BRITISH PARTY MEMBERS
An Overview
Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley
A B S T R A C T
Party membership and activism is declining among Britain's three major
parties. Using individual membership survey data, evidence of this
decline, particularly in party activism, is presented. Reasons for the
decline are considered. It is suggested that choice-based rather than
structural explanations are more persuasive. The impact of the decline
upon the parties and the political system is considered. The article
concludes that it is possible for parties to stimulate membership and
activism.
KEY WORDS Britain party activists party members
It might seem perverse to devote an entire issue of Party Politics to party
members when they appear to be a dying breed of political activists in the
advanced industrial democracies. Both the supply of political enthusiasts
eager to join parties, and the demand of parties for such enthusiasts, seems
to be waning. Rather than the mass-membership party being a party of the
future, as predicted by Duverger (1954), it now appears to be a party of the
past. Mair (1997: 124) claims that among three distinct elements of party
organization ­ the party in public office, the party bureaucracy and the
voluntary membership organization ­ the first two remain strong, but the
third is in decline. The contemporary party, it would appear, is becoming,
or has already become, an organization with a relatively small number of
members, or with no members at all as distinct from supporters.
If membership parties are in free-fall decline why might this be so, and
what might be the consequences both for parties in particular, and for the
political system more generally? Should attempts be made to arrest the
decline and, if so, how might this be done? To fully answer these questions
we need to know more about party members. In particular, more needs to
be known about why individuals join parties, what they do as party members,
what are their beliefs and what are their distinguishing characteristics.
PA RT Y P O L I T I C S V O L 1 0 . N o . 4 pp. 355­366
Copyright  2004 SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com
1354-0688[DOI: 10.1177/1354068804043903]

Notwithstanding the prevalence of membership parties in the advanced
industrial democracies, few individual studies have been made of the people
who join. Party scholars have been fortunate that aggregate data on party
membership are extensive, thanks in large part to the work of Richard Katz
and Peter Mair and their colleagues in the ECPR Party Research group (Katz
and Mair, 1992, 1994). Using their data it is possible to compare party
memberships over time and between countries. Nevertheless, these data
cannot answer the questions we have posed. It was for this reason that an
ECPR Research Session was held in Troms in 1995 to discuss party
membership. From this research meeting party membership studies were
initiated in Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands,
Norway and the USA to supplement the studies already conducted in Great
Britain (Seyd and Whiteley, 1992; Whiteley et al., 1994). In this issue of
Party Politics we present some of the findings of these membership studies.1
In this introductory article we use our British data, based upon extensive
surveys of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party members
(Billinghurst et al., forthcoming; Seyd and Whiteley, 1992, 1999, 2002;
Whiteley and Seyd, 2002; Whiteley et al., 1994), to, first, examine the trends
in party membership and, second, to consider explanations for the decline.
Based upon our survey information on the activities of members within their
party organizations, we assess the likely impact of these trends on the British
party system. Finally, we consider whether parties should try and reverse
the trends.
Trends in Party Membership
A recent study of parties in all advanced industrial democracies reveals that,
with the one exception of Spain, the trend in membership numbers is
downwards (Webb et al., 2002). Another survey of membership in 20
European countries confirms this trend: the authors conclude that `in each
of the long-established European democracies, without exception, the
absolute numbers of members have now fallen, and sometimes quite
considerably' (Mair and Van Biezen, 2001: 6). As far as Britain is concerned,
the downward trend in the memberships of the two major parties appears
to have been going on for a long period, particularly since the 1980s (see
Table 1). It is impossible to be certain about the exact date when this decline
first set in, because Labour's membership figures were certainly exaggerated
until the early 1980s, and neither the Conservative nor the Liberal
Democrat parties publish annual membership figures and so for them the
estimates in Table 1 are approximations.
It is important to note that the trend in membership has not been perma-
nently downwards since the 1980s. Between 1994 and 1998 the British
Labour Party expanded its membership.2 A combination of factors help to
explain this growth. First, a divided and demoralised Conservative Party
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was confronted by a Labour Party with a new, young leader, and this
assisted membership recruitment. Most importantly, however, Tony Blair
and his colleagues wanted new members for both inter- and intra-party
reasons and were therefore willing to put considerable party resources
(personnel, money and time) into their recruitment (see Seyd and Whiteley,
2002). Blair's Labour Party provided a range of incentives to encourage
individuals to join. For example, members had the opportunity to influence
the choice of party policies and personnel following the introduction of new
organizational structures. Furthermore, members were encouraged to
believe that they would be contributing to significant policy changes in
Britain if they helped Labour to be elected as the governing party. As a
further incentive, the party emphasized that new recruits would be joining
a growing, vibrant, social organization. These particular incentives were no
longer so powerful after Labour had been elected to office in 1997, and
from 1998 onwards party membership began to decline again. Whether this
membership growth over four years was just a temporary blip in an other-
wise inexorable decline, or evidence of fluctuation, is open to debate (see
Mair, 2000; Seyd and Whiteley, 2002). The answer depends upon whether
structural or choice-based reasons are believed to be more important in
explaining the decline in membership numbers. Structural explanations of
these trends emphasize the importance of societal trends which are gener-
ally beyond the control of parties but which reduce the number of people
joining or being active. Choice-based explanations emphasize the import-
ance of various types of incentives in promoting membership and activism
which the parties themselves can influence to make participation more
attractive to would-be members. Our research shows generally that incen-
tive-based models of participation work better than structural-based models
(Whiteley and Seyd, 2002). This means that the decline of membership can
be turned around with the right incentives.
To begin, we distinguish between supply-side and demand-led expla-
nations of the decline in membership numbers. There are three supply-side
explanations. The first argues that membership is drying up because the
political marketplace is becoming more competitive. The people who may
be intent on becoming involved in politics now have a wider range of
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Table 1. Individual party membership, 1983­2003
Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats
1983 295,344 1,200,000 145,258*
1987 288,829 1,000,000 137,500*
1992 279,530 500,000 100,000
1997 405,238 400,000 100,000
2001 350,000 90,000
*Includes membership of the Social Democratic Party.
Sources: Labour Party NEC Annual Reports; Webb, 2002: 24.

alternative options open to them. Parties are just one of an increasing
number of political organizations competing for people's attention. Single-
issue groups, in particular, have emerged to compete with parties for
people's support and they may attract potential party members. The second
explanation stresses the competing pressures on people's time, whether these
be work, leisure or entertainment, which have reduced the pool of poten-
tial members. Thus there is competition beyond the political marketplace
for people's time and energy. The third explanation suggests that socio-
economic and demographic changes have served to bring this about,
particularly the decline of traditional working-class communities, the
expansion of the suburbs, the decline of trade union membership and the
growth of female employment. These developments drain the pool of poten-
tial party members.
On the demand side, the single most powerful explanation for the decline
is that party leaders now have less need for individual members. With the
emergence of mass electorates in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries, parties needed to organize and mobilize new voters. At this time,
members provided the resources, both human and financial, for the political
mobilization of voters. However, the development of mass communications
and marketing has enabled parties to reach voters directly, particularly at
times of elections, and so a major impetus for membership recruitment has
now largely disappeared. Furthermore, as parties have succeeded in attract-
ing large donations from corporate organizations and wealthy individuals,
they have become less reliant upon the relatively small subscriptions and
donations from individual members.
Some of the factors which explain the decline in party membership are
outside of the parties' control. For example, parties can have no immediate
impact upon the hours that people devote to work, leisure or entertainment,
or upon employment patterns. Others, however, are within their remit. For
example, they have the powers to create incentives within their own
organizations to attract would-be members.
Perhaps of even greater significance for British parties than the decline in
the number of members is the decline in members' levels of activism.
Members' activities range widely, and at least four types of activities can be
distinguished. First, members contact both their fellow party members and
also other members of the community on behalf of their party. Second, they
campaign for their party and this involves fund-raising, recruiting members
and preparing for and running local election campaigns. Third, they repre-
sent their party by holding office, either within the party organization or in
a range of outside bodies. Finally, they give money to their party.
In Britain there is clear evidence that a decline in most forms of activism
has occurred (a similar conclusion is drawn in this volume by the authors
of the Danish and Norwegian party membership studies). A simple way of
measuring this decline is by asking Labour, Conservative and Liberal
Democrat party members whether they had become more or less active in
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the party over the previous five years and then subtracting the percentage
of those reporting more activity from those reporting less activity. We see
in Table 2 that the decline figures are 11 percent among Labour Party
members, 17 percent among Conservative Party members and 26 percent
among Liberal Democrats.
Another overall measure of activism is the amount of time members spend
on party work in the average month. We see in Table 3 that Labour and
Conservative members are now spending less of their time on party activi-
ties. Whereas in 1990 almost 1 in 2 Labour members devoted none of their
time to party activities, by 1999 this figure had risen to almost 2 in 3. Over
a 10-year period there has been a significant growth in the proportion of
members who do not work for the party in a typical month. This trend is
also apparent for the Conservatives, albeit over a much shorter period of
time between 1992 and 1994. We do not have trend figures for the Liberal
Democrat members, but we see that 1 in 2 of them spent no time on party
activities.
Finally, when we examine specific party activities we see in Table 4 that
Labour members were less `frequently' or `occasionally' engaged in display-
ing an election poster, signing a party-sponsored petition, delivering party
leaflets during an election, attending a party meeting and canvassing voters
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Table 2. Levels of party activity (percentages)
Less active About the same More active
Labour 1999 29 53 18
Conservative 1992 25 57 8
Liberal Democrats 1999 41 45 15
Sources: Various surveys of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party members. See:
Billinghurst et al. forthcoming; Seyd and Whiteley, 1992, 2002; Whiteley and Seyd, 2002;
Whiteley et al., 1994).
Question: `Are you more or less active within the party than you were five years ago (or when
you joined if less than five years ago), or about the same?'
Table 3. Time devoted to party activities in the average month
Lab Lab Lab Cons Cons Lib Dem
1990 1997 1999 1992 1994 1999
None 47 63 65 75 77 54
Up to 5 hours 33 25 22 16 15 29
From 5 up to 10 hours 9 6 7 5 5 7
From 10 up to 20 hours 7 3 3 2 2 4
More than 20 hours 5 3 4 2 2 6
Source: As Table 2.
Question: `How much time do you devote to party activities in the average month?'

on the doorstep on behalf of their party. Only the proportions of members
canvassing voters by telephone and donating money to party funds had
increased, and then only slightly.
Supply-side and demand-led explanations of declining levels of activism
can again be utilized. For example, on the supply side, the pressures on
people's time, in particular the amount of time spent at work, in domestic
commitments or at leisure, make party activism less attractive. On the
demand side, parties now have less need for their activists as fund-raisers
and election campaigners and, as a consequence, they have reduced their
incentives to become activists. For example, for Labour the activists' powers
to choose party personnel, such as the party leader and parliamentary candi-
dates, and to have an input into policy-making, have all been reduced. All
three parties now elect their leaders by balloting the membership as a whole.
Similarly, the selection of parliamentary candidates is by ballot of all local
members rather than by local activists. These powers have been given to the
members, irrespective of the time and effort that they devote to party activi-
ties, so there are now fewer rewards for becoming an activist.
Impact on the Parties of Declining Membership
What is the likely impact of this decline in membership numbers and levels
of activism? There are several consequences arising from these develop-
ments. First, parties will lose a solid electoral base of supporters. As voters
they constitute a relatively small proportion of the total electorate, but they
are there in both good times and bad. In local government elections or
elections for the European Parliament, where turnouts are very low, they
may be of greater relative importance. Furthermore, in bad electoral times
the existence of a core of loyal supporters is essential to a party's survival
and possible recovery. For example, without the loyalty over decades of its
members and activists the Liberal Party would not be where it is today. In
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Table 4. Labour Party members' campaigning in the previous five years
Percentage of Members who frequently or occasionally 1990 1997 1999
Displayed an election poster 86 78 76
Signed a petition supported by the party 89 65 60
Donated money to party funds 66 70 68
Helped with party fund-raising ­ 35 34
Delivered party leaflets during an election 77 59 61
Attended a party meeting 68 46 48
Canvassed door-to-door on behalf of the party 55 31 32
Canvassed voters by telephone ­ 10 13
Source: As Table 2.
Question: `We would like to ask you about the political activities you may have taken part in
during the last five years. How often have you done this?'

particular, the growth in the number of Liberal Democrat MPs from the
1992 general election onwards has been based upon the dedicated campaign-
ing activities in particular localities of its members (see Billinghurst et al.,
forthcoming).
Second, members help provide parties with political legitimacy. They are
testament to the fact that a party has support in the community and is
rooted in the concerns and values of real people. In this sense, members are
`ambassadors in the community'.
Third, members are a source of regular funds, albeit relatively modest,
which are less tied to the whims, pressures and particular policy preferences
of large financial donors.3 This function is linked to the issue of legitima-
tion, since accusations that a party is selling influence are much harder to
make when its funds come from a wide variety of voluntary actors, rather
than from a small number of rich supporters.
Fourth, members help parties to reproduce themselves over time by
providing a pool of people who are willing to be recruited as election candi-
dates, among whom will be future party leaders. In addition, members will
provide the personnel who help to run state institutions as diverse as
community health councils, school governing boards and the magistracy.
Without activists, parties are unable to run candidates in local government
elections, contests to the new Scottish and Welsh Assemblies and in the
European parliamentary elections. In the context of declining membership
parties will find it increasingly difficult to maintain a national electoral
presence. Yet the ability to run candidates across Great Britain, in both
winnable and unwinnable constituencies, is increasingly important now that
many elections are conducted using proportional representation systems. In
these electoral systems, overall votes become as significant as specific
constituency votes and so parties need standard-bearers in all constituencies.
Fifth, when electoral laws restrict the amount of money that can be spent
on general election campaigns both at the local and national levels, as occurs
in Britain, members are as important as election campaigners. They provide
the free human capital needed to help mobilize the voters. Although parties
run increasingly sophisticated and costly general election campaigns from
their central headquarters, they have to rely upon their members to imple-
ment these campaigns in the constituencies (Denver et al., 2003; Whiteley
and Seyd, 2003). There is evidence that a party's level of constituency
campaigning has a significant impact upon constituency electoral outcomes
(Denver and Hands, 1997; Pattie et al., 1994; Seyd and Whiteley, 1992,
2002; Whiteley and Seyd, 1994, 2002, 2003). Parties with fewer active
constituency campaigners will suffer electoral consequences.
But parties' electoral campaigning does not just occur every four or five
years when general elections are imminent. Local government elections, and
now elections to the new, devolved bodies in Scotland and Wales, occur
more frequently. State financial support for parties to campaign in these
elections, in particular local government elections, is limited and parties are
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therefore almost totally reliant upon their activists. These local government
election campaigns are the base upon which the national parties develop
and extend their support. This has been demonstrated in the rise in the
number of Liberal Democrat MPs in the 1997 and 2001 general elections,
most of which were won in areas where the party had made significant prior
gains in local government elections (see Billinghurst et al., forthcoming).
Sixth, members can be political communicators, both upwards and down-
wards. Upwards, they are one among many means of informing the party
leadership of voters' opinions. Opinion polls and focus groups are used by
party leaderships to provide a constant input into parties' strategic deliber-
ations. But members can also convey such opinions, and they come from a
significant group of voters, namely the party loyalists. Furthermore,
members can provide ideas which contribute to policy development,
particularly in the context of policy forums which are now a feature of party
organizations in Britain. Downwards, members are one of the means by
which parties can communicate their ideas and policies to a wider group of
people. There is evidence from our 1999 survey that Labour Party members
fulfil this important communication role. We see in Table 5 that most
Labour Party members are open about their membership and they talk to
friends and work colleagues about politics, and offer their opinions on
political issues.
People clearly rely upon the mass media, in particular television, for
much of their political information. But it is also evident that face-to-face
discussion with friends, family and workplace contacts play an important
role in influencing political ideas (Pattie et al., 2004). The two-step flow
model of political communication argues that people will often validate
messages from the media and the parties with people who they know
and trust (Popkin, 1991). In this model, `respected' community opinion-
formers and family members play an important role in political communi-
cation. Clearly, a large number of party advocates at the local level will
serve to reinforce the message which a party is trying to get across to the
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Table 5. Labour Party members' contacts with people outside the party
(percentages)
Yes No
Do members talk about politics with people who are not party 86 14
members?
Do their friends ask for their opinions on political issues? 72 28
Do work colleagues ask for their opinions about a political issue? 51 48
Do they offer their opinions to friends without asking them? 56 44
Do they offer their opinions to work colleagues without them asking? 39 61
Do their friends know that they are Labour Party members? 91 9
Do their work colleagues know that they are Labour Party members? 71 29
Source: Seyd and Whiteley (2002: 81).

electorate. So it is in this role that party members are important political
communicators.
We have so far outlined the costs to political parties of a declining
membership, but there are benefits also. First, recruiting individuals, main-
taining membership lists and then providing these members with services
can be costly. This is particularly true if parties offer discount memberships
to distinct groups of people (for example, the young and the retired). The
additional revenue that such members generate may not cover the initial
cost of recruitment and servicing this membership, and so financial savings
can be made by not recruiting members.
Second, a membership restricts a party leadership's freedom of action to
adapt party policies. This could be an electoral liability if the membership is
unrepresentative of a party's potential voters. Two recent examples exem-
plify the problem. In the 1983 general election the Labour Party came very
close to electoral meltdown as a consequence of adopting a set of policies
more popular with its members than its potential voters. Members' attitudes
to nuclear weapons, public ownership and public housing were significantly
out of line with those of Labour's voters at that time. A second example
occurred during John Major's Conservative Government, when he initiated
a `back to basics' programme of social and moral conservatism which
appealed much more to the party membership than to potential Conserva-
tive supporters. The contemporary Conservative Party faces a real problem
that its members are demographically skewed in terms of their age, education
and social class as well as in relation to their opinions on many issues, in
comparison with potential Conservative voters. Current Conservative Party
leaders face considerable difficulties in positioning the party on such key
strategic issues as nation, Europe and social change as a consequence.
A further drawback is that if members are part of their party's delibera-
tive decision-making process their participation will both slow down that
process and may emphasize divisions and disagreements. At a time when
constant, 24-hour news is a dominant feature of the media, speed of political
response is required. Furthermore, intra-party debate and discussion will
often be represented by the media as internal party strife. The balance
between debate and division is a difficult one to maintain, and the percep-
tion of a divided party can be electorally damaging. A divided party is often
regarded by the public as an unelectable party (Clarke et al., 2004).
What is the impact of the decline in the numbers and levels of activism
of party members upon the political system? Perhaps the most significant
effect is to promote special interest politics at the expense of responsible
party government. Generally, when parties are weak, special interest groups
become strong. Such groups are interested in getting benefits for themselves
and passing on the costs of these to the wider society. In contrast, political
parties have to be responsible in the sense of explaining how they propose
to pay for any benefits which they seek. In Olson's (1982) terminology,
parties are `encompassing' organizations which cannot afford to focus just
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on benefits if they want to remain credible contenders for government. In a
world of rampant special interests, policy-making can become gridlocked
by this search for benefits at everyone else's expense. The distinctive contri-
bution of parties to the policy-making process is that they help to allocate
costs. More generally, parties will find it more difficult to perform their
linkage role effectively, that is to link the opinions of the mass public to the
policy-making goals of government (Dalton, 2002). Thus, without
members, party leaders and governments are likely to be less accountable
and probably less successful as a consequence.
So should parties attempt to reverse the trends which we have outlined?
Or is the future party organization likely to be modelled along the lines of
Forza Italia with its supporters' clubs? Is there now no need for party
members? Given the chance, if they were founding a new party, would party
leaders choose to have supporters and financial donors rather than
members? Is the future a politics in which organizations of professional
political entrepreneurs predominate? Theda Skocpol (2002: 131) has
suggested in the US that `the professionally led advocacy group' has emerged
as a new and prominent feature of civic life. She argues (2002: 134) that:
All in all, the model of what counts as effective organization in U.S.
politics and civic life has changed very sharply. No longer do most
leaders and citizens think of building, or working through, nationwide
federations that link face-to-face groups into state and national
networks. If a new cause arises, entrepreneurs think of opening a
national office, raising funds through direct mail, and hiring pollsters
and media consultants. Polls are used to measure disaggregated public
opinion, even as advocacy groups emit press releases about hot-button
issues, hire lobbyists to deal with government ­ and engage in incessant
fund-raising to pay for all of the above. Organizational leaders have
little time to discuss things with groups of members. Members are a
nonlucrative distraction.
Skocpol's comments may also be appropriate to political parties.
The consequences for the political system of a member-free party would
be to undermine democracy, since parties would no longer be anchored in
distinctive values and groups. Of course some people argue that focus
groups can be a substitute for a politics which is anchored in this way. The
problem is that focus groups often produce incoherence, since they contain
individuals who, for example, want more government spending accom-
panied by tax cuts, an end to traffic jams but no road pricing and govern-
ment regulation of other people but not themselves. Only policy-making
rooted in community and group values can overcome the collective action
problems inherent in contemporary policy-making.
There is no doubt that parties find it more difficult to recruit members
today. Politics has become more individualized. People are less willing to
participate in collective forms of political activity (Pattie et al., 2004).
Furthermore, major socio-economic changes make membership recruitment
more difficult. But it is not beyond the possibility of parties to recruit
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members and activists. Our earlier work has suggested that individuals
respond to various types of incentives, the most important of these being
collective, selective, group and expressive. If parties provide a range of these
incentives they can still attract members and encourage them to become
activists.
Notes
1 Some of the membership studies have now been published in more extended form.
For example, see Knut Heidar and Jo Saglie Hva Skjer Med Partienne? (Oslo:
Gyldendal Akademisk, 2002); Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh Days of
Blue Loyalty: The Politics of Membership of the Fine Gael Party (Dublin: PSAI
Press, 2002); and Karina Pedersen Party Membership Linkage: The Danish Case
(Copenhagen: Forlaget Politiske Studier, 2003).
2 Party membership increased by 40 percent between 1994 (305,189) and 1998
(405,238). (Source: Labour Party National Executive Committee Reports.)
3 For example, during the Conservative Party's difficulties since 1997, some sub-
stantial party donors have made it clear that their financial support was dependent
upon particular policies or leaders.
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PATRICK SEYD is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield.
ADDRESS: Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
[email: P.Seyd@sheffield.ac.uk]
PAUL WHITELEY is Professor of Government at the University of Essex.
ADDRESS: Department of Government, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park,
Colchester, C04 3SQ, UK. [email: whiteley@essex.ac.uk]
Paper submitted October 2003; accepted for publication December 2003.
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