ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at organisational specificities of liberal parties. The literature on party politics does develop some expectations about liberal party organisations, albeit sometimes indirectly. In their country-case studies on How parties organize, R. S. Katz and P. Mair highlight three organisational features of liberal parties: federal structures, the direct selection of the party leader by the rank-and-file and a more democratic process in defining party policy, and the absence of mass membership but a valuation of individual membership. These features are in line with the theoretical expectations, although the authors point to organisational convergence leading liberal parties to become more membership-based as their organisational development progressed. As parties that originated inside parliament, liberal parties would be more voter- and election-oriented. Membership figures expressed as average ratio of the entire electorate per party family per decade since World War II, show that liberal parties tend to have fewer members than the Social Democrats or the Conservatives and Christian Democrats.
