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Abstract
The present article empirically examines the social composition of German political party membership. In the first stage of the analysis, party members are compared with the total population and with voters. This makes it possible to identify potential deficiencies in the political representation of certain social groups. In the second stage, party membership is regressed on individual characteristics. This makes it possible to study cleavage structures. Since the empirical analysis includes data from the 2009 German Party Membership Study as well as from the 1998 Potsdam Party Membership Study, we are able to investigate changes over a period of eleven years. In light of the empirical findings, we then consider whether German parties are socially representative of the German population and their respective voters.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
About the author
Alexandra Nonnenmacher is a professor for Social and Educational Science Research Methods at the University of Siegen, Germany. Beyond party membership, her research interests include social inequality, labour market sociology, and social science research methods and methodology, with a special focus on contextual analysis. Her most recent publication is “Modeling Spatial Opportunity Structures and Youths’ Transitions from School to Training”, Open Journal of Statistics 7 (2017), 1013–1038, (with Alexandra Wicht).
Notes
1. The result for “other” denominations, which indicates an even bigger difference to the reference category, is not reviewed in detail because of the small number of party members belonging to a non-Christian denomination.
2. To prevent confusion: The proportion of trade union members is higher in the SPD (Spier Citation2017), but the effect of trade union membership – with all other influences, e.g. occupational position, partialled out – is higher for Die Linke.