Party Organization and Organizational Adaptation in the LastThird of the Twentieth Century

在欧洲，大众民主和大众政党的历史有着千丝万缕的联系。群众性政党的兴起是为了动员和融入以前被剥夺公民权的社会阶层的政治体系，并产生和引导要求更广泛地融入民主政治的压力。政党是纪律严明的组织，既能在社会中扎根，又能在政府中获得民众的授权。从马克斯·韦伯(Max Weber)到莫里斯·杜弗格(Maurice Duverger)等观察家将大众政党描述为未来的政党，并辩称，他们是大众民主的必然副产品和必要的前提条件。这一观点的基础是两个长期趋势的互补性：公共服务和国家的增长，以及群众政党组织和鼓励的民众政治参与的扩大。它还植根于高度分层和分割的社会结构。近年来，这两种趋势之间的互补性已经变得支离破碎：政党对其成员的依赖程度降低，而公民对政党的依赖程度却有所下降。此外，欧洲社会的结构不那么简单，削弱了政党忠诚和组织的一个基础。缔约方如何适应这些变化？传统观点表明，一个趋势是由外部资助、由专业官员组成、由职业政客领导的政党；倾向于主要定位于外部而不是内部的政党。在许多方面，这表明欧洲政党正变得更像美国政党，而不是旧理论所暗示的相反。尽管这些趋势对民主政府的性质具有潜在的重要性，但很少有系统的研究针对收集西方民主国家政党组织的数据。该项目通过收集12个欧洲国家60多个政党的组织发展数据，解决了这一不足。通过这项研究，调查人员将首次积累关于这些关键政治组织正在发生的事情的系统的跨国证据。他们是否正在变得更加自给自足？决策是否变得更加集中？大众成员正在减少，政党是否越来越脱离他们的社区根源？这还是群众政党的世纪吗？这些只是这个数据库将让学者们解决的几个问题。

Within Europe, the histories of mass democracy and the mass party are inextricably linked. Mass parties arose to mobilize and integrate into the political system previously disenfranchised segments of society, and to generate and channel pressure for even wider inclusion in democratic politics. Parties were disciplined organizations able to claim both roots in society and a popular mandate in government. Observers from Max Weber to Maurice Duverger described the mass party as the party of the future and argued that they were the inevitable byproduct of, and necessary precondition for, mass democracy. This view was based on the complementarity of two long-term trends: the growth of public services and the state, and the expansion of popular participation in politics as organized and encouraged by mass parties. It was also rooted in a highly stratified and segmented social structure. In recent years, the complementarity between the two trends has been becoming unstuck: parties are less dependent on their members, while citizens are dependent on parties. As well, European societies are less simply structured, weakening one basis of party loyalty and organization. How have parties adapted to these changes? Conventional wisdom suggests a trend towards parties that are externally financed, staffed by professional officials, and led by career politicians; towards parties whose primary orientation is external rather than internal. In many respects, this is to suggest that European parties are becoming more like those in America, instead of the reverse as the older theories suggested. Despite the potential importance of these trends for the character of democratic government, little systematic research has been directed at gathering data on party organizations in Western democracies. This project attends to this deficiency by gathering data on organizational development in more than sixty political parties in twelve European countries. Through this research the investigators will accumulate, for the first time, systematic cross-national evidence on what is taking place in these key political organizations. Are they becoming more self-sufficient? Is decision-making becoming more centralized? Is mass-membership in decline, and are the parties increasingly divorced from their community roots? Is this still the century of the mass political party? These are but a few of the questions that this database will allow scholars to address.