ABSTRACT
In an era when there is a general concern regarding decline in political and civic activity (Putnam 1993, 1995, 2000), a commonly held view has emerged that group activity has offset this problem by replacing party activism as the normal participatory style. Farrell and Webb (2000:123) note that ‘Fewer individuals now take on political roles as loyal party members, perhaps preferring to participate via non-partisan single-issue groups’. Lawson and Merkl (1988) argue that major party decline is correlated to a failure of linkage between the parties and the political process, and that the replacement representative vehicles (groups) have been successful because they offer a more responsive and direct form of ‘particularized’ linkage. In support of such claims authors have highlighted the significant reductions in party membership and the corresponding dramatic rise in group (numbers and) membership levels. For example, between 1950 and the mid-1990s ‘aggregate party enrolment’ declined in many advanced democracies from: 1.3 million to 600,000 in France; 3.7 million to 1.9 million in Italy; and 3.4 million to 800,000 in the UK (Scarrow 2000:89). In 2002 the UK Labour Party membership was estimated at 280,000 and the Conservative Party at 318,000. In the same period new organizations formed and cultivated membership in excess of 100,000: Greenpeace 179,000; Amnesty International British Section 150,000; and Friends of the Earth (FoE) 100,000 (Guardian 28 January, 2002 and elite interviews).2 Currently, the membership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) in the UK is over 1 million: greater than the sum of all UK party memberships.
