Attitudes and behaviour of party activists

Abstract

Abstract. During the last four years a research project has studied the ‘Middle‐Level Elites’ of sixty European political parties. Like most previous studies in this area the main objective of the project was strictly party activists’ attitudes; no attention was paid to their actual behaviour in the party organisation. Other studies of recent date indicate however that party activists, despite their often more radical or extreme stands on many issues, often submit to the authority and dominance of the party leadership in the intraparty policy‐making process. Thus, attitudinal data seem to tell us very little about the actual behaviour of the party activists. The article first presents the results of some recent studies on the attitudes of party activists. Secondly, these findings are related to studies on the actual behaviour of the activists. When synthesising these different types of observations, we can develop a typology of intraparty conflicts, as well as one of party activist behaviour. Together, these two typologies represent different models of intraorganisational behaviour. Finally, by using empirical illustrations drawn from recent studies on party activist attitudes or behaviour, some hypotheses deduced from the theories of May, Hirschman and Michels are introduced to suggest paths for future research and to point to some of the most salient problems in this area.