Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on January 20, 2009
Parliamentary Affairs 2009 62(2):189-195; doi:10.1093/pa/gsn050
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This article appears in the following Parliamentary Affairs issue: ANALYSING PARTY ACTIVISM [View the issue table of contents]
Editorial
Department of History
Durham University
UK
lawrence.black{at}durham.ac.uk
School of Government and International Affairs
Durham University
UK
gidon.cohen{at}durham.ac.uk
Party activism has been seen as a, or even the, core issue for those interested in political science because it combines a number of features which enable it to shed light on participatory politics, arguably the central problem in the scientific study of politics. In particular, it looks at parties, perhaps the most important non-state institutions in democratic societies. Further, and in contrast to voting, the commitments involved are of relatively high intensity and show enough variation to enable a real insight into motivations.1 From another, rather different, perspective, starting from the mass of party members and moving outwards ‘the writing of party history can be seen as the writing of the general history of a country from a monographic point of view’; thus, the study of activism provides one valuable route into an understanding of society more generally.2 In these, and other, ways, questions of party membership and activism have been recognised as important in different disciplines. This special issue of Parliamentary Affairs is part of an attempt to generate some dialogue between political scientists and historians based on their shared interests in issues of party membership and activism. It is also concerned with different disciplinary constructions and interpretations of such debates. It stems from a symposium held in 2007, supported by Durham University's School of Government and International Affairs, Department of History and the Institute of Advanced Studies.
Most accounts of British party membership in contemporary political science make reference to, and in many cases try to explain change over time. Specifically, one of the main questions in this political literature is the historical one of why party membership has been in such long-term decline. Equally, most historians writing about party membership in Britain do so in ways which appears to rest on the work of political scientists. Often among their key sources are the works of previous generations of political scientists, and indeed the kinds of generalisations found in the political science literature often provide the starting point for historical inquiry. The potential for dialogue between the disciplines on questions of party membership and activism would thus appear to be not just substantial, but also already embodied in the practice of scholars.
If this characterisation is appropriate, and interdisciplinary work is being done in the study of membership and activism, the relationship between the disciplinary contributions is worth exploring. There is the intellectual issue of the history of the development of these academic disciplines, their key organisations and languages. While acknowledging this, the focus of this special edition is elsewhere. One set of questions emerges from considering the ways in which each discipline can treat the other as its under-labourer—as providing something of the foundations for the relevant enquiry. In this view, historians might be in a position to provide the detailed evidence on which a political scientist's views of change over time are based, or the political scientists might provide alternative models and conceptualisations of political activism which can structure historical investigation. A second, rather different direction of enquiry stems from investigating the disciplinary master building—the alternative explanatory frameworks that have emerged to the same questions when addressed by historians and political scientists, respectively. Where, for example, similar frameworks are proposed independently in different disciplines based on different sources we might even have reached a form of confirmation by triangulation.
However, there are a range of more or less obvious differences that make the situation rather more difficult than this picture suggests, which might be thought of in terms of first evidence, second methods and third approaches. First, and perhaps most necessarily, there are differences in the evidence available. Historians, with the benefit of hindsight, are probably in a better position to know what kinds of evidence they would like to have and may have the advantage of access to once confidential sources. However, they are largely restricted to working with whatever fragments of the past have survived, and custom-made data, like the surveys that underpin behavioural approaches to party membership, are not a possibility for most forms of historical enquiry. Second, there are also very substantial differences in the standard methods employed, for while quantitative approaches to party membership are well established in political science, they are an extreme rarity in the historical literature. Finally, in terms of aims, there are differences in what authors are trying to do in their studies of party membership. This is because some focus more on explaining the relationship between party membership and other variables, and others more on understanding the mindsets of the actors involved. Of course these different approaches do not map directly onto the two disciplines. However, not least because of the respective sources of evidence available and methodological toolkits commonly used, it is more common to find historians of party membership concerned with understanding and political scientists with explanation.
Such differences maybe seem so obvious that they scarcely need spelling out. However, the significance of such observations is that their potential to derail dialogue is substantial. As R.G. Collingwood famously pointed out, in the history of philosophy two apparently contradictory statements, even when phrased using the same words, may actually be reconcilable not least because words can and do have very different meanings in different contexts.3
In the study of party membership and activism, one point to note in this regard is that the meaning of activism and membership itself may vary in different times and places. To take just one obvious example concerning the relationship between levels of democracy and party activity. In much of the contemporary literature, declining regular attendance at party political meetings is perhaps appropriately described as a threatening decay in a crucial arena for democratic deliberation. However, in other contexts, party activism and political meetings have very different relationships with democracy, perhaps as a frequent site of violent entertainment, as a combination to exclude women from the franchise, or as a mechanism for the distribution of corrupt spoils. In such cases, decline or transformation may appropriately be seen as a necessary condition of democratic flourishing.
A second, perhaps less obvious point of Collingwood's implies that considerable caution is needed in comparing the claims made by scholars in different disciplines. Such claims may only really take on a meaning as answers to specific questions arising from particular lines of thinking and argumentation. If historians and political scientists are in fact answering different questions, we will need to be particularly careful in assessing whether their apparently contradictory assessments are real disagreements, and indeed whether their apparent agreements should in fact be considered as mutual support. We need to consider not just the individual arguments, but the context of the debates out of which these answers have emerged.
In the political science literature, initial concerns with the membership of British parties in the decades after 1945 came in the context of debates about the distribution of power within political parties.4 The conclusion that party members had few resources in these institutions means that it is in some respects unsurprising that there was little systematic interest in grass roots politics until the 1960s. Almond and Verba's seminal early 1960s comparative study attributed the stability of British political culture to relatively high levels of party membership, but low levels of activism. This, they suggested, hinted at content for the most part with democratic functioning, ability to cause change and a functional civil society, in contrast with more politicised societies. Many leading party members, like Labour revisionist Tony Crosland, were also wary of high levels of activism (around 3% of membership was his preferred level), fearing it would damage social stability and the prospects for agreed change by replacing critical with voluble debate and corroding parliamentary authority. These fears were heightened by new demands for ‘participation’ from, among others, nationalists, women, ethnic minorities, a range of pressure groups and the ‘spirit of '68’. Another factor here was the modernisation of party communication and election strategies—using TV, opinion polling and professional PR consultants notably—that were more national and capital-intensive and less dependent on a mass membership.5 However, perhaps more importantly for explaining the increasing interest of political scientists in party membership, the dramatic decline of local level political organisation was so evident that significant impacts on election results appeared likely.6 Subsequently, the form of high-intensity participation associated with party membership came to be seen as a particularly important form of political behaviour with crucial tasks including a fuller description its nature, explaining the motivations for such activity and assessing its consequences.7 Equally, as was apparent in the early 1980s Labour Party and the Conservatives after 1997, entrusting policy and leadership choices to party activists, could deleteriously differentiate a party from the main trends in opinion in the wider society. Indeed, although perhaps overstating the case, the generalisation that party activists are unrepresentative extremists has been elevated by some to almost law-like status.8 Activists had long demanded greater rights and power within both main parties, whether for wider benefits or not such power could make or break a party.
For historians, the study of grassroots party membership emerged rather differently, initially as part of the movement towards writing ‘history from below’ tied into a wider Marxist political project and associated with the study of the Labour movement broadly conceived.9 While subsequent historians have not necessarily fully followed this approach and have looked at parties across the political spectrum, the historical study of activism remained associated with a view which stressed the importance of local political actors, usually claiming that the national political scene was crucially transformed by initiatives at local level.10 Whether because of this theoretical claim, or because of more prosaic concerns surrounding the most readily available sources, historical approaches to party membership and activism have also tended to be tied into studies of local party organisations.
The context of the study of party political membership and activism in both disciplines in recent years has also been significantly affected by a movement away from a focused interest in political institutions in general and political parties in particular. In historical research, what might usefully be termed a more cultural history of politics has marked a key shift in this past decade. This has explored the shifting and multiple meanings of party activism—emotional, generational and identity-forging—and crucially placed popular and party politics in its broader social context.11 That is, it was often one among many activities, in competition with a range of others to which formal politics could seem rather marginal, not least in the post-war period a range of voluntary organisations, social movements and NGOs that flourished and provided alternative outlets for activist energies. In short, historians have moved away from conventionally defined forms of politics shifting their interest to what is best conceived of as political culture. They have widened their definition of ‘the political’ to include practices, movements and participation beyond party and involving issues of identity like sexuality, the body and consumerism. Such approaches have also stimulated historians' exploration of previously neglected contexts and aspects of party activism—to take some pertinent recent examples, Labour's rural campaigns, the social appeal of Young Conservatism, and the making of Communist identity.12 Similarly in political science, the ‘crisis’ of party politics has been extensively debated, with the declines in membership and popular identification sitting at the heart of these debates. While the case for the disappearance of parties has been rather overstated a shift in emphasis towards activism in general including an interest in wider, social interactions in surrounding notions of ‘social capital’ has seen the centrality of party political activity challenged. While party membership is not the only form of collective identity to be struggling in Britain, church attendance provides another high-profile example, the suggestion that this is the result of an overall decline in associational activity has been challenged at least in this country.13
There are then extensive differences between historians and political scientists. They typically make use of different forms of evidence, different methods, different approaches and make reference to different contexts both in terms of their substantive interests and in terms of disciplinary norms and debates. These differences overall indicate the difficulty in locating shared meanings. Of course there is little novelty in these points, similar arguments are embedded in introductory discussions of comparative politics and are central in most conceptions of historical enquiry. However, their familiarity does not prevent them from potentially causing difficulties in a dialogue between historians and political scientists.
The aim of bringing together the work of political scientists and historians on party membership and activism here is both hopeful and cautious. On the one hand, we are motivated by the possibility that there are synergies in interdisciplinary research into the question of party membership and activism. However, we imagine that rigorous approaches to dialogue need to be alert to the problems. For this reason, the articles presented do not speak with a single voice but rather represent, within the limits of what is possible with such a small number of pieces, something of the diversity of current historical and political research into party membership and activism.
The papers that follow include two by historians and two by political scientists. The first historical paper, by Karen Hunt, focuses on women's activism from the 1880s to 1920. Hunt argues for a greater awareness, not only of gender in studying women's activism, but of issues of identity, lifestyle and narratives of the self. The second, by Andrew Thorpe, assesses Conservative Party membership during the Second World War. Thorpe presents new ways of approaching local constituency records to offer a deeper understanding of the national picture, approaches that could be applied to other parties and periods. The first political science paper, by Justin Fisher and David Denver, evaluates different forms of constituency campaigning in general elections from 1992. Fisher and Denver contend, by looking at electoral payoffs from different forms of activity, it is clear that what members do is at least as important as how many of them there are. The second, by Paul Whiteley, surveys the profiles of voters, members and ex-members of UK political parties. Whiteley suggests that party membership is closely linked to important features of democratic society and thus the continuing fall in membership is a cause for wider concern.
These papers throw up a range of connections and tensions. Differences of methodology and of formulating the central questions of the sorts already discussed are readily apparent, for example in contrasts between Hunt's paper and Fisher and Denver's. Hunt's work undertakes a deep study of a number of individuals to interpret competing activist identities over several decades. Fisher and Denver's work aims to provide a compelling test of specific hypotheses using purely quantitative methods across a range of parties, activist and campaigns. Equally sources clearly fashion the papers. If Thorpe highlights the longstanding nature of the vicissitudes of party membership, then Fisher and Denver and Whiteley have at least more abundant evidence to explain these similar issues. There is then much that appears to separate historians from political scientists. However, looking at these articles, it is evident that there are also many substantive matters which connect them. One is that while local studies can inform a broader, national picture they should be distinguished from studies of activism. Further, while all the papers recognise the interplay between membership and activism, there are differences in where the emphasis is placed. Both Thorpe and Whiteley provide an analysis where membership is the fundamental category. For Fisher and Denver and Hunt, it is the modes of activism that provide the starting point. These are then many divisions which continue to cut across disciplinary boundaries.
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Notes |
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 Top Notes |
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1 P. Whiteley and P. Seyd, High-Intensity Participation: they Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain, University of Michagan Press, 2002, pp.1–2.
2 A. Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings, International Publishers, 1970, pp. 148–9.
3 R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, Oxford University Press, 1939.
4 R. McKenzie, British Political Parties: the Distribution of Power within the Conservative and Labour Parties, Heinemann, 1955.
5 G. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Princeton University Press, 1963; C.A.R. Crosland, Socialism Now, Jonathan Cape, 1974, pp. 87–91.
6 D. Butler and M. Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970, Macmillan, 1971.
7 P. Seyd and P. Whiteley, Labour's Grassroots: the Politics of Party Membership, Clarendon Press, 1992.
8 J. May, ‘The Opinion Structure of Political Parties: the Special Law of Curvilinear Disparity’, Political Studies, 21, 1973, 135–51.
9 A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History, Croom Helm, 1960.
10 D. Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party, 1900–18, Cambridge University Press, 1990; M. Worley, S. Ball and A. Thorpe, ‘Researching the Grass Roots: the Records of Constituency Level Political Parties in Five British Counties, 1918–45’, Archives, 110, 2004, 72–94.
11 See, for example, Molly Andrews, Lifetimes of Commitment: Aging, Politics and Psychology, Cambridge University Press, 1991; S. Fielding, P. Thompson and N. Tiratsoo, England Arise! The Labour Party and Popular Politics in Britain in the 1940s, Manchester University Press, 1995; R. Samuel, The Lost Word of British Communism, Verso, 2007.
12 Clare Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside: the Politics of Rural Britain 1918–1939, Oxford University Press, 2007; L. Black, ‘The Lost World of Young Conservatism’, Historical Journal 51, 2008, 4; K. Morgan, G. Cohen and A. Flinn, Communists and British Society 1920–1991, Rivers Oram, 2007.
13 Key texts here include, A. Marsh, Protest and Political Consciousness, Sage, 1977; C. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, Routledge, 2001; R. Putnam, Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, 2000; Peter Hall, ‘Social Capital in Britain’, British Journal of Political Science, 29, 1999, 417–61.
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