Party members and activists: party membership profiles in a comparative perspective

Abstract

Our starting point is that the decline of party mobilisation and political socialisation is of great importance to better understand both how democracy works and how it may survive. At national level, party member activity has significant features that are deeply seated in the nation’s political culture. At an individual level, party activism is a mission particular to each person. It is not only part of his or her unique life story but serves also as a link in the chain of party sustainability. Party mobilisation and political socialisation warrant further development in the Portuguese context, particularly the study of the choice of party members’ activity upstream. The main objective of this article is to identify, in a comparative perspective, sociodemographic basic traits, and a set of essential political and ideological attitudes of party members of three main Portuguese parties with parliamentary representation (Socialist Party – PS, Social Democratic Party – PSD, and Centro Democrático Social / Partido Popular – CDS/PP). The methodology of this study is based on the survey technique validated in the MAPP project (Working group on Members and Activists of Political Parties). This is an object scarcely analyzed in Portugal (Stock et al., 1985; Lisi & Espírito Santo, 2017), and its expected results will be those of contributing to identify causalities regarding the decrease and lack of interest for parties’ activities in politics in general, on the one hand. On the other hand, it is intended to contribute to getting to know better, in an inside party perspective, who are the party affiliates and how they can distinguish themselves from the activists.