Party Members in the United Kingdom

没有政党的成熟民主国家，即使有的话，也是很少的。但政党几乎在任何地方都陷入了困境--无论是在公众看法方面，这种看法越来越负面，还是在成员人数方面，这种人数（除了一些新的、更激进的进入市场者）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成为精英主义、空洞化的机构，否则这应该引起我们的担忧。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，而不是与社会脱节。它们的方案必须反映有意义的差异。他们的领导人和议会候选人最好通过竞争性选举而不是任命或继承来选择。党员可以帮助确保这一切在实践中和理论上都能实现。当然，它们也可以决定一个政党在选举中的胜负，因为竞争不仅取决于全国的媒体，也取决于地方的实际情况。尽管如此，我们对21世纪的党员的了解并不多。诚然，保守党最近得到了相当好的服务，尤其是我们在2009年和2013年进行的调查。然而，对工党成员的最后一次学术调查是在1997年进行的，对自由民主党成员的最后一次调查是在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，从来没有同时对几个政党的成员进行研究，从而使研究人员能够在同一时间向他们提出完全相同的问题。也没有对加入政党后离开政党的人进行任何系统的研究。我们将改变这一切。使用从互联网民意调查机构收集的大规模小组中收集的样本，从而最大限度地减少政党本身所带来的后勤和其他问题，我们将在2015年5月中旬对英国四大政党的成员进行同步调查，沿着工党潜在的工会成员和那些对一个政党或另一个政党有强烈感情但不选择的公民加入他们然后，一年后，我们将调查那些离开他们的政党。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成立后立即进行调查，我们还将有助于研究政党之间的所谓地面战及其成员对不同执政方案的态度。我们也将与各方进行对话，比较他们的观点。我们的项目将使学术和非学术受众受益。政治家和记者从此将了解党员，而不必做出假设或有根据的猜测。各政党可以利用这些知识来促进传统和非传统成员的招聘和保留。对政党感兴趣的政治学家不仅能够判断互联网民意调查作为一种研究工具的有效性，而且还可以回答一些关于成员的社会特征、态度、活动、参加竞选活动及其加入或离开的原因-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那些对不同类型候选人的偏好感兴趣的人，选择他们的党员所表达的。最后，我们的研究将为成员提供信息和装备。他们当然知道他们作为个人和在当地政党中的想法和行为，但他们并不总是知道他们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.