The German Party Membership Study 2017: Party Memberships in Change

继1998年《波茨坦党员研究》和《2009年德国党员研究》之后，《2017年德国党员研究》对德国党员的长期社会记录作出了重要贡献。对基民盟、基社盟、社民党、Die Linke、绿党和自民党成员的代表性样本进行的邮寄调查，能够描述近20年来德国政党成员的变化。它们使人们能够研究党员的社会结构、心理特征和行为特征方面的变化过程。因此，《2017年德国党员研究》提供了描述性信息，这对于对政党和一般政治的学术研究以及特定政党的政治工作都具有重大意义。《2017年德国政党成员研究》还能够对有关德国政党成员变化的关键学术解释进行实证分析。这些解释假设成员的变化是世代更迭的结果。然而，只有使用复杂的年龄-时期-队列模型才能分析这类代际动态，只有在至少三个足够遥远的时间点收集的数据才能对该模型进行有意义的评估。因此，2017年德国党员研究的一个关键目标是能够分析德国党员变化的特定年龄、时期和群体的影响。《2017年德国党员研究》也对人们加入和退出政党的决定因素进行了实证分析。除了党员的死亡，这也是德国党员构成不断变化的一个关键因素。因此，对入党或退党决定背后的机制的理解对于理解成员的变化至关重要。为了能够对这些决定进行实证分析，对前任和现任党员以及从未参加过政党的个人进行了不成比例的分层电话调查。《2017年德国党籍研究》基于这样一个规范性前提，即政党对现代代议制民主政体的运作作出了不可或缺且不可替代的贡献。在此背景下，该项目的总体目标是研究成员变化对德国政党的运作及其确保社会融合的能力的影响，从而找出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.