Within Europe, the histories of mass democracy and the mass party are inextricably linked. Mass parties arose to mobilize and integrate into the political system previously disenfranchised segments of society, and to generate and channel pressure for even wider inclusion in democratic politics. Parties were disciplined organizations able to claim both roots in society and a popular mandate in government. Observers from Max Weber to Maurice Duverger described the mass party as the party of the future and argued that they were the inevitable byproduct of, and necessary precondition for, mass democracy. This view was based on the complementarity of two long-term trends: the growth of public services and the state, and the expansion of popular participation in politics as organized and encouraged by mass parties. It was also rooted in a highly stratified and segmented social structure. In recent years, the complementarity between the two trends has been becoming unstuck: parties are less dependent on their members, while citizens are dependent on parties. As well, European societies are less simply structured, weakening one basis of party loyalty and organization. How have parties adapted to these changes? Conventional wisdom suggests a trend towards parties that are externally financed, staffed by professional officials, and led by career politicians; towards parties whose primary orientation is external rather than internal. In many respects, this is to suggest that European parties are becoming more like those in America, instead of the reverse as the older theories suggested. Despite the potential importance of these trends for the character of democratic government, little systematic research has been directed at gathering data on party organizations in Western democracies. This project attends to this deficiency by gathering data on organizational development in more than sixty political parties in twelve European countries. Through this research the investigators will accumulate, for the first time, systematic cross-national evidence on what is taking place in these key political organizations. Are they becoming more self-sufficient? Is decision-making becoming more centralized? Is mass-membership in decline, and are the parties increasingly divorced from their community roots? Is this still the century of the mass political party? These are but a few of the questions that this database will allow scholars to address.
