Party Membership and Social Participation
| Author | David Berry |
| Date | 01 June 1969 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1969.tb00635.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1969 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
PARTY MEMBERSHIP AND SOCIAL
PARTICIPATION
DAVID
BERRY
University
of
Strathclyde
I.
INTRODUCTION
RANK
and file members of political parties are often regarded as little more
than sources
of
party funds, via subscriptions, and unpaid labour for
electoral campaigns. This, and more especially the well-known fact that most
party members do no more for their parties than pay their subscriptions,
probably accounts for the sparsity of research on party membership in
Britain. By taking a much broader view of political participation than the
narrow one of party political activity, this paper attempts to show that rank
and file party membership may yet play
a
more fundamental role in the
maintenance of a democratic political system than is usually recognized. It
is suggested that participation in the activities of voluntary associations other
than political parties may be regarded as political participation: all such
associations are in some sense interest groups, and therefore at least poten-
tial pressure groups exerting influence in the political process
:
furthermore,
participation in voluntary associations is also political in
so
far as it involves
participation in decision-making processes, even if at a very local and paro-
chial level. It follows that the participation of party members in the activities
of voluntary associations may be regarded as political participation, and it
is
this form
of
participation which is examined in this paper.
If the concern here is with the political implications of participation in the
activities of voluntary associations, then it is not unreasonable to regard
party membership itself’ as a form
of
voluntary association participation.
This permits the application of theories of voluntary associations to party
membership
:
such theories, which seek to explain the significance
of
voluntary associations for social integration and democracy in modern
industrial societies, have been advanced by
a
number
of
sociologists
following the social thought
of
Alexis de Tocqueville, and they constitute
elements of what is known as the theory of ‘mass society’. The procedure
adopted here is firstly to set out
a
theoretical framework for empirical
analysis in terms of the theory
of
mass society: this
is
followed by the
presentation of data on the relationship between party membership and
voluntary association participation from
a
case study of random samples
of
Political
Studies,
Vol.
XVII.
No.
2
(1969. 191S20’1).
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