Reflexões (16)
“Party leaders have little incentive to recruit and retain new members if the taxpayers pickup the costs of running the party organisation. (…) Thus the state itself may be smothering voluntary party activity.
If party organisations become denuded of volunteers, then political parties are even more likely to become wholly dependent on the state. This could have wider consequences for party systems throughout the world. If this promotes anti-party sentiments and serves to weaken party identification in electorates then the consequences of contemporary democracy will be serious. Such a development is likely to lead to lower turnouts, more support for anti-system parties and problems of governance in general. Weak parties can produce policy gridlock and institutional sclerosis (…).[A] weakening of parties is likely to make government in general more difficult.” – Peter Whiteley, Is the party over? The decline of party activism and membership across the democratic world, Paper, Political Studies Association Meeting, University of Manchester, 2009
