liberation

[party membership] 5: Party membership numbers in NZ

There has been a very dramatic fall in party membership in New Zealand: from nearly 24% of the electorate in the 1950s to only 2% in the 1990s. This spectacular collapse began in the 1960s and, despite a recovery in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has continued to decline. This has meant that the political parties in Parliament are now low-membership, cadre-type institutions, which are more reliant on the resources of the state and on business donations. This blog post describes the aggregate decline in membership numbers. [Read more below]

[party membership] 4: Electoral-Professional party

The old class mass membership party type discussed in the previous blog post, has increasingly been superceded by a model of organising that is more exclusively concerned with electoral success and organised along smaller and more professional lines. The new party form is reliant on professionals, its use of new forms of communication techniques, and the strengthening of the role of leadership. There is less role in the party for members, as the party organisation is more narrowly involved in the recruitment of leaders, the legitimation of authority, and generally publicising the parliamentary leadership. [Read more below]

[party membership] 3: The class mass party

The establishment of the Labour Party in 1916 heralded the arrival of a new form of party organisation, the class mass party, which would eventually characterise all parties in New Zealand. [Read more below]

[party membership] 2: The Elite-Cadre Party

As in other advanced industrial democracies, the New Zealand political parties at the start of the twentieth century were typically elite-cadre type parties, in which few participated. [Read more below]

[party membership] 1: Introduction to series

One of the most obvious ways in which New Zealand political parties appear to be in decline is in their inability to recruit and retain members. This phenomenon is part of a wider change: the party organisations have been shifting from class-based mass membership parties to small professional electoral-focused parties. [read more below]

[political party social bases] 21: Conclusions

This series of blog posts has detailed one way in which the New Zealand parties are becoming less connected with civil society. The social constituencies are clearly being detached from the parties. This is because of the declining influence of class (in particular) and social structure (more generally) in shaping voting behaviour. And while class has become less important in New Zealand party politics, it is significant that there has been no alternative social cleavage emerging to configure and shape the party system. In this environment the differences between parties have narrowed and the parties compete without any strong coherence. [Read more below]

[political party social bases] 20: Ideological erosion

The detachment of political parties from their social constituencies described in previous blog posts has obviously resulted in a reduction of pressure on political parties to act on behalf of particular social groups. This has pushed political parties in New Zealand to become (a) more pragmatic, and (b) more politically centrist [Read more below]