			Home About us Contact

Party Membership (party + membership)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	57%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	42%

Selected Abstracts

Economic Returns to Communist Party Membership: Evidence From Urban Chinese Twins,

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 523 2007
Hongbin Li
This article estimates the returns to membership of the Chinese Communist Party using unique twins data we collected from China. Our OLS estimate shows a Party premium of 10%, but the within-twin-pair estimate becomes zero. One interpretation is that the OLS premium is due to omitted ability and family background. This interpretation suggests that Party members fare well not because of their political status but because of the superior ability that made them Party members. The estimates are also consistent with another interpretation that Party membership not only has its own effect but also has an external effect on siblings. [source]

A decline of linkage?

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2003
Intra-party participation in Norway
The decline in party membership in Western Europe is generally taken as an indicator of party transformation. This article looks beyond membership figures and asks whether membership decline should be interpreted to mean that the activities and motivation of the remaining members are changing. Hypotheses on changes in party activism and motivation for party membership are tested with data from the 1991 and 2000 Norwegian party member surveys. Rather than uncovering evidence of change, most analyses point to a remarkable level of stability. Active and passive members seem to have disappeared at about the same rate. The general diagnosis of party decline is neither improved nor aggravated, but the analysis casts doubt on propositions about the transformation of the grassroots organisation. The Internet is used by party office-holders and the young, but the grassroots rarely use the new technology for political purposes. The character of the representative and participatory linkages provided by parties has, however, changed as a consequence of a shrinking party membership. [source]

Voters, Parties, and the Endogenous Size of Government

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2002
Jans-Peter Olters
Elections, often to a considerable degree, influence the fiscal policies of governments installed on the basis of their results. Yet, economists have tended to view politicians' behaviour either as being determined exogenously or as the result of a social planner's maximisation of a well-defined social-welfare function (subject to some appropriate technology and resource constraints). The latter approach, given (i) its inherent abstraction from important politico-economic interactions, (ii) the theoretical difficulty in deriving a non-contradictory "collective utility function" (as demonstrated by Arrow), and (iii) the inability to estimate a stable relationship that could explain political preferences with economic variables,is viewed as being an unsatisfactory tool for the joint description of a country's economy and polity. On the basis of explicit micro-economic foundations and a democratically coordinated decision-making mechanism over the "optimal" provision of public goods and the corresponding taxes required to finance them, this paper will introduce a simple economic model of politics that subjects individuals to a,two-tiered,political decision-making process over party membership and electoral participation, thereby endogenising the evolution of the competing parties' ideologies, households' electoral behaviour, and the key factors explaining the design of fiscal policies. Having the majority party's median delegate determine on the "optimal" degree of income redistribution suggests that a country's wealth distribution is a crucial explanatory variable explaining its politico-economic development path. [source]

Parliamentary Election Turnout in Europe since 1990

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 5 2002
Alan Siaroff
This article examines the cross-national variations in turnout for parliamentary elections in Europe since 1990 , a continent with a vast range in turnout levels and some clear subregional patterns, especially that of low turnout in East-Central Europe. A full range of socio-economic, mobilizational, party system, institutional, and contextual factors are examined for bivariate relationships with turnout. A multivariate model then indicates that cross-national turnout is higher where there is strictly enforced compulsory voting, in polarized two-party systems and countries with a high level of party membership, and where there are no relevant elected presidents or strong regional governments. Variances on these and other key factors are what accounts for the subregional pattern of East-Central Europe and the highest turnout case of Malta; however, Switzerland is confirmed to be a significant national dummy variable. [source]

Better to shop than to vote?

BUSINESS ETHICS: A EUROPEAN REVIEW, Issue 3 2001
Noreena Hertz
This paper begins by reflecting on the current generalised political apathy signalled by low voter turnout and falling party membership. It would appear that people are exercising political choices not at the ballot box but by means of consumer activism. Corporations respond to consumer pressure in a way that governments do not, and are gradually assuming the role of global political actors. But this is a dangerous state of affairs for several reasons. In the first place, social welfare can never be the core activity of corporations. Corporate social motives are commercial, and there is a danger that their social policy decisions will be driven by the logic of the market place rather than social need. Recession, for instance, will curtail their social responsiveness, as will decisions to relocate. It is also the case that partnerships between governments and corporates run the risk of removing checks on the growth and abuse of corporate power. And finally, what price does society have to pay for the growth of corporate benevolence? [source]