Parties and Participation: Evolving Australian Party Membership

该项目旨在为政党成员如何演变以及公民和政党如何相互参与提供新的见解。党员人数的减少通常等同于政党作为参与性组织的死亡，以及它们作为民主联系工具的关键作用的削弱。该项目采用了一个新的理论框架，整合了个人、党和国家的视角，计划研究党员制度的结构、实践方式、今天的意义以及党员人数下降的原因。在创新的混合方法研究设计中，将组织分析与调查和焦点小组数据相结合，旨在评估政党可以做些什么来确保他们在澳大利亚民主中的未来角色，并通过党派参与的新模式促进民主参与。

The project aims to provide new insights into how political party membership is evolving and how citizens and parties engage with each other today. The decline of party memberships is usually equated with the death of parties as participatory organisations and the erosion of their crucial role as vehicles for democratic linkage. Applying a new theoretical framework integrating individual, party and state perspectives, this project plans to examine how membership is structured, how it is practised, what it means today and why membership is declining. Combining organisational analysis with survey and focus group data in an innovative mixed-methods research design, it aims to evaluate what parties can do to secure their future role in Australian democracy and to foster democratic participation through new modes of partisan engagement.