The Individual-Level Determinants of German Party Membership

Abstract

Why do citizens join German parties? Do specific attributes and abilities play a determinant role in participation in political parties? The German Party Membership Study of 2009 enables us to answer these questions. On the basis of the telephone survey, we will address these issues by way of a systematic comparison of current party members with fellow citizens who never joined a party. For the purpose of analysing the individual-level determinants of joining a party, we use fundamental explanatory approaches to political participation: The socioeconomic standard model, the social-psychological approach, and the general incentives model. The results of our analyses clearly show that social-psychological attributes best explain the decision to join a party. Nevertheless, the findings for the determinants in both the socioeconomic standard model and the general incentives model complete the picture of citizens who are party members.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Hanna Hoffmann started her research career in the Political Science Department at the Leibniz University of Hannover and continued her scientific work at the Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf. Hanna Hoffmann received her PhD for a work in the field of electoral studies about effects of election polls on voting. Hanna Hoffmann is nowadays employed in an agency for market and media research.

Frederik Springer is a researcher in the Political Science Department at the Leibniz University of Hannover. His research focuses on political parties, electoral systems and voting behaviour. In line with this, he wrote his PhD thesis on individual and contextual determinants of strategic voting.

Notes

1 Because of these processes of societal change, it can be assumed that a general transformation of political participation has taken place (Inglehart and Welzel 2005).

2 To generate this information, the respondents were asked: ‘Could you possibly imagine joining a political party?’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number GZ AL 171/4-1,KL 1385/1-1].