Economy and Political Parties: The Impact of the Economic Conditions on the Trend of Party Membership in England and Germany, 1945-1990.

Does the economy explain the long-term trend of party membership? Do positive economic conditions encourage the increase of party memberships? On the other hand, does negative economic condition lead to the decline in party memberships? Political scientists have studied what factors have an impact on party membership trend, and how the parties respond to the change of party membership trend (Dalton, Wattenberg 2000; Duverger 1954; Katz, Mair 1995; Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco 1988; Rokkan 1960; Scarrow 1996). Studying industrialized democracy political parties, they have examined whether external factors such the economic transformation or political dealignment cause the decline of the party membership trends. However, political scientists have not considered whether economic factors, such as economic growth (GDP) or unemployment rate, can cause the increase or decrease of party memberships. Using Vector Autoregression (VAR) approach, in this paper I will examine the long-term relationship between the economic conditions and the party membership trends of the British Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1945 to 1994. I hypothesize that in the long run, positive economic conditions are likely to encourage the increase of the party memberships whereas negative economic conditions are likely to discourage the increase of the memberships. By looking at the trend of party memberships, this paper aims to find the long-term relationship between economic conditions and people's political participation in political parties in terms of whether positive economic conditions encourage people to join the parties, and whether negative economic conditions discourage people to join the parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]