ABSTRACT
An organizational apparatus intervening between candidates and voters may be less necessary, or at any rate less efficient, as a vote-getting device. The extent to which new mass-media techniques and the mass-membership organization provide alternative campaign means can be observed in party financing. The large numbers have been accounted for by the indirect affiliation of 5–6 million trade unionists through their national organizations, in addition to as many as a million direct constituency party members. From what has just been said about the evident irrelevance of mass-membership organizations to the demands, financial and otherwise, of campaigning through the mass media, it might well be expected that organizations of this kind would decline. The characteristics of another exception really strengthen the argument that advanced social circumstances lead to diminished organizational activity. The African mass-party organizations have provided both a new elite and a political base for this new elite.
