Party members & organisation

Young people increasingly withdraw from party politics. However, some still join parties because they believe they can influence them to achieve change. We examine this personal efficacy among contemporary youth wing members and ask: what are the individual and party-level factors that influence their personal efficacy? To do so, we combine the “Political Party Database Base” with the largest original survey of youth wing members conducted, covering ~3,600 members of twelve party youth wings in six democracies. We find that young people who are more active are more efficacious and that efficacy drops after joining but eventually increases for members that stay longer. We also find that greater opportunities for the youth wing to be heard by its party fosters more efficacious youth wing members. Our results show that parties which incentivise participation and integrate their youth wings into senior party increase their members’ personal efficacy and nurtures democratic citizens.

Party youth wings are crucial sites of political socialization, yet it remains unclear how members’ motivations to join translate into political activities. This article examines how youth wing members’ career, policy, and social motivations shape engagement, arguing that the translation of motivations into participation is shaped by membership tenure and organizational context, which structure opportunities for networking and recognition. We draw on a survey of over 3,000 members from ten major centre-right and centre-left youth wings in five Western parliamentary democracies. Our analysis shows that social motivations primarily drive social activities without reducing campaign engagement, policy motivations consistently predict both campaigning and social participation, and career motivations influence activity mainly after longer membership. Party ideology moderates these patterns, with centre-right youth wings strengthening the link between policy and career motivations with campaign activity. These findings refine theories of party activism and guide parties in cultivating committed activists and future elites.

Research consistently shows that LGBTQ+ people form a highly politically engaged group, and recent elections show a growing presence of openly LGBTQ+ candidates and representatives. Yet it remains unclear how political parties facilitate (or constrain) LGBTQ+ political participation from within, and how LGBTQ+ party members themselves understand political representation. This project looks at LGBTQ+ party wings (i.e. formal intra-party organizations designed to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion), by focusing in particular on the experiences and perspectives of their members. We explore why LGBTQ+ party members join their party and its wing; their participation within the party; their political career ambitions; and their experiences with violence within and outside the party. We take intersectional heterogeneity into account, analyzing how gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, and other social identities shape experiences within the wing and the party. The project is the first systematic comparative study of LGBTQ+ wings across various countries, including Sweden, Spain, Australia and the Netherlands. It combines explorative interviews with executive wing members with a large-scale survey of their grassroots members. Moreover, using an innovative visual conjoint experiment, we test what forms of representation LGBTQ+ members value most, and the trade-offs they are willing to make between descriptive representation (LGBTQ+ or other minority candidates) and substantive representation focused on LGBTQ+ policy issues. In short, this project advances our understanding of the experiences of LGBTQ+ members in political parties and what LGBTQ+ communities themselves view as meaningful political representation.