that its supporters will be

contacted during election campaigns.

The second set of hypotheses examine the impact of party contacting on individual attitudes and

behaviour. If such contact is effective (in the sense of having any impact), citizens who are

contacted should be more likely to perceive themselves as being part of the democratic process,

rather than as excluded bystanders. This may work regardless of whether they are contacted by a

party which they like or reject – in either case this will heighten their political awareness and

sharpen their political stance. Our ultimate dependent variable is satisfaction with democracy:

we want to know whether parties’ organizational capacity and outputs (top-down

communication) or their decision-making processes (bottom-up communication) affect how

citizens view the democratic process. This is necessarily a complex relationship. Hence, we also

theorize two intervening variables that may facilitate satisfaction with democracy: these are

affinity to political parties, and propensity to turn out and vote at elections. In our model these

are viewed as logically prior to satisfaction with democracy (though other researchers have taken

other views of this causal relationship).

H2: Respondents who are contacted by a party or parties during an election campaign are more

likely to have a sense of partisan affinity.

H3: Contact by parties during an election campaign increases the likelihood of a citizen voting.

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H4: Respondents who vote in an election are more likely to express satisfaction with democracy.

H5: The greater the partisan affinity of voters, the more likely they are to express satisfaction

with democracy.

The third set of hypotheses looks at the impact of party decision-making processes, and of the

extent to which they foster bottom-up linkage. We posit that more inclusive internal processes

should make a party’s supporters feel more actively engaged in the political world.

H6: The more democratic a party’s internal decision-making processes are, the greater the

partisan affinity of its voters will be.

H7: The more democratic a party’s internal decision-making processes are, the more likely that

its supporters are to express satisfaction with democracy.

Note that there is two implicit causal chains of logic to the individual level hypotheses H1-H7.

The first one starts with a party’s organizational resources, and suggests that the greater these are

the more likely that its supporters will be contacted during an election campaign. Even if this

were not the case, we would still want to know if party contacting has an effect. We then test the

expectation that if an individual is contacted during an election campaign, the more likely that

their attachment to a party will be bolstered, and that they will turn out to vote; if this is

confirmed, we then test the expectation that the greater voters’ partisan attachment and

propensity to vote are, the more likely they are to express satisfaction with the way that

democracy in their country operates. Thus, this causal path covers H1-H5. A different and

shorter chain of causal logic links H6 and H7: here we seek to verify whether forms of intra-

party democracy enhance a party’s voters’ attachments to that party, which in turn sustains their

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satisfaction with democracy in the wider political system. Thus, the ultimate dependent variable

is the legitimacy of the democratic system, and our hypotheses suggest two (possibly

complementary) routes from party organization to such legitimacy; one stems from parties’

organizational resources, the other from their decision-making processes, as per Figure 2. What

then does the data reveal?

FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE

6. Our Data and Measures

Our strategy for assessing these hypotheses involves combining individual-level data from the

CSES (Module 4) with organizational from the PPDB Round 1a. The PPDB is a cross-national

database on party organizational resources and structures, collected by a team of country experts

(see Poguntke, Scarrow, Webb et al 2016 for further information). Round 1a data come from the

period 2011-15, which closely approximates the same period as the elections in CSES Module 4

(2011-16). Whenever we have multiple data points we have used the mean; the data on IPD is

based on the last available valid measurement in the PPDB dataset. We use two measures for

IPD generated from the PPDB dataset, the assembly-based intra-party democracy index (AIPD)

and the plebiscitary intra-party democracy index (PIPD). They are mainly based on formal rules

(the official story) complemented by some data on actual practices (for details see von dem

Berge & Poguntke 2017).

The CSES data contain recall data on which parties contacted each individual during a campaign.

Table 2 uses this to report two pieces of information for each country. The top figure for each

country shows the percentage of national respondents having been contacted by any party during

an election campaign; the bottom figure for each country reports the percentage of respondents

reporting having been contacted by the party they actually voted for in the election. This table

makes clear that there is indeed a great deal of variance on these measures, with the rate of

respondents’ reported party contacts varying greatly across countries.

TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

16

Our two main measures of party organizational strength are membership size, and a more

comprehensive party strength index (PSI). Data for both these measures are derived from the

PPDB. Following many other studies, we standardize membership-per-party in terms of the

national pool of eligible voters (ME). The PSI measure takes account of party membership, party

financial resources, and party staff (see Webb & Keith 2017 for a more complete account). Full

details on the variables used in this paper are provided in the Appendix.

7. Analysis and results

H1: The greater a party’s organizational resources, the more likely that its supporters will be

contacted during election campaigns.

Using the merged PPDB/CSES dataset, we find the surprising result that the association between

PSI and whether or not a voter has been contacted by the party they voted for in an election

campaign turns out to be negative; the correlation between the PSI of a party that a respondent

voted for and the percentage of that party’s voters who claimed to have been contacted by it

during the election campaign is -.127 (p<.000, n=10816). The correlation between the ME ratio

of a party that a respondent voted for and the percentage of its voters who claimed to have been

contacted is -.225 (p<.000, n=10816). This would seem to disconfirm H1, an impression that is

reinforced when we examine the connection between the the party resource measures and an

indicator of whether or not respondents have been contacted by any party during the campaign

(not just the one they eventually voted for); if organizationally strong parties are better at

contacting, and if they are even somewhat good at targeting, those who support them should be

more likely to be contacted than other voters. Yet this was not the case. The mean PSI of parties

supported by voters who were contacted = 0.71 compared to 1.06 of those who were not

contacted (p<.000, n=12540). If we use the membership/electorate ratio (ME) as an alternative

measure of party organizational strength the same pattern holds; the mean ME for the parties of

those who were contacted was 0.60 compared to 0.84 for the parties of those not contacted

(p<000).

17

However, we can probe the connection between parties’ mobilizational efforts and their

resources further than this using our combined dataset. This suggests that, when investigating the

individual-level party organizational resources/contact relationship, a clearer understanding

might lie in the type of mobilizational contact that parties make. The CSES asks respondents to

describe all of the different ways in which they were contacted during the campaigns, including

by phone, e-mail, mail, etc. Unfortunately, respondents were not asked which parties contacted

them in which way, so we cannot directly test the extent to which specific parties used each

method to target their most likely supporters. However, the data do seem to suggest that while

parties may reach out to all voters rather indiscriminantly (perhaps especially when they receive

subsidies to send out general mailshots?) they are much more effective in targeting their likely

voters with the more personalized (and hence more costly) campaign techniques. Thus, while the

relationship between the PSI of parties that respondents voted for and whether or not they had

experienced any kind of party contact is negative, the relationship becomes positive when parties

make direct personal contact with voters (see Table 3). That is, when parties contact voters ‘in

person’, by phone, text or email, these personal forms of contact are all more likely to be targeted

at known potential supporters than general mailshots are. Personal forms of contact such as these

are either critically important ways of identifying such supporters in the first place (eg, door-to-

door or telephone canvassing), or they require personal contact details that suggest particular

voters who are already known to parties as possible supporters (eg, email or text). So it makes

sense for parties to concentrate resources on making these ‘personal’ forms of mobilizational

contact. And the evidence reported in Table 3 reveals that parties with the strongest

organizational resources are in the best position to make such personal contacts. This even seems

to hold for respondents who have been contacted via social media – a communications medium

that parties are now known to be increasingly intent on targeting with campaign messages (see,

eg, Wade 2017). Thus, overall, we would argue that Table 3 offers support for H1, at least in

modified form: The greater a party’s organizational resources, the more likely that its supporters

will receive a personal form of contact (from some party) during election campaigns.

TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE

18

H2: Respondents who are contacted by a party or parties during an election campaign are

more likely to have a sense of partisan affinity.

Table 4 sheds conclusive light on this hypothesis. While we are unable with CSES data to

measure how much contact voters have from parties during election campaigns, we can see

whether they were contacted at all, and identify the various forms that contact took. It is readily

apparent that in the case of every form of contact aside from the general mailshot, those who

were contacted were more likely to report feeling ‘very close’ to a particular party than those

who were not contacted. Again, our data do not allow us to determine whether a respondent was

contacted by ‘his’ or “her” party using a particular method, which doubtless lowers the strength

of the relationships that we find. But even so, the findings are strong, and are consonant with the

notion that parties are targeting their own supporters, and that these contacts have some effects.

Thus, for instance, 16.4% of those reporting some form of contact claimed to be very close to a

party, compared to 9.8% of those who were not contacted at all, and 31.7% of those experiencing

contact claimed to feel somewhat close to a party compared to just 20.7% of those having had no

contact. Moreover, fully half of those who had had no contact declared that they had no partisan

attachment at all, compared to only a third of those who had experienced some contact. Thus, it

seems clear that parties can stimulate or sustain a sense of partisan affinity among voters if they

are able to make direct contact with them during a campaign. This confirms H2. It would seem

logical, moreover, to assume that the capacity of parties to establish such mobilizational contacts

reflects their organizational resources, as per H2. It is therefore not surprising that we are able to

show a direct relationship between party resources and partisan affinity. As Table 5 reveals,

those with very close attachments voted for parties that have decidedly higher average PSI or

ME scores than those who feel less close to any party.

TABLES 4 & 5 ABOUT HERE

H3: Contact by parties during an election campaign increases likelihood of a citizen voting.

Table 6 offers some support for this hypothesis. This is clearest when we simply compare the

propensity to vote of those respondents reporting any form of election campaign contact by

19

parties with those who report no such contact. Whereas 91% of the former voted, only 80% of

the latter did, plainly a significant difference. Rather more modest effects are apparent when we

look at ‘in person’, phone or email contacts, but no other form of party contact elicits a

significant mobilizational effect. Nevertheless, there is enough here to confirm H3: campaign

contacts by parties seem likely to drive up an individual’s propensity to vote.

TABLE 6 ABOUT HERE

H4: Respondents who vote in an election are more likely to express satisfaction with

democracy.

TABLE 7 ABOUT HERE

Table 7 confirms that it is indeed the case that, broadly speaking, satisfaction with democracy is

generally greater among those who turn out to vote than amongst those who do not. This is clear

when we add together those indicating that they are either very or quite satisfied with democracy

and compare them with those saying they are either not very or not at all satisfied with

democracy. 56.6% of those who voted claim to feel very or quite satisfied with democracy

compared to just 39.2% of those who did not vote, a quite stark difference. Thus, we may accept

H4: those who vote are more likely to express satisfaction with democracy – and of course, we

know that propensity to vote may depend in part on the mobilizational efforts of parties, so we

might tentatively infer that party organizational resources underline citizens’ faith in the

democratic system, if only indirectly.

H5: The greater the partisan affinity of voters, the more likely they are to express satisfaction

with democracy.

20

TABLE 8 ABOUT HERE

Further confirmation of this last point can be found in Table 8, which shows that it is the case

that a respondent’s satisfaction with democracy increases the closer they feel to a particular

political party. Again, this is especially clear when we add together those indicating that they are

either very or quite satisfied with democracy and compare them with those saying they are either

not very or not at all satisfied with democracy. In particular, this serves to highlight how those

lacking any partisan attachment differ from the rest; only 48.3% of these individuals say that

they feel very or quite satisfied with democracy, compared to 64.1% of those who are very close

to a party, 63.5% of those who feel somewhat close to a party, and 63.0% of those who feel not

very close to a party. Thus, a sense of belonging to or being represented by a particular party

does seem to underline citizens’ faith in the democratic system. We may confirm H5, then.

So, to recap briefly, thus far we have seen that those who support parties with stronger

organizational resources are more likely to be personally contacted in election campaigns, and

are more likely to have a sense of partisan affinity. They are also more likely to turn out and vote

in elections, and more likely to be satisfied with the way that the democratic system functions.

Thus, democratic satisfaction seems to rest in part at least on the ability of party organizations to

mobilize citizens through campaign contacts, as per the sequence laid out in Route 1 of Figure 2.

Indeed, we can directly confirm as much by reference to Table 9, which reveals respondents who

are contacted by a party during an election campaign are more likely to express satisfaction with

democracy. This does not hold for each and every form of campaign contact, but the significant

and positive relationship is most simply illustrated by the ‘any form of contact’ category: 60.6%

of those who were contacted by parties were very or quite satisfied with democracy, whereas

only 52.3% of those not contacted were. To be sure, this is hardly a strong relationship, but it is a

statistically significant difference.

TABLE 9 ABOUT HERE

21

This concludes our simple bivariate tests of the impact of party organizational resources on

satisfaction with democracy. We now turn to the evidence regarding the two hypotheses about

the impact of intra-party decision making processes.

H6: The more democratic a party’s internal decision-making processes are, the higher the

partisan affinity of its voters will be.

Table 10 sheds some light on this hypothesis by reporting simple crosstabulations between the

AIPD and PIPD scores of parties that respondents voted for, and whether or not these

respondents report feeling some degree of partisan attachment. The parties are divided into those

that have high or low IPD scores (that is, over or under .50 on scales that run from 0-1). We

exclude OIPD from the analysis since there is so little variation on this scale; 97% of parties in

the dataset score zero on it. Table 10 shows the expected differences in that those who voted for

parties with high scores on AIPD or PIPD are more likely to claim to be close to a particular

party than those who voted for parties with low scores on these indices. The difference is clearer

in the case of AIPD; over three-fifths of those who voted for ‘High AIPD parties’ (which is most

of the parties in the dataset) claimed a partisan attachment, compared to about half of those who

supported ‘Low IPD parties’. Table 11 takes the analysis further by taking into account the

strength of partisan attachment. This reveals that 47.4% of supporters of High AIPD parties

claim to be very or somewhat close to a given party, compared to just 33.9% of those who vote

for Low AIPD parties. The corresponding figures for High and Low PIPD parties are 53.3% and

42.6%. All this seems to be consistent with H6, then: Parties that offer their members and

delegates a relatively high degree of involvement in their decision-making procedures appear

more likely to inspire a sense of partisan attachment among their followers in the electorate.

TABLES 10 & 11 ABOUT HERE

22

H7: The more democratic a party’s internal decision-making processes are, the more likely

that its supporters are to express satisfaction with democracy.

Table 12 provides clear support for the notion that the form of internal decision-making parties

adopt might bear upon the degree of satisfaction that their voters feel for the wider democratic

system, at least in respect of AIPD. There is a significant relationship between AIPD and

democratic satisfaction, and it runs in the hypothesized direction: 70% of those who voted for

High AIPD parties are either very or somewhat satisfied with democracy, compared to just half

of those who voted for Low AIPD parties. However, the PIPD/democratic satisfaction

relationship runs slightly contrary to expectations: a slightly higher percentage (69%) of

supporters of Low PIPD parties are very or somewhat satisfied with democracy than supporters

of High PIPD parties (65.5%). Overall, then, there is some support for H7, but only in respect of

the impact of AIPD.

TABLE 12 ABOUT HERE

Multivariate models: Does party organization influence citizens’ satsfaction with

democracy?

In Figure 2, we set out two paths by which party organization might impact on satisfaction with

democracy. The first was via party resources: in brief, well-resourced parties should be in a

strong position to contact voters during election campaigns, which would in turn inspire a greater

sense of closeness to particular parties and higher propensity to vote in the election; this then

leads to greater satisfaction with democracy. The second path is via intra-party decision making

procedures: it suggests that more democratic parties might inspire closer affinity to parties and

thence greater satisfaction with democracy. We have found fairly convincing evidence to support

the first of these simple causal models (ie, the resources path) in our bivariate analyses so far,

and more limited support for the second causal route. However, we will be in a stronger position

to reach definitive conclusions once we have applied more rigorous multivariate tests of each

path. It is to this task we now turn.

23

In Table 13 we report the results of a logistic regression model for the resources path.

Specifically, we test four separate models that follow the logic of the causal chain set out in

Route 1 of Figure 2: Model 1 only includes the summary index of party resource strength index,

PSI. On its own this predictor significantly increases the odds (by 34%) of a respondent being

satisfied with the condition of democracy in his or her country. Model 2 then adds the next link

in the causal chain, contact by parties during an election campaign. This also proves significant

and in the expected direction; given that the reference category is ‘contacted by a party or

parties’ this shows that not being contacted reduces the odds on being satisfied with democracy

by nearly 14%, while PSI retains its significant and positive impact. Model 3 adds the next link

in the causal chain, which is closeness to a party. Again, the effect is positive and runs in the

expected direction; compared to people who lack any usual partisan affinity, those who claim to

be very close, quite close and even ‘not very close’ to a party are all significantly more likely to

be satisfied with democracy; while the first of these is nearly twice as likely to be satisfied, the

latter two groups are both about 50% more likely be satisfied. The PSI and Contact predictors

retain their significance in this model.2

TABLE 13 ABOUT HERE

Finally, in Model 4, we add three standard demographic controls – gender, education, and socio-

economic status (SES). The first of these proves to be non-significant. Education and SES do

have independent impacts, however. The education variable is based on the nine-fold

International Standard Classification of Education scheme, and the model shows that, compared

to respondents with the highest level of qualification (the doctorate), most of the other categories

have significantly lower levels of satisfaction with democracy. For instance, those with the

lowest level of education (no education at all or only early childhood education) are 64% less

likely to express satisfaction with democracy. Similarly, those in the lowest three household

2 Note that Figure 2 also points to a further predictor that we might in principle add to the model at this stage, which is whether or not a respondent has voted; however, we are unable to test this empirically as our PSI scores are for the parties for which each respondent voted. This means that we are only able to include respondents who voted in the most recent national election in the models reported in Table 13, so there is no variation between voters and non-voters. We are obliged to exclude this variable from the models, therefore.

24

income quintiles are all significantly less likely to be satisfied with democracy than those in the

highest quintile. In this final model of the organizational resource path to satisfaction with

democracy, PSI and closeness to party retain their significance, but the campaign contact

variable loses its significance. Overall, though, there is enough evidence here to confirm that

party organizational resources might well play a role, albeit indirectly, in stimulating satisfaction

with democracy.

The second path from party organization to democratic satisfaction that we postulate is via intra-

party decision-making procedures; is it the case that intraparty democracy inspires closer affinity

to parties and thence greater satisfaction with democracy? Table 14 sheds light on this. Model 5

includes two of the three measures of intra-party democracy (IPD) used in Tables 10-12 –

assembly-based IPD (AIPD) and plebiscitary IPD (PIPD). Once again, we exclude open IPD

(OIPD) because it is so heavily skewed. AIPD and PIPD each appear to have a significant impact

on satisfaction with democracy, and in the same direction as revealed in the bivariate Table 12.

That is, while the impact of AIPD is positive, that of PIPD is negative. On the whole, the more

that a party uses the assembly-based decision-making processes that are open to non-members,

the more that people who vote for it are likely to be satisfied with democracy; on the other hand,

the opposite is true of plebiscitary decision-making - the more that a party practises this, the less

satisfied its voters are with democracy generally. We suspect that this negative relationship with

PIPD may have something to do with a different direction of causality, namely, that parties are

most likely to introduce these new procedures in countries in which levels of dissatisfaction are

relatively high. However, trying to explain this relationship goes beyond what we can do in this

paper.3

TABLE 14 ABOUT HERE

3 Note that a cursory examination of the data does not seem to support this possiblity: the the countries with ‘High PIPD’ parties are mainly Britain (6 parties), Canada (4) and Israel (3), with 1 party each in Australia and Ireland in this category. The overall percentage of respondents in each of these countries claiming to be not very or not at all satisfied with democracy is 34.5%, compared to 39.9% for respondents in other PPDB countries, so it is not obvious that High PIPD parties are more likely to be found in countries with higher than average levels of dissatisfaction with democracy. That said, this possibility clearly merits far deeper investigation than we can offer here.

25

Model 6 adds the partisan affinity variable on the assumption that IPD might impact on the

dependent variable via this. We find that, once again, this has a clearly significant and positive

effect on satisfaction with democracy; the closer a respondent is to a party, the more likely s/he is

to be satisfied with democracy. This is not a surprise in view of the findings of models 3 and 4.

More to the point, however, is that adding this predictor to the model does not undermine the

impact of the IPD variables; they both remain significant and signed as in Model 5. Finally, we

add in the demographic controls once again. In essence, they have the same effects as in the

party organizational resource model 3; education and SES drive up satisfaction with democracy,

while gender has no significant effect. But of greatest substantive importance here is the fact that

the addition of these demographic controls does not alter the basic impact of the IPD variables;

they retain their significance (albeit at a slightly lower level in the case of AIPD) and direction of

influence. AIPD is postively signed, while PIPD is negatively signed.

Overall, these models seems to suggest that both party organizational resources and internal

decision-making processes are significantly linked to the popular legitimacy of democracy.

While the nature of the relationship is quite straightforwardly positive in the case of resources,

things are less clearcut in respect of party processes. It is easy to understand how parties with

strong funding and high numbers of members relative to the size of the country might be in a

good position to establish contact with voters, to mobilize them electorally and foster a sense of

partisan affinity, all of which help to sustain support for the democratic process. But with regard

to intra-party democracy it does not appear to be quite as easy as suggesting that parties, by

practising high levels of democratic decision-making, can engender a wider sense of enthusiasm

for democracy at the national level. At least, if this is true at all, it only appears to relate to

assembly-based intra-party processes. We are left confronting two questions, then: 1. Why might

the practice of plebiscitary democracy by parties tend to drive down satisfaction with the wider

system of democracy among those who vote for such parties, while AIPD has the opposite

effect? 2. Is it possible that the findings regarding IPD are essentially spurious and cannot be

sensibly rationalised at all?

26

Discussion

Taken as a whole, our findings provide evidence that party organization matters for overall

satisfaction with democracy, and that it has both direct and indirect effects on the ways that

citizens perceive their systems, and in how they engage with politics. How parties organize is

therefore a relevant factor for the stability of democratic systems. More specficially, these

findings provide tentative support for the continued value of the subscriber-democracy model of

party organization, in other words, of parties based on formal dues-paying membership, and

which use their organizational resources to directly reach supporters during campaigns. This

model was traditionally associated with cleavage-based mass parties, but it has also endured in

more catch-all and professionally oriented parties, albeit with declining membership numbers.

In response to those declines, some party scholars and party elites have been eager to write off

this model in favor of new-fangled alternatives, be these non-partisan citizen juries, digital

discussion boards, or social media-led movements. Yet our findings here point in the direction

of a chain of causal relations whereby organizationally stronger parties are more effective in

retaining the support of voters, and in promoting satisfaction with democratic processes in

general. In this sense, they provide further support for the idea that party organization (both

resources AND processes) should not be viewed separately from stability of voter attitudes and

behaviour; instead, they can be integral to our understanding of how electoral democracies

maintain the support and consent of their citizens.

27

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31

Figure 1:

Party Organizations and Two-Way Communication Linkages

Party System contacting

attitudes

Linkage structures

Party

Citizens

32

Figure 2: Causal logic of individual-level hypotheses: Two paths from party organization to satisfaction with democracy

Route 1: Via organizational resources

Route 2: Via organizational processes

Partyorganiza,onalresources

Contactwithvotersduringelec,ons

Par,sana7achment&propensityto

vote

SATISFACTIONWITH

DEMOCRACY

Intra-partydemocracy

Par,sana7achment&propensityto

vote

SATISFACTIONWITH

DEMOCRACY

33

Table 1: Electoral Volatility in Europe 1990 - 2015

Country Avg New Party Vol

Avg Total Vol

Number elections

Highest New

Party Vol Year

Highest Total Vol Year

Last Included election

Austria 1.56 13.01 8 3.9 2013 18.3 2008 2013 Belgium 1.23 12.05 7 2.1 1991 15.1 2010 2014 Denmark 0.87 11.76 8 2.3 2007 18.7 2015 2015 Finland 1.08 10.81 7 2.6 1991 14.95 2011 2015 France 3.67 20.59 5 5.95 1993 23.6 2012 2012

Germany 1.21 10.19 7 2.85 1990

&2013 16.75 2013 2013 Greece 2.63 13.47 10 12.85 2012 48.5 2012 2015 Iceland 3.91 15.07 7 10.85 2013 34.65 2013 2013 Ireland 0.60 13.55 5 1.9 2011 29.6 2011 2011 Italy 7.20 20.54 7 18.7 2013 39.25 1994 2013 Luxembourg 0.86 7.58 5 2.2 2013 9.6 2013 2013 Malta 0.23 3.38 6 0.85 1992 6.5 2013 2013 Netherlands 3.21 20.94 7 9.3 2002 31.3 2002 2012 Norway 0.60 14.96 6 1.2 2013 18.7 2005 2013 Portugal 0.84 11.22 7 3.3 1991 20.5 1995 2011 Spain 0.73 9.85 6 1.2 2004 17 2011 2011 Sweden 0.91 13.25 7 3.35 1991 16.85 2006 2014 Switzerland 0.83 7.73 6 2.15 1999 8.2 2011 2011 UK 1.08 9.11 6 2.4 2015 18.2 2015 2015

Source: Emanuel, 2015

34

Table 2: Percentage of national samples reporting party contacts during election campaigns (PPDB countries only)

Country % Number of

cases

Australia 61.00 46.07

3922 3464

Austria 18.9 7.19

996 669

Canada 72.3 -

1111 -

Czech Republic 23.9 20.89

1630 613

France 9.6 -

2013 -

Germany 52.1 44.21

1871 1380

Great Britain 88.4 76.86

1373 1231

Ireland 54.8 -

1674 -

Israel 51.5 31.05

1006 493

Norway 27.9 20.46

1711 1281

Poland 6.07 4.37

1909 1012

Portugal 6.3 5.86

1487 805

Total 39.98 35.03

20703 10948

Note: The top figure for each country reports the percentage of national respondents claiming to have

been contacted by any party during an election campaign; the bottom figure for each country reports the

percentage of respondents reporting claiming to have been contacted by the party they actually voted for

in the election. The latter figure is not available for Canada, France or Ireland.

35

Table 3: Mean PSI and Membership/Electorate scores of parties voted for by respondents who have been contacted by various means during election campaigns Form of contact PSI ME ratio

Yes No Yes No

Any contact .71 1.06 .60 .84

In person .96 .58 .74 .57

By phone .96 .83* .75 .60

By email 1.17 .75 .83 .63

By text 2.17 1.18 1.40 .75

By social network .95 .70 .69 .61

By mail .63 .94 .56 .61

P<.000 for all relationships, except where noted *, where p<.10.

36

Table 4: Strength of partisan attachment by campaign contact

Form of Contact

Contacted? Very close

Somewhat close

Not very close

No partisan attachment

Number of cases

Signif.

Any contact Yes 16.4 31.7 8.4 43.4 30975 P<.000 No 9.8 20.7 8.5 61.1

In person Yes 19.1 23.8 5.3 51.9 10123 P<.000 No 14.2 33.8 10.1 41.9

By phone Yes 20.1 33.7 8.5 37.7 9197 P<.000 No 16.7 32.0 10.7 40.6

By email Yes 27.9 32.6 4.9 34.5 9357 P<.000 No 14.9 28.9 9.1 47.0

By text Yes 21.8 28.2 4.9 45.1 7038 P<.000 No 17.1 27.0 10.3 45.6

By social netwok

Yes 24.4 30.3 4.9 40.4 9372

P<.000 No 16.3 32.0 9.1 42.5

By mail Yes 15.6 34.9 9.3 40.2 11967 P<.000 No 18.4 27.9 11.9 41.8

Figures – percentages of respondents falling into each category, totalling 100% across the rows, unless otherwise stated.

.

Table 5: Strength of partisan attachment by party organizational resourcing

Closeness to party PSI ME Ratio Number of cases

Very close 1.6739 .8192 1860 Somewhat close .6131 .6401 3695 Not very close .9689 .6148 1746 No attachment .8190 .7951 4864 Overall mean .9104 .7263 Number of cases 12095 12095 12095

All figures = mean scores unless otherwise stated. For all relationships p<.000

37

Table 6: Electoral turnout by campaign contact

Form of Contact

Contacted? Voted Number of cases

Signif.

Any contact Yes 91.3 28572 P<.000 No 80.2

In person Yes 91.5 9829 P<.05 No 90.0

By phone Yes 92.9 8645 P<.000 No 89.6

By email Yes 93.8 9082 P<.000 No 89.8

By text Yes 91.7 6622 NS No 91.3

By social netwok

Yes 91.7 8857 NS No 90.1

By mail Yes 91.8 11683 NS No 91.9

Figures = percenatges of respondents falling into each category, totalling 100% across the rows, unless otherwise stated. NS = non-significant

38

Table 7: Propensity to vote by satisfaction with democracy

Satisfaction with democracy

Voted Not at all /

Not very satisfied Quite/

Very satisfied Number of

cases Yes 43.4 56.6 24213 No 60.7 39.2 4392

Total Number of cases

46.0 13176

54.0 15429

100% 28605

Note : All figures are percentages, totalling 100% across the rows, unless otherwise stated. P<.000

Table 8: Strength of partisan attachment by satisfaction with democracy

Satisfaction with democracy

Closeness to party Not at all/ Not very satisfied

Quite/ Very satisfied

Number of cases

Very close 35.9 64.1 3684

Somewhat close 36.5 63.5 7446

Not very close 37.0 63.0 2576

No partisan attachment 51.7 48.3 15935 Total Number of cases

44.6 13223

55.4 16418

100% 29641

Note : All figures are percentages, totalling 100% across the rows, unless otherwise stated. P<.000.

39

Table 9: Campaign contact by satisfaction with democracy

Form of Contact

Contacted? Not at all/ Not very satisfied

Quite/Very satisfied Number of cases

Signif.

Any contact

Yes 39.4 60.6 31011 P<.000 No 47.6 52.3

In person Yes 43.5 55.5 10403 P<.000 No 39.0 61.0

By phone Yes 40.4 59.5 9277 NS

No 39.7 60.4 By email Yes 39.0 61.1 9613 P<.005

No 41.7 58.3 By text Yes 49.1 50.9 7261 P<.000

No 42.0 58.1 By social netwok

Yes 41.3 58.7 9479 NS No 40.2 59.8

By mail Yes 35.4 64.5 12238 P<.000 No 43.0 57.1

Figures = percentages of respondents falling into each category, unless otherwise stated.

40

Table 10: Partisan attachment by intra-party democracy

AIPD PIPD

Are you close to any political party?

Low AIPD

High AIPD

Low PIPD

High PIPD

Yes

52.7

62.0 59.3 64.8

No

47.3

38.0 40.7 35.2

Overall sample total

13.8

86.2

73.7 26.3

Number Significance

12993 p<.000

12993 p<.000

Figures = percentages totalling 100% down the columns.

41

Table 11: Strength of partisan attachment by intra-party democracy

AIPD PIPD

Closeness to party Low AIPD

High AIPD

Low PIPD

High PIPD

Very close 9.3 16.5 15.7 14.8 Somewhat close 24.6 30.9 26.9 38.5 Not very close 18.3 13.2 15.1 10.9

No partisan attachment 47.8 39.4 42.3 35.8 Overall sample total

14.1 85.9 73.3 26.7

Number Significance

12572 p<.000

12572 p<.000

Figures = percentages totalling 100% down the columns.

42

Table 12: Satisfaction with democracy by intra-party democracy

AIPD PIPD Satisfaction with democracy

Low AIPD

High AIPD

Low PIPD

High PIPD

Not at all/ Not very satisfied 49.2 29.4 30.9 34.5

Quite/ Very satisfied 50.8 70.6 69.1 65.5

Overall sample total 12.8 87.2 71.1 28.9

Number Significance

13860 p<.000

13860 p<.000

Figures = percentages totalling 100% down the columns

43

Table 13: Binary logistic regression model of satisfaction with democracy:

Party organizational resource models

Model 1 (party resources

predictor)

Model 2 (party resources + campaign contact)

Model 3 (party resources + campaign contact

+ partisan affinity)

Model 4 (party resources +

campaign contact + partisan affinity +

demographics) B Odds

Ratio B Odds

Ratio B Odds

Ratio B Odds

Ratio PSI .293**** 1.341 .295**** 1.343 .283**** 1.327 .266**** 1.305 Contact (Ref. Cat = contacted)

-.145*** .865 -.090* .914 .006 1.006

Closeness to party (Ref. Cat. = No partisan affinity)

**** ****

Very . .601**** 1.824 .576**** 1.780 Quite .453**** 1.573 .397**** 1.488 Not very . .397**** 1.488 .350**** 1.420 Gender (Ref.Cat=male)

.007 1.007.

Education (Ref.Cat.=Doctoral level)

****

Early childhood/none

-1.080**** .339

Primary -.425*** .624 Lower secondary -.275** .760 Upper secondary -.156 .856 Post secondary .256* 1.292 Short cycle tertiary

-.203 .816

Bachelor .126 1.134 Master .156 1.169 Household income (Ref.Cat.=Highest quintile)

****

1st quintile -.475**** .622 2nd quintile -.459**** .632 3rd quintile -.303**** .739 4th quintile -.105 .900 Constant .642**** 1.900 .712**** 2.038 .405**** 1.399 .738**** 2.091 Nagelkerke R2 = .074,

n=9684 Nagelkerke R2 =.076,

n=9684 Nagelkerke R2 =

.091, n=9475 Nagelkerke R2 = .115

n=8959 *p<.10, **p<.05, ***p<.01, ****p<.001

44

Table 14: Binary logistic regression model of satisfaction with democracy:

Intra-party process models

Model 5 (Intra-party democracy

predictors)

Model 6 (Intra-party democracy +

partisan affinity)

Model 7 (Intra-party democracy

+ partisan affinity + demographics)

B Odds Ratio B Odds Ratio B Odds Ratio AIPD .657*** 1.929 .741**** 2.098 .499** 1.646 PIPD -.474**** .622 -.538**** .584 -.495**** .610 Closeness to party (Ref. Cat. = No partisan affinity)

**** .725**** 2.065

Very .768**** 2.155 .466**** 1.594 Quite .466**** 1.594 .386**** 1.471 Not very .456**** 1.578 .402**** 1.495 Gender (Ref.Cat=female)

-.001 .999

Education (Ref.Cat.=Doctoral level)

****

Early childhood/none -1.237**** .290 Primary -.608**** .544 Lower secondary -.309** .734 Upper secondary -.118 .888 Post secondary .323** 1.382 Short cycle tertiary -212* .809 Bachelor .116 .1.123 Master .157 1.170 Household income (Ref.Cat.=Highest quintile)

****

1st quintile -.396**** .673 2nd quintile -.406**** .666 3rd quintile -.260*** .771 4th quintile -.059 .944 Constant .602**** 1.825 .243* 1.275 .736**** 2.087 Nagelkerke R2 = .006,

n=9732 Nagelkerke R2 =.029,

n=9732 Nagelkerke R2 = .059,

n=9515 *p<.10, **p<.05, ***p<.01, ****p<.001

45

Appendix: Variables and Measures

Party strength index (PSI): This is a simple additive index first devised by Webb & Keith (2017)

that incorporates two elements – party income per registered voter and members per registered

voter – that complement each other in important ways when regarded as aspects of

organizational resourcing. Money is the most obvious and most flexible type of resource in that it

can be exploited for many purposes, including – crucially – the hiring of pay-roll and

professional staff, while members are the major source of unpaid voluntary labour. Thus, in

effect, both types of labour resources are captured by the two-item PSI. The index is created by

adding the standardised z-scores of the members/electorate ratio and income/electorate ratio for

each party. The distribution for each of these components therefore has a mean of zero and a

standard deviation of one, so that they share common scales and can be easily added together.

These scores do not constitute an absolute measure with a fixed meaning because the process of

standardization means that we are gauging the relative positions of parties on this index within

this particular sample of PPDB cases. However, the method is a simple but effective way of

summarising the relative organizational strength of the PPDB parties. The PSI used in the

analysis are those for the parties for which respondents voted in the most recent national

elections.

ME ratio: Ratio of party members to the number of registered electors in that party’s country for the parties for which respondents voted in the most recent national elections.

Contact (or ‘Any contact’): During the campaign, did a party or candidate contact you in person or by any other means? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

In person: Did they contact you in person, face-to-face? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

By phone: Did they contact you by phone? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

By email: Did they contact you by email? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

By text: Did they contact you by text message or SMS? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

By social network: Did they contact you through a social network site or other Web-based method? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

By mail: Did they contact you by mail ? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

Partisan attachment: Do you usually think of yourself as close to any particular party? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

46

Strength of partisan attachment: Do you feel very close to this party (1), somewhat close (2), or (3) not very close? (or 4 – No party attachment).

Voted: Did respondent cast a vote in current lower house election? 0 – No, 1 – Yes

Satisfaction with democracy: On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in your country? 1 – Very satisfied, 2 – Fairly satisfied, 3 – Not very satisfied, 4 – Not at all satisfied.

AIPD & PIPD: Our assembly-based IPD-index (AIPD) measures the inclusiveness of party

decision-making based on discussions within party bodies and assemblies, including assemblies

of all members. It covers three essential components of intra-party democracy, namely

programme writing, personnel selection (leaders and candidates) and organizational structure

(referring to the relative strength of party bodies like congress and executive). A higher index

score indicates that a more inclusive party body has the final say in this area. Our plebiscitary

IPD index (PIPD) measures the degree to which parties allow for non-assembly decisions on a

one member, one vote basis. These decisions are made by the lone party member at home on a

computer screen, or via the casting of a ballot through the post or a party-run polling station. It

covers only programme-writing and personnel-selection. A higher index score means that a party

provides more opportunities for ballots on these aspects. The PIPD index assigns a positive value

to all parties which incorporate such procedures in their rules, even if they are optional or apply

only in certain situations. Each of these IPD indices has been normalized so that they are scales

running from 0 (no IPD) to 1 (maximum IPD). Further details of their construction can be found

in von dem Berge & Poguntke (2017).