Nordic Party Members: Linkages in Troubled Times [Paperback]

This is an impressive and comprehensive comparative study of party members in all the five Nordic countries. The various chapters examine many important topics in research on party members such as trends in party membership, social and political representation, party members political activity and their political influence.Oddbj?rn Knutsen, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo.Political parties provide continuity at the elite level and among the mass electorate in times when populist forces threaten the stability of many western democracies. This edited collection aims to make an analytical contribution to what party democracy means, how to study it and add to our knowledge of who the party members are, what they do and how influential they are in policy-making processes.Political parties provide continuity at the elite level and among the mass electorate in times when populist forces threaten the stability of many western democracies. The parties, however, have experienced turbulent times with declining memberships among the established parties, volatile electorates and the emergence of new parties. This edited collection aims to make an analytical contribution to what party democracy means, how to study it and add to our knowledge of who the party members are, what they do and how influential they are in policy-making processes. Clearly, elections provide linkage at regular intervals. Does party membership, even after membership decline, provide a supplementary, representative linkage that supports democracy and stability in post-cleavage societies?Nordic party systems have kept central elements of their old five party systems , with (mostly) large social democratic parties and a variable geometry of the conservative, liberal, agrarian and left socialist forces. They have experienced the electoral rise of new parties and  in particular - the increasing strength of vote-catching, anti-establishment parties; in most countries nurtured by l3(