The Organizational Crisis of European Parties （Zhang Haiyang）

Abstract：According to the statistic ( 2012 Feb) from three leading European research institutions on political science, the levels of party membership and the percentage of party member among the eligible voters in European democracies have registered an all-time low in history. Meanwhile European citizens’ political participation in party politics has also dropped to the lowest in history. With the widening gap between parties and society, many European political parties have transformed from mass organizations to elite groups. Concomitant with the decline of parties’ grassroots organizations is the gradual dwindling of parties’ assets and the weakening ability of political mobilization. These changes have resulted in an adjustment of European party politics in the ways of political mobilization and securing financial resources as well as their relations with other social forces, which would inevitably trigger off a dramatic change in the model of European democracy.

IES Innovation Project Briefing，No. 1, 2012.