Party Power: Approaches in a Field of Unfilled Classics*

Much current research into the working of liberal democracy tends to emphasise and concentrate on the corporate channel of influence. The linkage to centres of power provided by political parties has not received sufficient attention. There is a need for more research into the operation of parties as linkages between grass root activists and national elite politics. Studying party democracy is to study internal distribution of power, and the article turns to the debate on community power studies for guidelines on how to approach empirical research on intra-party democracy.     

Norway

European Journal of Political Research -     

Party Feminism: Gender Gaps within Nordic Political Parties

On the basis of surveys of Danish and Norwegian political party members, this article shows that female presence is comparatively high in Danish and Norwegian parties, and that there are a number of consistent and politically significant gender differences in political opinions within the parties. These gender gaps are largest regarding issues that are not central to the ideological core of the parties and on issues where women are particularly affected. The study still reveals the importance of party in the sense that the differences between the members of different parties are greater than the gender gaps within parties. In the Nordic party systems, gender as such does not constitute a political force transcending the left–right dimension.     

Social Democratic Parties between Class and Organization*

Two questions are discussed in this article. First, what are the main divisions in the debate on the causes of the deradicalization of European social democratic parties? Second, what kind of empirical research could at this stage of the debate hope to contribute substantially to it? Through a survey of the literature the argument is presented that in both Marxist and Liberal debates the question of the relative importance of class-factors and party-factors emerge as dominant. The empirical confrontation of these perspectives has hitherto taken place at the national level. What is needed now is more local level research, which would give a more manageable unit in the exploration of the theoretical and empirical issues involved.