What Explains Party Membership in Post-Yugoslav Countries: Socialism, Nationalism, Clientelism or False Reporting?

Q2 Social Sciences Politics in Central Europe Pub Date : 2023-03-01 DOI:10.2478/pce-2023-0004
Dario Nikić Čakar, Goran Čular
{"title":"What Explains Party Membership in Post-Yugoslav Countries: Socialism, Nationalism, Clientelism or False Reporting?","authors":"Dario Nikić Čakar, Goran Čular","doi":"10.2478/pce-2023-0004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Earlier studies on party membership in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) led to the conclusion that political parties in new democracies are not inclined to build strong party organisations or invest in recruiting members. However, several recent individual country studies point to the opposite conclusions, indicating that there are significant cross ‑country variations in party membership figures across the post ‑communist region. By using a unique dataset on party membership in post ‑communist Europe, in this article we argue that the average membership level in CEE seems to be higher than in Western Europe. This holds true even when party membership figures for CEE countries are ‘corrected’ after conducting validity and reliability tests. Furthermore, we also find that party membership figures across CEE countries vary to a much higher degree than in established Western democracies. Our analysis shows that former Yugoslav countries are clustered at the top and other CEE countries at the bottom, leading to the conclusion that selection bias has been present in many studies on party membership that only included a limited number of post ‑communist countries. In order to explain higher levels of party membership in post ‑Yugoslav countries, we test three sets of explanatory variables, namely socialism, nationalism and clientelism. This exploratory study suggests that nationalist movements from the early period of transition, coupled with clientelistic politics, could serve as the most convincing explanation of high membership density in former Yugoslav countries.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Politics in Central Europe","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2023-0004","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract Earlier studies on party membership in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) led to the conclusion that political parties in new democracies are not inclined to build strong party organisations or invest in recruiting members. However, several recent individual country studies point to the opposite conclusions, indicating that there are significant cross ‑country variations in party membership figures across the post ‑communist region. By using a unique dataset on party membership in post ‑communist Europe, in this article we argue that the average membership level in CEE seems to be higher than in Western Europe. This holds true even when party membership figures for CEE countries are ‘corrected’ after conducting validity and reliability tests. Furthermore, we also find that party membership figures across CEE countries vary to a much higher degree than in established Western democracies. Our analysis shows that former Yugoslav countries are clustered at the top and other CEE countries at the bottom, leading to the conclusion that selection bias has been present in many studies on party membership that only included a limited number of post ‑communist countries. In order to explain higher levels of party membership in post ‑Yugoslav countries, we test three sets of explanatory variables, namely socialism, nationalism and clientelism. This exploratory study suggests that nationalist movements from the early period of transition, coupled with clientelistic politics, could serve as the most convincing explanation of high membership density in former Yugoslav countries.
查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
本刊更多论文
如何解释后南斯拉夫国家的党性:社会主义、民族主义、裙带主义还是虚假报道?
摘要早期对中欧和东欧党员的研究得出的结论是,新民主国家的政党不倾向于建立强大的政党组织或投资招募党员。然而,最近的几项个别国家研究得出了相反的结论,表明整个后共产主义地区的党员人数存在显著的跨国差异。在本文中,通过使用一个关于后共产主义欧洲党员的独特数据集,我们认为中东欧的平均党员水平似乎高于西欧。即使在进行有效性和可靠性测试后对中东欧国家的党员人数进行了“校正”,这一点也成立。此外,我们还发现,中东欧国家的党员人数差异远高于西方老牌民主国家。我们的分析表明,前南斯拉夫国家排名靠前,其他中东欧国家排名靠后,这导致了一个结论,即在许多关于党员的研究中都存在选择偏见,这些研究只包括少数后共产主义国家。为了解释后南斯拉夫国家党员水平较高的原因,我们测试了三组解释变量,即社会主义、民族主义和庇护主义。这项探索性研究表明,过渡初期的民族主义运动,加上裙带关系的政治,可能是前南斯拉夫国家成员密度高的最令人信服的解释。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
来源期刊
Politics in Central Europe
Politics in Central Europe Social Sciences-Political Science and International Relations
CiteScore
1.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
20
审稿时长
20 weeks
期刊介绍: POLITICS IN CENTRAL EUROPE – The Journal of the Central European Political Science Association is an independent and internationally peer-reviewed scientific journal in political science and international relations. The Journal was established in 2005 as the scientific review that publishes scientific essays, book reviews and information about conferences and other events connected with Central European issues. POLITICS IN CENTRAL EUROPE publishes politics, policy analysis, international relations and other sub-disciplines of political original, peer-reviewed manuscripts that provide scientific essays focusing on issues in comparative science, as well as original theoretical or conceptual analyses. All essays must contribute to a broad understanding of the region of Central Europe. Our goal is to give scholars from Central Europe and beyond the opportunity to present the results of their research.
期刊最新文献
Opportunities and Limits of Presidential Activism: Czech presidents compared Equality implies proportionality: Assessing the (dis)proportionality of constituencies created for the 2022 Slovak regional elections The Impact of Electoral Gender Quotas on Women’s Political Participation in Bosnia and Herzegovina Cabinet formation under semi-presidentialism: European countries in comparison IlliberalNeo-Intergovernmentalism: Poland’s Conservative Idea for the European Union?
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1