Parties and Participation: Evolving Australian Party Membership

该项目旨在提供关于政党成员身份如何演变以及公民和政党今天如何相互参与的新见解。党员人数的减少通常等同于政党作为参与性组织的消亡，以及其作为民主联系载体的关键作用的削弱。应用一个整合了个人、政党和国家视角的新理论框架，该项目计划研究成员资格是如何构成的，它是如何实践的，它在今天意味着什么，以及为什么成员资格正在减少。它将组织分析与调查和焦点小组数据结合在一起，采用创新的混合方法研究设计，旨在评估各政党可以做些什么，以确保他们未来在澳大利亚民主中的角色，并通过新的党派参与模式促进民主参与。

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.