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Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the general election of 2015, this article asks what motivates members to engage in high-intensity election campaign activism. It argues that two factors are especially prominent: the aspiration to pursue a career in politics (which only accounts for a small minority of these activists) and becoming integrated into a local social network (which accounts for a much larger proportion). By contrast, members who lack either of these characteristics, but are mainly motivated to join by ideological impulses, largely restrict themselves to low-intensity activity. These findings are likely to be especially pertinent to countries with single-member district electoral systems.

A survey of ordinary members of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party carried out in 2013 revealed that nearly 30% of them would seriously consider voting for the country’s radical right wing populist party (United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)). However, we show that at the general election in 2015, only a very small proportion of them – around 5% of Tory grassroots members – actually did so, driven it seems mainly by alienation from the leadership and David Cameron in particular, as well as, perhaps, by concerns about the Conservative-led government’s austerity policies. However, those party members who did eventually vote for UKIP were still much more likely to have expressed a propensity to vote for it in 2013 than those who did not. Since the Conservative Party has not experienced the same increase in membership as some of its competitors, and since members are an important part of parties’ electoral campaigning, they should avoid alienating those members they do have – something of which Theresa May appears to be aware.

Although often treated as such, political parties are not unitary actors. Presumably, therefore, their leaders have to take at least some account of the views of their followers – not least when deciding whether or not to enter a coalition with other parties. Hitherto there has been relatively little research into those views. This article uses a survey of members of the UK’s Conservative Party in order to elicit and explain their thinking on the coalition the party formed with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, on the performance of the government since then, and on the prospects of a similar arrangement after the next general election. It finds that, although they largely approve of the government’s record, grassroots Tories regret the decision to go into coalition in the first place. However, they would sanction a continuation of the arrangement as the price of hanging on to power after the next election. Different members, of course, have different views, and these are best explained by ideological rather than demographic variables, as well as by members’ views on their party leader and – at least in part – their levels of activism.

This research note draws on a new survey to reveal a widespread willingness among current Conservative Party members in Britain to countenance voting for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) at future general elections. Those most likely to do so are cultural conservatives, but they are not overly right-wing on the distributional dimension of politics. They are particularly concerned about immigration and the European Union, do not feel valued or respected by their own leadership and even regard David Cameron — their own party leader and the country's prime mnister — as ideologically more remote from them than UKIP. This serves to illustrate some of the strategic dilemmas facing centre-right parties confronted by populist right challengers.

Stereotypes of Conservative Party members abound. But in a detailed survey of Tory rank-and-file, Tim Bale and Paul Webb found some surprising results: most are open to limited immigration, are wary of NHS cuts and would sanction another coalition with the Lib Dems.

Party employees are an under-researched group in political science. This article begins to address this oversight by examining Labour Party employees using new quantitative and qualitative data. It argues that party employment should be regarded as a form of political participation and as a consequence, existing models of political participation can be utilised to help explain why people work for political parties. After testing these propositions, the article concludes that existing models are indeed helpful in explaining the motivations for party employment.

This article analyses party employees, one of the most under-researched subjects in the study of British political parties. We draw on a blend of quantitative and qualitative data in order to shed light on the social and political profiles of Labour Party staff, and on the question of their professionalisation. The latter theme is developed through a model derived from the sociology of professions. While a relatively limited proportion of party employees conform to the pure ideal-type of professionalism, a considerably greater number manifest enough of the core characteristics of specialisation, commitment, mobility, autonomy and self-regulation to be reasonably described as ‘professionals in pursuit of political outcomes’.

This article seeks to examine evidence that British political parties may be in decline. A two-dimensional framework for analysis is utilized, which suggests that the overall picture is far from unambiguous. At most, a prima facie case can be made that the popular legitimacy of parties may be dwindling; similarly, party organizations only appear weaker than they were a generation ago at the local level - and even this may be a somewhat simplistic account of the real strengths and weaknesses of British parties given the emergence of the `electoral-professional' model. If we turn to a deeper level of analysis, we must concede that the capacity of parties to fulfil functions on behalf of the wider political system may not be what it once was in some respects; nevertheless, they remain central to the tasks of demand aggregation and political recruitment. In short, political parties in the UK may have their problems, but they remain much more than vestigial phenomena of a bygone age. To a significant extent this is because of their undoubted capacity to adapt to changing environments.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) display anti-inflammatory, antipyretic and analgesic properties by inhibiting cyclooxygenases and blocking prostaglandin production. Previous studies, however, suggested that some NSAIDs also modulate peroxisome proliferator activated receptors (PPARs), raising the possibility that such off target effects contribute to the spectrum of clinically relevant NSAID actions. In this study, we set out to understand how peroxisome proliferator activated receptor-γ (PPARγ/PPARG) interacts with NSAIDs using X-ray crystallography and to relate ligand binding modes to effects on receptor activity. We find that several NSAIDs (sulindac sulfide, diclofenac, indomethacin and ibuprofen) bind PPARγ and modulate PPARγ activity at pharmacologically relevant concentrations. Diclofenac acts as a partial agonist and binds to the PPARγ ligand binding pocket (LBP) in typical partial agonist mode, near the β-sheets and helix 3. By contrast, two copies of indomethacin and sulindac sulfide bind the LBP and, in aggregate, these ligands engage in LBP contacts that resemble agonists. Accordingly, both compounds, and ibuprofen, act as strong partial agonists. Assessment of NSAID activities in PPARγ-dependent 3T3-L1 cells reveals that NSAIDs display adipogenic activities and exclusively regulate PPARγ-dependent target genes in a manner that is consistent with their observed binding modes. Further, PPARγ knockdown eliminates indomethacin activities at selected endogenous genes, confirming receptor-dependence of observed effects. We propose that it is important to consider how individual NSAIDs interact with PPARγ to understand their activities, and that it will be interesting to determine whether high dose NSAID therapies result in PPAR activation.