Party Members in the United Kingdom

如果没有政党，几乎没有成熟的民主国家能够繁荣发展。但是，几乎所有地方的政党都陷入了困境——无论是在公众的看法方面，都变得越来越消极，还是在成员数量方面，（除了一些较新的、更激进的进入市场的人）已经像石头一样下降了一段时间。除非我们愿意看到政党本质上变成精英主义的、被掏空的机构，否则我们应该有理由感到担忧。在一个健康的民主国家，政党不能仅仅是精英们为了自己和我们的集体利益而经营的品牌。他们需要扎根于社会，而不是脱离社会。它们的方案需要反映出有意义的差异。他们的领导人和议会候选人最好是通过竞争性选举，而不是任命或继承。党员可以帮助确保这一切在理论上和实践中实现。当然，他们也可以决定一个政党在选举中的输赢，因为竞选不仅仅是在全国范围内由媒体决定的，而且是在当地由实地决定的。尽管如此，我们对21世纪党员的了解还不如我们所能了解的那么多。的确，保守党最近得到了相当不错的服务，尤其是从我们在2009年和2013年进行的调查来看。然而，上一次对工党成员的学术调查是在1997年进行的，上一次对自由民主党成员的调查是在1999年完成的。英国独立党成员从未接受过调查。同样重要的是，从来没有对几个政党的成员同时进行的研究，从而使研究人员能够在完全相同的时间问他们完全相同的问题。也没有对入党后离开政党的人进行系统的研究。我们将改变这一切。我们将在2015年5月中旬对英国四个最大政党的成员、工党潜在的工会附属成员以及那些对一个或另一个政党有强烈依恋但不选择加入他们的公民进行同时调查，使用从互联网民意调查机构收集的大量小组中收集的样本，从而最大限度地减少招募政党本身所带来的后勤和其他问题。然后，一年后，我们将调查那些离开政党的人。为了研究党员的动态和人口统计，我们将包括一些在20世纪90年代进行的开创性调查中提出的相同问题。通过在大选和新政府组建后进行实地调查，我们还将有助于研究两党之间所谓的“地面战”，以及两党成员对不同执政方案的态度。我们也将与各方对话，比较他们的观点。我们的项目将使学术界和非学术界的观众受益。政治家和记者今后将了解党员的情况，而不必做出假设或有根据的猜测。政党可以利用这些知识来促进传统和非传统成员的招募和保留。对政党感兴趣的政治学家不仅能够判断网络民意调查作为一种研究工具的有效性，而且还能回答一些关于成员的社会特征、态度、活动、竞选活动和他们加入或离开的原因，以及那些对工会成员参与政治感兴趣的人，以及那些对选民对不同类型候选人的偏好与选择他们的党员所表达的偏好感兴趣的人。最后，我们的研究将告知和装备成员自己。他们当然知道自己作为个人和当地政党的想法和行为，但他们并不总是知道自己与其他地方和其他政党的成员相比如何。知识就是力量。

Few, if any, fully-fledged democracies prosper without political parties. But parties are in trouble almost everywhere - both in terms of public perceptions, which are becoming more and more negative, and in terms of membership numbers, which (with the exception of some newer, more radical entrants into the market) have been dropping like a stone for some time. Unless we are willing to see parties become essentially elitist, hollowed-out institutions, this should give us cause for concern. In a healthy democracy, parties cannot simply be brands run by elites for their own and for our collective convenience. They need to be rooted in, rather than disconnected from, society. Their programmes need to reflect meaningful differences. Their leaders and their parliamentary candidates are best chosen by competitive election rather than appointment or inheritance. Party members can help ensure that all this occurs in practice as well as in theory. They can also, of course, make the difference between a party winning or losing an election since contests are decided not merely nationally, in the media, but locally, on the ground.In spite of this, we do not know as much as we might do about party members in the twenty-first century. The Conservatives have, it is true, been reasonably well served recently, not least by our own surveys carried out in 2009 and 2013. However, the last academic survey of Labour members was carried out back in 1997 and the last survey of Liberal Democrat members was completed in 1999. UKIP members have never been surveyed. Just as importantly, there has never been a study of the members of several parties carried out concurrently, thereby enabling researchers to ask them exactly the same questions at exactly the same time. Nor has there been any systematic study of people who leave political parties after joining them. We will change all this. Using samples gleaned from the massive panels collected by internet pollsters, and therefore minimising the logistical and other problems posed by enlisting the parties themselves, we will, in mid-May 2015, carry out simultaneous surveys of the members of the UK's four biggest parties, along with Labour's potential trade union affiliated members and those citizens who feel strongly attached to one party or another yet do not choose to join them. Then, a year later, we will survey those who have left their parties. In order to study the dynamics as well as the demographics of party membership, we will include some of the same questions asked in the pioneering surveys conducted in the 1990s. By fielding the surveys just after the general election and the formation of a new government, we will also contribute to the study of the so-called ground war between the parties and the attitude of their members to different governing options. We will talk, too, to the parties to compare their perspectives.Our project will benefit academic and non-academic audiences. Politicians and journalists will henceforth know about party members rather than have to make assumptions or educated guesses. Parties can use that knowledge to boost recruitment and retention of traditional and less conventional members. Political scientists interested in parties will not only be able to judge the effectiveness of internet polling as a research tool but also have a number of questions answered about members' social characteristics, attitudes, activities, campaigning and their reasons for joining or leaving - as will those interested in trade unionists' involvement in politics and those interested in comparing voter preferences for different types of candidates to those expressed by the party members who select them. Finally, our research will inform and equip the members themselves. They of course know what they think and what they do as individuals, and in their local parties, but they do not always know how they compare to members in other places and in other parties. Knowledge is power.