Interactions between party members and local party activists: A formal model and its empirical application*

The author is indebted to his colleagues and students at the Social Science Informatics Department at the EWH Koblenz as well as to two anonymous referees for helpful criticism. The data employed were collected in the research project “Party System and Legitimation of the Political System” directed by Professors Heino Kaack and Reinhold Roth and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. They will soon be available from the Zentralarchiv für empirische Sozialforschung at Cologne.

Data taken from two surveys among party members and local party activists are used to test a formal theory of intra‐party interaction at a low regional level. For this purpose a miniature version of legitimation theory is axiomatized according to Joseph D. Sneed's proposals. A possible partial model for this miniature theory is defined, terms theoretical in this theory are introduced to make up a possible model of the theory, and several variants of the model of this theory are discussed together with their empirical claims. The axiomatized theory does not only allow the interpretation of empirical correlations among attitudinal variables as effects of interactions between persons bearing those attitudes, but also compels to consider nonlinear interactions as well.

Notes

The author is indebted to his colleagues and students at the Social Science Informatics Department at the EWH Koblenz as well as to two anonymous referees for helpful criticism. The data employed were collected in the research project “Party System and Legitimation of the Political System” directed by Professors Heino Kaack and Reinhold Roth and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. They will soon be available from the Zentralarchiv für empirische Sozialforschung at Cologne.