Social networkers and careerists: Explaining high-intensity activism among British party members
| Author | Paul Webb,Monica Poletti,Tim Bale |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512118820691 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118820691
International Political Science Review
2020, Vol. 41(2) 255 –270
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512118820691
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Social networkers and careerists:
Explaining high-intensity activism
among British party members
Paul Webb
University of Sussex, UK
Tim Bale
Queen Mary University London, UK
Monica Poletti
Queen Mary University London, UK
Abstract
Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the
general election of 2015, this article asks what motivates members to engage in high-intensity election
campaign activism. It argues that two factors are especially prominent: the aspiration to pursue a career in
politics (which only accounts for a small minority of these activists) and becoming integrated into a local
social network (which accounts for a much larger proportion). By contrast, members who lack either of
these characteristics, but are mainly motivated to join by ideological impulses, largely restrict themselves to
low-intensity activity. These findings are likely to be especially pertinent to countries with single-member
district electoral systems.
Keywords
Political party members, election campaigns, political activism, political participation, incentives theory
What activists do for their parties during campaigns can make the difference between winning and
losing. They operate phone banks, deliver leaflets, and canvass door-to-door in the run-up to an
election, and then remind people to vote and even help them get to the polling stations on the day
itself. But not every member of a political party is equally involved: some do nothing at all and
even among those who do play their part, there are some who do more – sometimes much more –
than others. So what precisely is it that drives these variations in activity? This article uses recently
Corresponding author:
Paul Webb, Department of Politics, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QE, UK.
Email: p.webb@sussex.ac.uk
820691IPS0010.1177/0192512118820691International Political Science ReviewWebb et al.
research-article2019
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256 International Political Science Review 41(2)
gathered data from the UK in order to answer this question – one that is not only important to social
scientists interested in elections and political participation, but should also be of considerable prac-
tical interest to parties themselves.
In previous research, we have shown how party members’ campaign activity compares with that
of non-member supporters (Webb et al., 2017), and how traditional ‘offline’ campaign activity is
influenced by different drivers than ‘online’ activity (such as using Twitter and Facebook to spread
messages supporting candidates); in particular, we discovered that factors associated with the
national party bear more strongly on members’ online activity, while factors associated with the
local party and constituency context have greater influence on offline activity (Bale et al., 2018).
This article moves beyond this previous research primarily in terms of the dependent variable: here
we do not seek merely to describe and explain the range of campaign activities, as measured by
additive scales, but rather to explain the intensity of campaign activity, as measured by (a) the time
committed to campaigning by members and (b) willingness to engage in the most demanding acts.
Our data set provides a unique opportunity to investigate what drives members to undertake the
unpaid high-intensity campaign work that is so central to electoral success.
In doing this, we draw on one of the best-known approaches to explaining activism among party
members – that of incentives theory. Seminally inspired by the work of Clark and Wilson (1961),
and further elaborated in the General Incentives Model (GIM) developed by Patrick Seyd and Paul
Whiteley (1992; Whiteley et al., 1994; Whiteley and Seyd, 1998; Whiteley et al., 2005), we show
how different types of activity are connected with different motivations for joining parties.
Specifically, we demonstrate that two factors are especially prominent in the context of single-
member electoral districts: the aspiration to pursue a career in politics (which only accounts for a
small minority of these activists) and being integrated in a local social network based around party
life (which accounts for a much larger proportion). By contrast, members who lack either of these
characteristics, but are mainly motivated to join by purposive (that is, policy and ideological)
impulses, largely restrict themselves to low-intensity activity. While our data is from the UK, we
believe that the findings should resonate more widely, especially in countries with single-member
electoral districts, be they in plurality or mixed-member plurality systems. Wherever parties run
candidates in elections, they will require the active commitment of volunteer labour, much of
which will come from formally affiliated members. Members are most likely to form part of and
become embedded within social networks where they operate in defined territories with relatively
small district magnitudes; by contrast, it is far less likely that members could construct local social
networks in multi-member constituencies that cover large territories. Hence, the particular rele-
vance of this research to single-member district electoral systems.
Theoretical approach
Only Whiteley and Seyd have expressly investigated the causes and extent of ‘high-intensity’
activism. They define it simply as ‘participation that takes a lot of time and effort’ (2002: 1),
and empirically they measure it using a scale derived from five types of activity: leafletting or
canvassing voters during campaigns, standing for elective public office, attending party meet-
ings, and standing for internal party office. This scale is distinct from a separate one designed
to measure ‘low-intensity’ activity. In this article, our concern lies exclusively with election
campaign activism rather than with forms of general participation that members might engage
in between elections. As such, this already sharpens the focus onto what are usually the most
intense moments of membership activity, but we then further refine our investigation by meas-
uring the intensity of campaign activity in two ways: the first is through the overall amount of
time spent on campaign activity, while the second distinguishes between low, medium and
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