The German Party Membership Study 2017: Party Memberships in Change

继《1998年波茨坦党性研究》和《2009年德国党性研究》之后，《2017年德国党性研究》对德国党性的长期社会记录做出了重要贡献。对基民盟、基社盟、社民党、左翼党、绿党和自由民主党的代表性样本进行的邮政调查，使人们能够描述近20年来德国政党成员的变化。它们使变化的过程能够从社会结构、心理和党员的行为属性方面进行研究。因此，《2017年德国党员研究》提供的描述性信息，无论是对政党的学术研究，还是对一般政治以及特定政党的政治工作，都具有重大意义。《2017年德国党籍研究》还对德国政党党籍变化的关键学术解释进行了实证分析。这些解释假设成员的变化是世代交替的结果。然而，只有使用复杂的年龄-时期-队列模型才能分析这些世代动态，只有在至少三个足够遥远的时间点收集到的数据才能对其进行有意义的评估。因此，2017年德国党籍研究的一个关键目标是分析德国党籍变化对年龄、时期和群体的影响。《2017年德国党员研究》也对人们入党和退党的决定因素进行了实证分析。除了党员的死亡，这是德国党员构成变化的一个关键因素。因此，了解决定加入或离开一个政党背后的机制对于理解成员关系的变化至关重要。为了能够经验性地分析这些决策，在一项不成比例的分层人口电话调查中，对前任和现任政党成员以及从未成为政党成员的个人进行了采访。2017年《德国党籍研究》是在政党对现代代议制民主的运作做出不可或缺和不可替代的贡献这一规范前提下进行的。在此背景下，该项目的总体目标是研究成员制度变化对德国各党派运作的影响及其确保社会一体化的能力，从而确定问题并提出解决办法。

Following on from the Potsdam Party Membership Study 1998 and the German Party Membership Study 2009, the German Party Membership Study 2017 makes an important contribution to a long-term social documentation of German party membership. The postal surveys of representative samples of members of the CDU, the CSU, the SPD, Die Linke, the Greens and the FDP enable a description of changes in German party membership over a period of almost two decades. They enable processes of change to be studied with respect to the sociostructural, psychographic and behavioural attributes of party members. The German Party Membership Study 2017 thus provides descriptive information that is of enormous significance both to academic research into political parties and to politics in general as well as the political work of particular parties. The German Party Membership Study 2017 also enables an empirical analysis of key scholarly interpretations regarding changes in the membership of German parties. These interpretations hypothesise that changes in membership occur as a result of the alternation of generations. However, it is only possible to analyse these kinds of generational dynamics using sophisticated age-period-cohort models, a meaningful assessment of which is possible only with data that has been collected at a minimum of three sufficiently distant points in time. Hence, one key goal of the German Party Membership Study 2017 is to enable an analysis of age-, period- and cohort-specific effects of changes in German party membership. The German Party Membership Study 2017 also empirically analyses determinants of people joining and leaving parties. Alongside the deaths of party members, this is a key factor in the changing composition of German party membership. An understanding of the mechanisms behind decisions to join or leave a party are therefore of fundamental importance for understanding changes in membership. In order to be able to empirically analyse these decisions, former and current party members as well as individuals who have never been a member of a political party are interviewed in a disproportionally stratified population-based telephone survey. The German Party Membership Study 2017 proceeds on the basis of the normative premise that political parties make an indispensable and irreplaceable contribution to the functioning of modern representative democracies. Against this background, the overarching aim of the project is to study the effects of changes in membership on the functioning of German parties and their ability to ensure social integration, and thereby identify problems and propose solutions.