Electoral Institutions and Party Membership

Abstract

This chapter presents membership data from political parties across 11 central and east European countries. Using data from the European Values Survey and Eurequal, it then examines the relationship between political party membership and three institutions thought to influence membership levels: state funding, regime type and electoral systems. State subsidies and regime type do not appear to influence membership levels; however, higher district magnitudes appear to be correlated with lower party membership levels. In order to explore potential causal links between electoral systems and party membership, a series of sub-hypotheses about the impact of district magnitude on the roles of party members are developed from the extant literature. These will be tested in the case studies presented in Chaps. 3, 4 and 5.