Too late to come to the aid of the party?

It's Andrew Rawnsley's article in the Observer this morning that prompts the above headline, part of an anonymous quotation that was used to test typing speed back in the 19th Century.  Rawnsley reports that the membership of the Labour Party has now fallen to under 200,000 and remarks that its not the decline in membership that is the surprise but rather the fact that anyone would want to be a member at all:

To be a member of any political party is to define yourself as an eccentric enthusiast for a minority pursuit which is widely treated with contempt. That's doubly the case if you belong to the governing political party.

Things are no different this side of the Irish Sea.  In Ireland party membership as a percentage of the electorate fell from 5% in 1980 to 3.14% by 1998.  Presumably it has fallen to about 2.5% at this stage.  Mair and van Biezen, in an article in the journal Party Politics published in 2001, make the following point:

what appears to be happening to party organizations – their general withering on the ground – may well be related to the declining importance of other traditional forms of institutionalized mediation, be these churches, trade unions, or whatever. Political parties, together with other traditional and hierarchical organizations, appear to be suffering from the impact of the individualization of social and political preferences, as well as from a more general unwillingness to rely on existing institutional structures to represent and articulate what appear to be increasingly particularized demands.

Is the withering of party grass roots inevitable and, if so, does it matter?  There is a view among some political scientists that political parties are becoming "head without a body" organisations that have a well funded and powerful central office organisation that is in turn subordinate to the parliamentary leadership and that is capable of fighting electoral campaigns largely through the mass media.  Party organisations, in this view, have effectively migrated from civil society to become part of the state.  Leaders often regard active and assertive grass roots members as a nuisance and a threat towards maintaining the party's electable status.  Rawnsley observes that Blair has always feared that the Labour grass roots might go "berserk" on him and David Cameron fears that the bulk of the Tory membership won't get with his modernisation programme. 

The Labour Party in Britain has lost thousands of members due to do disillusionment with the policies it has pursued since coming to power - the Iraq war being the most notable.  This has happened to many parties that have been in office for some time although I don't know if Fianna Fáil has suffered a similar decline since 1997.  As policy convergence and consensus on fundamental issues becomes more pronounced, most politically minded citizens are more likely to opt for single issue campaigns then immerse themselves in sterile party politics.  What does this tell us about the people who still choose to be active party members? 

Ought we to be in any sense worried by the decline of political parties?  After all isn't it the case that many people reject political parties because they are too inflexible, unresponsive and hierarchical to meet their needs?  Optimists will point to more advanced and deliberative models of democracy and the fact that e-democracy and Internet-based netroots organisation is starting to become a reality.  Some caution is to be advised at this point; the old is dying but the new has yet to be born, to borrow a famous quotation from Antonio Gramsci, who added that, in the interregnum, all sorts of "morbid symptoms" appear.  There could be a lot more voter apathy and cynicism to come. 

Comments

[EWI]

This has happened to many parties that have been in office for some time although I don't know if Fianna Fáil has suffered a similar decline since 1997.

I can personally attest from my own experience that it has. And as to your question - "should we be worried?" - that's a very definite yes if we're not to be entirely ruled by a small group of permanent establishment insiders in Dublin.