Party Members and Their Importance in Non-EU Countries. A Comparative Analysis

This volume aims to explain differences in post-communist parties’ limited success in maintaining high membership levels. The analysis contributes to the ongoing debate on the significance and future of party membership in contemporary democracies and the approach engages with the most recent literature on the membership fi gures on a disaggregated level covering the entire period since 1991 until 2016, with some variations due to independence issues or violent conflicts. The evolution of membership figures covers exclusively election years. Such an approach has potential limitations ( Kölln 2016 ). However, the cases constitute what all the country experts defined as a “hostile” party environment. The parties under scrutiny were highly reluctant to report individual membership figures,in particular in cases where no legal obligation to gather this information was included in the national party laws. Hence, the country chapters present the traditional caveats on the limited reliability of data provided by parties and the sources of the data (in some cases based on press-interviews).