Örebro StudieS in Political Science 25 2009 issn 1650-1632 isbn 978-91-7668-690-4
Fredrik Bonander has been a graduate student in Political Science at Örebro University. He is currently employed by the The Swedish Schools Inspectorate. This is his dissertation.
The party membership of parties all over Europe has de-clined over the last decades. This is serious issue because political parties are the back-bone of democracy as we know it. Why party membership is in decline is not gene-rally known. However, several different explanations of party membership decline exist. One such theory was constructed by Leon Epstein in 1967. This thesis revisits his theory and empirically tests certain key aspects of the theory, namely if state subsidies cause party membership to decline.
The most likely interpretation of the results is that increasing state subsidies to political parties does not cause a decline in party membership. Instead, the focus of future studies should probably be found in other theories of party membership decline which explains party membership decline as a supply side phenomenon. When party membership decline is explained by the supply side this means that the decline is explained by people stop having motive to become party members.
Örebro Studies in Political Science 25
örebro 2009
Doctoral Dissertation
