Mobilising volunteer activists in political parties: the view from central office

The role of volunteer activists in the success of election campaigning has undergone somewhat of a renaissance in the last decade or so. It is now becoming increasingly evident that having a strong volunteer activist base is central to winning elections, especially when the campaign is a close run affair. This then raises the important question of how to raise the volunteer armies necessary for such work. Indeed, there is a reasonably long standing literature on what might incentivise people to become active in political parties. However, there is relatively little work done on what party managers are able and willing to offer members as incentives for activism. Using new data from extensive interviews with professional party managers working in the central offices of political parties, this article explores the ways in which such party managers have worked to incentivise volunteer activists. From this data, it offers a new framework for encouraging volunteer activism through inclusive party organisations.     

What's the Problem in Public Sector Workforce Recruitment? A Multi-Sector Comparative Analysis of Managerial Perceptions

Public sector workforce recruitment is problematic, but the nature of that problem is not clearly defined. Workforce recruitment is essentially a matching problem that requires managers to recruit desired employees in available labor pools. This research asks whether sectoral differences and competition for labor affect whether public managers frame the major problem of workforce recruitment as the size, qualifications, or work ethic of the labor pool. Using survey data from about 2,300 managers from two US states, problem attributions are modeled using multinomial logit. The findings suggest that the public and nonprofit sectors find it more problematic to recruit qualified employees than the private sector, but public and nonprofit agencies hold a comparative advantage over the private sector in recruiting employees with sufficient work ethic. Therefore, public and nonprofit managers should emphasize retention and training to leverage their comparative advantage in recruiting employees with work ethic while addressing a comparative disadvantage in recruiting qualified employees.     

Parties,Recruitment and Modernisation: Evidence from Local Election Candidates

Using pooled data from four separate nationwide surveys of local election candidates conducted from 2006–09 the paper assesses the role and importance of parties in the recruitment and selection of candidates. In many respects candidates are similar to councillors with men outnumbering women in a two to one ratio, with very few non-white candidates coming forward for selection and an age bias towards older rather than younger people. Candidates are found generally to have higher educational qualifications and to be employed in professional and managerial populations than in the public at large. Although a majority of candidates are resident in the ward that they contest a large fraction live elsewhere, suggesting that local parties cast the net widely during the recruitment process. The data suggest that the recruitment networks used by parties are relatively closed with many candidates reporting prior experience as local party officer holders or as members of charitable organisations and local public bodies. For two-thirds of candidates the initial decision to stand follows from a request by someone else, often a fellow party member. Women are more likely to be asked than men. Although candidates are aware of the current under-representation of some social and ethnic groups they are generally against using affirmative action measures to redress any imbalance. Although local parties are sometimes seen as contributing towards the problem of under-representation of some groups on council benches the data suggest than an increase in independent candidates would be unlikely to improve the situation and could perhaps cause it to deteriorate still further.     

Decentralized Recruitment and Selection in Thailand: Friend or Foe to Local Public Administration?

This article draws attention to the advantages and disadvantages derived from decentralized recruitment and selection for a form of local public administrative unit, the municipality. This was examined within the context of Thailand, a unitary transitional country where bureaucratization and centralization had been the norms in its public administrative system for centuries. It argues that local fiscal management and reformed local government structure would not be successful when executed by incompetent local civil servants. To summarize, recruitment and selection function as a “vacuum” and “filter” that organizations employ to obtain proficient and skilled human resources for their organizations. In Thailand at the local level, it appears that discussions of recruitment and selection functions barely disguise the inept procedures that occur in reality. These are grounded in actions looking towards recentralization, local-cronyism, and nepotism that have traditionally rooted and underpinned the Thai local administration in the area of personnel administration.     

Militarizing peace: why did the Israeli military spearhead the Oslo Accords?

This article deals with the question of why the Israeli military played a major role in the design and implementation of the Oslo Accords in the years 1993–2000 even though this process was originally initiated as a diplomatic move. It is argued that the explanation lies in the army's role in politically mobilizing the anti-Oslo front comprised of religious and peripheral groups, most of whom had a nationalist agenda, as a strategy to counter their resistance to the Accords. The ‘people's army’, through which many of these groups attained social mobility and which they had traditionally trusted, was inherently the most effective mechanism for achieving this goal. This role was further intensified in light of the government's social policies that made these groups ‘peace losers’. Political recruitment took the form of the army's role in designing the Oslo arrangements as military ones.     

Don’t reinvent the wheel: possibilities for and limits to building capacity of grassroots international NGOs

Abstract

How can support organisations build the capacity of volunteer-driven non-governmental organisations (NGOs)? Citizen aid for relief and development has expanded rapidly in the twenty-first century, and the number of American aid organisations operating in the Global South has grown to nearly 10,000. These grassroots international NGOs – GINGOs – are small-budget, volunteer-driven organisations typically launched by Americans without professional experience in international development or nonprofit management. These groups prize the expressive and voluntaristic dimensions of development work, yet face challenges of amateurism, material scarcity, fragmentation, paternalism and restricted focus. We investigate whether support organisations, whose primary goals are to build the capacity of organisations and strengthen the organisational field, offer solutions to GINGOs’ inherent weaknesses. We draw on 15 semi-structured interviews with a stratified selection of support organisations, including associations tailored towards international development and towards nonprofit work at large. We find that support organisations offer resources to help GINGOs in managerial and administrative domains. Fewer support organisations help GINGOs build technical development skills, and fewer still push GINGOs to critically reflect on their role in development. We find that peer learning and online platforms could help engage GINGOs volunteers in networking spaces, even as their geographic dispersal in the US encourages their fragmentation and isolation.     

Diversity,Inclusion, and the Voice of Older People: Engagement and Decision-Making in Seniors’ Organizations

Seniors’ organizations play a vital role representing older people in policymaking. The impact of diversity among older people on organizations’ engagement and decision-making processes therefore has implications for democratic inclusion. Interviews were conducted with paid and voluntary managers of Australian seniors’ organizations, along with analysis of organizational documents. Findings identified issues of presence and participation and challenges inherent in inclusive deliberation, highlighting the importance of leadership. Leaders’ understandings about what drives and impedes participation, who and what is represented, and how inclusion should be practiced are vital. It is important to consider how organizations can be supported to facilitate inclusion as their constituencies grow.