政党会终结吗? 民主国家政党行动主义和党员的衰退

Is the Party Over? The Decline of Party Activism and Membership across the Democratic World

虽然学界曾充分证实欧洲民主国家政党行动主义和党员的衰退,但对该现象的理论解释却乏善可陈。全面考察民主国家党员和行动主义的现况,表明绝大多数民主国家的政党出现严重衰退。研究结合2004年国际社会调查项目数据建构多层分析模型,检验政党衰退的两个代表性观点:前者认为'国家俘获'即政党和国家联盟关系带来的国家过度规约会抑制基层志愿活动;后者则假设伴随新型参与行为的不断扩展,特别是交易式(check book)参与、消费者参与和互联网参与为公民在入党之类传统参与形式外拓展了新的参与渠道。实证研究支持'国家俘获'的假设。

The decline of party activism and membership in European democracies has been well documented,but not effectively explained. This article examines the state of party membership and activism across a wide spectrum of democratic countries and shows that membership is in decline in most of them. It tests two rival explanations of the decline using a crosssectional multi-level analysis of data from the ISSP Citizenship survey of 2004.One hypothesis is that the decline is due to 'state capture',or excessive state regulation brought about by an ever-closer relationship between parties and the state which has the effect of stifling voluntary activity at the grassroots level. A second suggests that parties are being undermined by the growth of relatively new forms of participation, notably cheque book participation, and consumer and Internet participation. These provide alternative outlets for political action outside traditional forms of participation such as party involvement. There is evidence to support the first of these hypotheses, but not the second.