Australian Journal of Political Science

ISSN: 1036-1146 (Print) 1363-030X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cajp20

Evolving membership strategies in Australian political parties William Cross & Anika Gauja To cite this article: William Cross & Anika Gauja (2014) Evolving membership strategies in Australian political parties, Australian Journal of Political Science, 49:4, 611-625, DOI: 10.1080/10361146.2014.958979 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2014.958979

Published online: 21 Oct 2014.

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Australian Journal of Political Science, 2014 Vol. 49, No. 4, 611–625, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2014.958979

Evolving membership strategies in Australian political parties WILLIAM CROSS Carleton University

ANIKA GAUJA University of Sydney

Like parties elsewhere, the Australian parties have witnessed a decline in membership activism in recent years and some have suggested that near memberless parties may become the norm. Drawing on elite interviews, party documents and examination of recent organisational reforms, we argue that parties continue to need members and view their involvement as essential to achieving their objectives. In response to declining rates of activism parties have begun to experiment with different forms of membership, such as policy branches, and to expand the traditional notion of membership to include ‘supporters’. We show that membership is a flexible concept that is used by parties to fulfil their institutional functions and electoral objectives, and is defined in unique ways in each sphere of activity. We suggest that accounts of party decline relying on formal membership numbers may be inaccurate. Keywords: political parties; party members and functions; party activism; Australian politics

Introduction A significant body of research establishes a marked decline in both party membership numbers and in levels of intra-party activism (Scarrow and Gezgor 2010; van Biezen, Mair, and Poguntke 2012; Whiteley 2011). Among them, Katz and Mair’s (1995) cartel party thesis highlights a changing organisational dynamic within parties as they have become more dependent on the state, with individual members increasingly marginalised and less important to a party’s success. And, according to van Biezen and Poguntke, any efforts expended by parties to achieve and sustain large membership organisations ‘served to validate the legitimising myth of party democracy rather William Cross is Professor and Bell Chair in Parliamentary Democracy in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Anika Gauja is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Funding for this research was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Australian Research Council and the University of Sydney International Research Collaboration Scheme. © 2014 Australian Political Studies Association

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than remain true vehicles of linkage between party elites and society at large’ (2014: 205). Australia’s political parties have been no exception to this trend. In recent decades, membership numbers have declined and those who do belong are ageing and less active than in earlier periods. Yet, the formal roles of parties in Australian representative democracy have remained the same, and like political parties elsewhere, there are few signs of deterioration in their procedural functions, such as selecting candidates and contesting election campaigns (van Biezen 2014: 3). Engaging with a growing literature that considers membership and party organisational decline as something of a fait accompli, in this article, we examine the contemporary attitudes and approaches of Australia’s major political parties, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party, towards the utility and function of party membership. We choose to focus exclusively on the major parties as the problem of membership decline is arguably a more fundamental and pressing problem for these once ‘mass party’ organisations. The Greens, in contrast, have experienced membership growth in the last decade (Jackson 2012: 599). The frame of analysis that we present, however, can be applied to all political parties. Adopting a top-down perspective, we start from the assumption that ‘membership’ is a concept constructed by parties and one that can be used and manipulated (in terms of who can be a member and the rights/duties ascribed to members) as a tool to achieve a party’s goals. We do this by examining party documents, drawing upon interviews with party elites and ethnographic observations at party meetings and conferences, in order to consider how the parties construct membership and empower members and supporters in key areas of party life. The Australian parties have taken different approaches to the empowerment of members in recent years, and because of this we are able to identify different conceptions of membership and their underlying rationale. We find that despite structural and ideological differences, for both the ALP and the Liberals, the perceived importance of having a membership organisation is similar: it lies in the roles members play as a link between the parliamentary party and local voters as participants in policy development, as volunteers and funders of successful electoral campaigns, and as an asset in the recruitment and selection of personnel. We show that in response to declining and less active memberships, these parties have responded with a series of membership innovations, for example: online policy forums, policy rather than geographic membership branches, community organising techniques for campaigning, experiments with the inclusion of supporters in the selection of parliamentary candidates and, in the ALP, allowing members to vote in leadership contests. We argue that these experiments present something of a balancing exercise for parties between preserving the value of party membership and maintaining the authority of the party ‘centre’, while also engaging interested and active citizens outside the party in a more formalised way. Within this balance, party membership should be viewed as a dynamic and flexible concept that has different meanings in different functional contexts. Previous studies have examined the ‘role’ of Australian party members in specific contexts – candidate selection (Cross and Gauja 2014) and policy development (Gauja 2013), for example – but they do not consider the relationship between members’ activity in different spheres, and how this contributes to a broader picture of what membership means. This article advances debate by disaggregating the analysis of membership into three discrete spheres of party activity (policy development, contesting elections and personnel selection) and treating it

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as a constructed concept, in order to show that members still matter to Australian political parties. Because their objectives are somewhat different in each functional area, membership is defined and used in unique ways in each sphere of party activity. The challenges confronting the principal Australian parties are similar to those in the remainder of the western, democratic world, which makes them an interesting case study of the changing nature of membership and the character of the organisational response. Wither party membership The value of party membership is usually conceptualised in the scholarly literature in terms of the core functions of political parties. Members are seen as a committed group of activists that promulgate an ideology, a source of outreach and policy innovation, as financial support or a campaigning resource, and as a source of legitimacy and social linkage (Scarrow 1996: 42–6; Ware 1996: 63–4). Despite the perceived benefits that members bring to parties, the standard argument is that parties have evolved from the mass model, in which grassroots members were the foundation of the party, through several other organisational iterations – cadre, electoral professional, cartel and franchise models – where members have become increasingly marginalised. Among the most often cited contributing factors are a centralisation of party decision-making among the elite, an increased reliance on modern techniques of mass and targeted communications (including online campaigns), the associated professionals required to execute these electoral strategies, and an increased reliance on public funding from the state (Farrell 2006; Katz and Mair 1995; Panebianco 1988). Arguably, all of these transformations weaken the linkages between a party’s supporters on the ground and its central offices and operations (Scarrow 2000). Some observers have begun to question whether parties even want members. As parties arguably become less reliant on members for their electoral and fundraising capacity, Young (2013) argues that they may also view an active membership as a liability in pursuit of their electoral objectives (Scarrow 1996: 40–1). Katz (2013: 63) takes a somewhat contrarian view suggesting that the decline in membership numbers may have little to do with the ways in which parties operate internally and may instead reflect broader societal changes that are completely exogenous to questions of party organisation. As a form of participation oriented towards ‘citizen duty’ and institutionalised politics, party membership may no longer meet changing social preferences for more individualised and ad hoc political engagement (Bang 2003; Bennett 2008; Dalton 2008). One result of these developments may be the emergence of ‘memberless’ parties. These tend to be centred on a strong, charismatic leader and include the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders, early iterations of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and, in Australia, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Other parties have moved in what seems to be the opposite direction of making membership easily accessible and lowering barriers to participation to the point where they are essentially nonexistent. This is most obvious in parties that have broadened their categories of affiliation in what Scarrow (2014) refers to as a multispeed model of organisation, expanded rights to participation in internal decision-making to ‘supporters’ as well as members (Gauja 2013: 98–111); and, when restricting participation to members, eliminated any real conditions to membership so that it is more self-proclaimed

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than a benefit bestowed by the party. Some have argued, however, that the result of making membership extremely open and accessible (or removing it altogether as a condition of intra-party participation) is that it becomes transitory and highly fragmented (Kenig and Rahat 2014). Rather than having an engaged, semi-permanent membership that is equipped with institutional opportunities to hold leaders to account, large numbers of casual supporters are invited to participate, with the result that they are more easily led by the party elite and not inclined to check the latter’s activities on an ongoing basis (Mair 1994). We are left then with suggestions that parties may not need members to accomplish their primary electoral goals, that in many cases they may find engaged members to be an obstacle to achieving these, and that they find themselves situated in communities in which broader societal dynamics make membership less appealing. Most parties and their leaders, however, continue to talk about the need for an engaged membership. Using the example of the principal Australian parties, we argue that parties believe they require an engaged membership to be successful and that they are adapting norms of membership in response to the changing contextual challenges outlined above. The Australian case Both the ALP and Liberals are formally membership organisations, but membership rates have declined for decades. In addition, levels of activism have decreased, members are generally dispirited and those who do belong tend to be older and generally unrepresentative of Australian society. As a Liberal Party report noted, ‘our membership is ageing and declining … our branches are falling in number; many do not meet regularly’ (Liberal Party 2008: 1). Similarly, an ALP study concluded that ‘membership has continued to fall … the Labor Party now faces a crisis in membership’, that the membership is ageing and that ‘the Party also faces a decline in participation. Members feel alienated and disenfranchised’ (ALP 2011: 9, 11). Since the 1960s, aggregate membership has fallen from 4 per cent of the electorate (McAllister 2002: 389–91) to less than 1 per cent (Sawer, Abjorensen, and Larkin 2009: 134–5). The Liberals’ membership has fallen from 156,000 in the 1940s to 78,000 today (Liberal Party 2014). The ALP has suffered the greatest decline in members, from approximately 370,000 in the 1940s to 44,000 in 2014, and a loss of over 100 branches in New South Wales between 1999 and 2009 (Cavalier 2010: 187–9; Shorten 2014). Since the early 1990s, trade union membership – traditionally an important element of the ALP’s mass membership organisation – has declined by almost half, accompanied by a distinct shift in rhetoric selectively emphasising individual, rather than collective, membership (ABS 2012).1 Regardless of questions about the utility of members, the Australian parties remain at least outwardly committed to being membership organisations. Their memberships may be in long-term decline, but the parties continue both to bemoan this situation and to attempt to increase their numbers. A prime example was the emphasis given to this issue by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. After assuming the ALP 1

Traditionally, union membership has been a requirement for joining the ALP, although branches are now being urged to repeal these rules (Shorten 2014). At the organisational level (as distinct from the individual level), unions are able to affiliate to the party and constitute 50 per cent of voting delegates at party conferences (Bramble and Kuhn 2009; Cook 2012).

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leadership, Gillard committed to dramatically increasing membership numbers. In a speech to the December 2011 National Conference, she talked about the need for Labor to be ‘a Party of members’ and championed ‘a recruiting challenge’ of 8000 new members (Gillard 2011). During her many trips to the conference podium, Gillard repeatedly emphasised the need to revitalise and expand the Party’s membership. In the face of a widely reported decline to just below 32,000 at the time, this was a significant call to increase membership by 25 per cent. Beyond simply growing the membership roll, Gillard spoke about the need to empower members, by providing them with ‘more opportunities to have a say and a direct vote in important decisions’ (Gillard 2011). The current leader, Bill Shorten, has also emphasised the push to increase ALP membership. In March 2014, Shorten launched an ambitious plan to double the ALP’s 44,000 members by giving those who donate to the party the ability to ‘opt in’ to gain internal voting rights (Kenny 2014). Addressing the party’s National Policy Forum (NPF), he argued that ‘membership processes need to match the reality of the modern world’, that union membership should no longer be a requirement for party membership, that donors needed to be embraced, and that the 233,000 people on party email lists in 2013 needed to be placed on membership rolls (Shorten 2014). Recent reports issued by party review committees in both parties also focus on this issue. It is worth revisiting the findings and recommendations of several of these, including the post-2010 federal election organisational reviews (authored by Peter Reith for the Liberals and by Bracks, Faulkner and Carr for Labor). In addition, we examine the 2002 ALP organisational report issued by Bob Hawke and Neville Wran and the 2008 report of the Liberal’s Victorian Division’s Party Futures Committee. All of these reports, written by senior party officials, call for an increase both in the number of members and in the roles ascribed to them. Examining these documents gives us a sense of why the parties think a decline in membership and activism is problematic, and accordingly what advantages they perceive are offered from a large, engaged membership. A section of the 2008 Liberal Party of Victoria report entitled ‘The Party needs members’ nicely summarises the arguments found in all of these documents: It is from the membership that we draw our candidates and Members of Parliament, our key campaigners, our organisational leaders, those to whom we look for ongoing fundraising, our understanding of the communities the Party seeks to represent, and many of the policy ideas that will address their major concerns. (Liberal Party 2008: 1)

These sentiments are consistent with those heard in formal interviews with party officials for this research.2 It is also important to note that these documents are not generally written for public consumption. Rather, they are internal documents that 2

Interviews were conducted with nine party officials in December 2011 and July 2013. All interview subjects held senior positions with either the ALP or the Liberal Party at the state or national level. Interviews were conducted in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. Interview subjects were promised anonymity and thus are not named. Those interviewed were asked to expand on material found in party documents, to describe new initiatives relating to party membership and generally about the relationship between party supporters on the ground and the party’s central elites. For the most part, party officials

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sometimes are only publicly released after a lengthy period and sometimes never at all. Thus, if the parties’ real objective is simply to appear democratic and to present a public face of desiring stronger engagement with civil society, they are not likely vehicles for such ‘propaganda’. Our argument is that these claims are not simply manifestations of an attempt to ‘appear’ more democratic and inclusive but rather reflect a genuine view by the parties that an active and engaged membership is necessary for them to achieve their functional objectives. In the following section, we briefly discuss each of the key activities the parties identify as in jeopardy as a result of a declining membership and then examine more fully how they currently deal with members and supporters in each of these core functions. Using examples of contemporary innovations in each of the parties, we articulate how membership is defined in functional terms in different spheres of party activity. This analysis gives us a more comprehensive picture of how the parties conceive of, and construct, membership.

Linking the parliamentary party to local voters and policy development One of the recurring themes in party reports is that members provide an important link between the parliamentary party and their voters. Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr write that ‘our local level organisation provides us with the eyes and ears to listen to the concerns of everyday Australians’ (2010: 9). The ALP’s Right, in its factional response, agreed that ‘it is members who provide Labor with its most fundamental connection to the community’ (ALP 2011: 15). The 2010 Liberal Party Report came to a similar conclusion, arguing that: ‘the Parliamentary Party needs to hear what members say because the views of a broadly based membership reflect public opinion. It can help MPs [members of parliament] keep in touch with real people rather than just the latest poll’ (Reith 2011: 12). One Labor MP recounted to us how he was dependent upon his branches’ activists to be his ‘eyes and ears in the community’ and that he relied on them to let him know what issues were ‘percolating’ locally. Both parties largely protect the policy independence of their parliamentary groups, but they acknowledge that civil society, preferably through a representative and engaged membership, must be part of this process if their manifestos are to resonate with voters. The Victorian Liberal Party’s Report found that ‘most existing members of the Party are dissatisfied with their opportunity to contribute to policy discussions in the Party’ (2008: 3), and concluded that ‘it is also vital to the policy work that the membership be broadly based so as to enhance the credibility of membership views and opinion on policy’ (2008: 28). This sentiment was echoed in the ALP’s report as Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr argue for branch members’ involvement in policy formation in order to ‘find new ideas and policy innovation which should form part of Labor’s policy development process’ (2010: 19). The lack of membership involvement in policy development is seen as a problem for both major parties, but the formal structures in place to facilitate this participation are markedly different. Liberal Party members may be seen as a source of public opinion, but their formal role in policy development is far more limited (Liberal Party 2014). In contrast, the formal role of members in the ALP is to make party told remarkably similar stories and these have helped to inform our analysis throughout. Where a subject used a particularly illuminating phrase or made a unique point, this is noted in the text.

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policy through a system of delegate democracy culminating in the National Conference. Irrespective of these traditions, questions have been raised within both parties as to whether better policy initiatives may in fact come from a more inclusive process. In his 2011 review, Reith argued that policy-making in the Liberal parliamentary party was an area that needed to be strengthened. He noted that a constitutional clause calling on parliamentarians to consult with party groups (including Divisions, backbench committees and standing committees such as the Women’s Committee) had been routinely ignored (Reith 2011: 12). The ALP has gone further in addressing its own concerns with the policy-making process, by undertaking organisational reforms that grant new participatory opportunities to members. Acknowledging some of the problems inherent in using the party conference as the primary vehicle for members to formulate policy, the ALP established the NPF in 2011. At its second meeting in March 2014, Labor leader Shorten described the NPF as: ... proof of our determination to listen and engage with our members... For more than 120 years, Labor has relied on party members to provide the on-the-ground support for our parliamentary candidates. We have also looked to them for policy inspiration and reform... Today’s event continues that tradition. It sends the clear message that developing policy is the work of all of us. (Shorten 2014: n.p.)

In this forum, members participate according to a model of representative, rather than direct participation. Of a total of 69 representatives, roughly one-third of the NPF is elected by the rank-and-file, whereas the remainder comprises union and parliamentary representatives in similar proportions (Gauja 2013: 62–3). The voice of the membership is brought together with policy ‘experts’ and outside interests, including economists, academics, businesses and union leaders through a series of roundtable discussions and policy workshops (Macklin 2014). The ALP is keen to facilitate member involvement in policy development, but it is not prepared to limit this process to members. In addition to the ‘conversation’ between party and non-party actors that the NPF encourages, the ALP has also tried to systematically involve party supporters in online policy deliberations known as ‘Think Tanks’ (Gauja 2013). The Liberal Party in Victoria has implemented a similar process, with 19 policy forums (including several that are online) operating to give the rank-and-file a more meaningful say in policy development, while maintaining the autonomy of the parliamentary party, as well as engaging supporters who are not party members in this process. A senior party official described this as ‘a tough challenge’. In this sense, the ‘legitimacy’ benefit is not based on having a large membership alone, but in structures that facilitate member involvement, combined with incorporating the views of supporters and stakeholders. Another initiative designed to broaden the concept of membership away from geographically based branches has been the creation in the ALP of issue branches. Known as policy action caucuses, these branches receive financial support and resources from the party in the same way as a geographic local branch, and are entitled to convene meetings, policy forums and put policy motions to conference (ALP 2011: 12–3). According to a New South Wales (NSW) Labor organiser, issue branches are seen as a way of attracting younger people and those drawn to the party for policy reasons as opposed to wanting to engage in a local branch. In NSW, members have

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the option of joining a Central Policy Branch rather than a local branch, which is advertised as offering ‘dynamic and robust policy discussions’, featuring ‘guest speakers, interesting themes and lively question and answer sessions’. Policy branches seek to capitalise on the relative success of issue-based groups within the party, such as Rainbow Labor and Labor for Refugees, which have been successful in not only changing party policy, but also in engaging interested members within the policy process. ALP parliamentarian Sharpe describes the success of Rainbow Labor as contingent on several factors: an outcomes-focused organising model, engagement with extra-party groups to build community support, no monthly meetings but rather a Facebook page to engage with members, and an acceptance that membership of the group is fluid and people drop in and out (Sharpe 2013). Compared with the traditional role of members in policy development, these groups combine both policy and campaigning functions. In Sharpe’s view, the experiences of Rainbow Labor create a model of modern membership that successfully fits within existing party structures while reaching beyond traditional notions of formal, branch-based members. Waging successful election campaigns In interviews conducted for this project, when party officials – administrators and parliamentarians alike – were asked what they wanted from their members they most often replied that they were needed as boots on the ground and as financial contributors for election campaigns. This may be somewhat surprising given that many campaign observers have suggested that increased reliance on the Internet, political professionals and targeted media campaigns have decreased the importance of local, volunteer-intensive campaigning. The party professionals we interviewed generally agree with scholars who have argued that local canvassing activities still play an important role in voter mobilisation, and perhaps persuasion (Carty and Eagles 2005; Fisher and Denver 2008; Nielsen 2012). This sentiment is also reiterated in party reports. For example, the Victorian Liberals’ report concluded that ‘our current weaknesses are increasingly affecting our ability to fight winning election campaigns’ (Liberal Party of Australia (Victorian Division) 2008: 1). Similarly, the Reith report found that ‘a lack of volunteers on the ground in the campaign and beforehand is a common complaint’ (2011: 28). Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr found the same phenomenon commenting that ‘a strong, well organised branch membership undoubtedly contributes to electoral success’ (2010: 14) and that ‘today, the Labor Party struggles to staff polling booths, even in held seats’ (2010: 12). This interest in increasing and mobilising memberships to assist in campaigning speaks to the utility of members as campaign ‘foot soldiers’. In the campaigning context, however, the role of members as ambassadors and disseminators of the party message goes much deeper than this. Inspired by the success of the Obama model of campaign organising in the USA, the ALP has placed a renewed emphasis on the integrating role of party members: Every member of the Labor Party is a voice for our cause. Their persuasive power lies in the fact that they’re not some talking-head on TV, they’re a family member, a friend, a colleague, a team-mate, a fellow commuter ... The voice of the members, the advocacy of members is infinitely more powerful than that of any politician. (Shorten 2014: n.p.)

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The party has invested significant resources in training members in a way of organising that combines one-on-one contact with voters with the collection of data on potential supporters and the more sophisticated use of campaigning databases. Rather than promulgating party ideology, this direct contact between member and voter/supporter relies on the construction of personalised narratives through the use of stories to forge connections and prompt action. Party activists are now trained through forums such as the Chifley Research Centre Progressive Young Leaders Program in the ‘art of storytelling’ under the belief that ‘persuasion conversations’ are ‘most effective when held by members of local communities’ (Murnain 2013). In this model of campaign organising, the notion of membership has a more fluid and expansive functional meaning. Those enlisted as members constitute an obvious source of personnel for these programs, but the shortage of active members meant that in the 2013 election, for example, the ALP had to look to others sympathetic to the party for support through ‘neighbourhood teams’, set up by Labor members but committed to enlisting help also from those outside the party (Murnain 2013). Community organiser and former staffer Tim Richardson reported that in 84 days his team secured the involvement of 250 people who were not previously part of the Labor movement in the campaign for the federal seat of Isaacs. For Richardson, the most important goal of community organising was not to transition ALP supporters to members, but straight from supporters to activists (Richardson 2013). Analysing the core function of campaigning, we see that members are called on to assist in campaigning, but formal membership is of secondary importance to action. Reflecting the experience of political parties in the UK (Fisher, Fieldhouse, and Cutts 2014), members constitute a ‘go to’ group, but donors, volunteers and ambassadors are just as valuable to Australian political parties. A large membership base, however, provides a useful starting point in the search for campaign volunteers. Personnel selection The selection of candidates to stand in general elections is at the core of what parties do and is what separates them from other advocacy organisations. Our data suggest that the parties view a vibrant membership as helpful both in providing a large pool of potential candidates, who are both known to the party and socialised politically within it, and also as a group to consult in the selection of candidates to ensure that they have broad support at the electorate level. In listing the reasons why the party needs members, the Victorian Liberals’ Report begins with ‘it is from the membership that we draw our candidates and Members of Parliament’ (2008: 1); and, several party officials indicated that strong local branches play a key role in developing potential candidates and in their identification come election time. The Reith Report also cites former Liberal leader John Howard as arguing that a large membership that is engaged in the candidate selection process results in better candidates, as Howard bemoaned that ‘reduced and less representative membership has made political parties more susceptible to internal group control of the candidate selection process’ (2011: 19). A recent examination of pre-selection methods in the Australian parties illustrates that authority is usually shared between local members and central party elites (Cross and Gauja 2014). This is often accomplished through a sharing of votes between the two levels. Traditionally, the parties have seen pre-selections as a way to attract

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members. As noted in the Victorian Liberals’ Renewal Report, ‘it is clear that having a say in the choosing [of] the individuals who will represent the Party in elections is one of the main reasons why people join the Party’ (2008: 32). Balanced against this, however, is concern that candidates will recruit large numbers of casual members for the sole purpose of supporting their candidacy for pre-selection. The party gains little from the presence of these new members as they have no ongoing commitment to the party and their membership is often transitory, ending once the pre-selection contest ends. This was often the case in the Australian parties in the last decades of the twentieth century. In contested pre-selections, candidates recruited large numbers of new members who pledged their support (Sawer, Abjorensen, and Larkin 2009: 138–9). Bitterness and animosity among long-time rank-and-file members was a frequent by-product of these contests, because these supporters saw their influence wane as their numbers were often overwhelmed by new recruits with no history in the party. The parties responded to these complaints by tightening the rules of membership eligibility for participation in pre-selection voting. Rules vary by state, but these typically include a length of membership requirement of up to 24 months and, in some, a requirement of having attended several local party meetings in the past year. This greatly reduced the number of members eligible to participate and has ultimately resulted in complaints of ‘branch stripping’. A common criticism is that the obstacles to participation are too high, resulting in too few party supporters being attracted to membership and a resulting small and unrepresentative pre-selection electorate. When we analyse these different approaches, we can see different visions of party membership at play. On the one hand, allowing virtually anyone recruited by the candidates to vote reflects a view that the more party members participating the better. The party benefits from membership dues from all participants, and candidate skills in recruiting and organising supporters are rewarded. Such a list also provides a potential pool of future donors and campaign volunteers. There is little concern in this conception for the quality of the members’ deliberation and decision-making. The alternative vision is one in which the party both rewards long-term and active members by restricting participation in pre-selections to this group and trusts that these committed members will make a ‘better’ choice. ‘Better’ in this context means that the deliberation process will include consideration of the party’s needs and be made by those both with a greater commitment to the party and a fuller understanding of what is required for a candidate to be both electorally successful and a quality MP. An alternative approach is for pre-selection by party primary (Gauja 2012; Orr 2011). At one extreme, these contests dispense with the requirement of party membership and instead allow any voter in an electorate to participate. The Reith report suggests that the Liberals trial several primaries as they ‘can mitigate the operation of factions, discourage branch stacking and importantly, promote active participation in the political process’ (2011: 22). Supporters also note that primaries can broaden local exposure of the chosen candidate and build momentum for the general election. In these cases, however, there are no special provisions made for party members, they are invited to participate along with all other voters, and all votes have equal weight. Given the low number of party members, their votes are almost certain to comprise a small minority of those cast. An intermediate approach invites participation of all interested voters while providing a privileged position for members. In this method, used in a few ALP trials and recommended in the Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr report, the vote is shared

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between party members and supporters in the local community. For example, in the ALP trials conducted in Sydney in March 2014 – termed ‘community pre-selections’ – members were allocated 50 per cent of the total vote while 50 per cent was reserved for community and trade union supporters. This approach brings together different incentives the Party has for different selectorates. Members are rewarded for their ongoing service, and their insider perspective of what constitutes a good party candidate is privileged, as they control half of the vote, even though in all likelihood they comprise a minority of those participating. Allowing supporters to participate opens up the process and eliminates obstacles to voting, such as membership fees and activism requirements. In this way, the party attracts a broader base of voters but does not give up ‘control’ over the pre-selection to casual supporters at the expense of more committed and dedicated members. The vote of each supporter almost certainly counts less than that of each member, but this reflects the Party’s preference to give more say in the pre-selection to members over other participants. Recent ALP community pre-selections conducted in two NSW electorates illustrate both how few party members participate and how their votes are more heavily weighted than are those of non-members. In the Newtown electorate, a member’s vote was worth more than five times that of a non-member: 241 party members voted along with 1345 non-members. In Campbelltown, a member’s vote was worth 38 times more: 28 members voted alongside 1061 non-members (Bramston 2014). Over the course of the past two decades, parties in many other parliamentary democracies expanded their leadership selectorates to include rank-and-file members, yet both the ALP and the Liberals resisted this movement (Cross and Blais 2012; Gauja 2014). Their principal justification for this was that the primary role of the leader is to lead the parliamentary party and thus s/he must have their confidence and accordingly should be chosen by them. Party officials also pointed to the relatively short three-year electoral cycle as a reason why they could not easily adopt the reforms implemented elsewhere (Cross and Blais 2012). Citing a desire by party members for direct participation in this important party decision and responding to growing concerns over internal leadership struggles within the parliamentary party, the ALP for the first time included members in its 2013 leadership contest. Shorten was selected leader on a ballot in which votes of party members and parliamentarians were each weighted to account for 50 per cent of the total. Some argued for a two-year membership requirement (similar to that often required for pre-selections), but the Party instead allowed all financial members as of the date of the past election (just weeks earlier) to participate. The rules allowed all members to vote but they did not provide an opportunity for candidates to recruit new supporters to the Party and did not permit the participation of supporters who were not current members. In this sense, voting eligibility was somewhat more restrictive than in ‘primary’ pre-selections, but less so than in those requiring relatively lengthy branch membership. Approximately 74 per cent of the eligible 44,000 party members voted. Interestingly, Shorten was the choice of only 4-in-10 members but was successful as a result of being favoured by almost two-thirds of his parliamentary colleagues. In both candidate and leadership selection (at least for the ALP), we see a willingness to involve party members in the process but an unwillingness to turn over full decision-making authority to them. In both parties, there is a sharing of authority between the rank-and-file and central party elites in candidate selection. There is

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movement to include non-members in the process through community primaries, but there is a privileged position for members through a weighting of votes. This reflects both a desire to maintain an incentive to membership, a privileging of the views of those who have been long-term members, and a desire to increase the numbers of supporters participating in party decision-making. Conclusion: Locating modern membership within traditional party functions Declining rates of membership and decreasing levels of intra-party activism have not escaped Australian political parties. Internal party reports acknowledge the seriousness of the trend, but continue to advocate for increasing membership engagement as the solution. This may be explained by parties’ reluctance to depart from the legitimising myth of intra-party democracy, but we argue that this prescription stems from more functional roots. Parties in Australian representative democracy continue to fulfil several traditional functions, and membership is a key tool that they can use in performing these functions. In short, some scholars argue that political parties no longer need or want members, but we find that the Australian parties believe they need engaged supporters in order to be successful. Our analysis has focused on the two major Australian political parties, yet our basic argument – that membership matters and should be seen as a tool to promote engagement in different spheres of party activity – travels across democracies and can be applied to other political parties. As Scarrow (2014) has shown, parties in many countries are experimenting with different types of membership. Rather than giving up on engaging supporters in their activities, parties are seeking new and different ways of attracting them. Parties in government may often become increasingly hierarchical, but after electoral defeat fingers are routinely pointed at organisational atrophy resulting in a dispirited, shrinking and disengaged grassroots, and attempts are regularly made to revitalise membership as a way of reinvigorating a party. Recent examples of this include New Zealand’s Labour Party, Canada’s Liberals, the UK Labour Party and Ireland’s Fianna Fail. Within Australia, evolving membership strategies similar to those described in this article can also be seen within other parties: the Nationals have previously experimented with primaries in candidate selection (Gauja 2012) and the Greens’ 2013 campaign for a Senate seat in the Australian Capital Territory drew heavily on candidate Simon Sheik’s prior experience campaigning with the progressive organisation GetUp! Drawing on party documents and interviews with party elites, we have presented a picture of what members mean to Australian parties and have illustrated how a flexible definition allows them to tailor it to meet their needs across different functions. In the arena of policy development and linkage, we see a shift from the formal dominance of the party conference and parliamentary group to policy forums and branches in response to party elites’ request for members to provide a connection to the community as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the party organisation, and an alternate source of public opinion for the parliamentary party to draw upon. The formal role of party members is markedly different between the parties, but there is evidence of some convergence, with the ALP moving to downgrade the dominance of the unions, and the Liberals seeking to expand policy input beyond the parliamentary party. A more diverse notion of what it means to be a party member is evident in the establishment of policy branches and in the experience of successful intra-party advocacy groups, such as Rainbow Labor. In this area, parties are also responding to members’

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expressed dissatisfaction with the role they play and to the presence of competitor groups such as advocacy organisations. The parties seek more direct methods of rank-and-file participation in policy-making, yet they do so with the constraint of preserving the sovereignty of the parliamentary party in this field. Australian parties acknowledge the benefits of local and personalised campaigning (McAllister 2013), but formal party membership is of least importance in the performance of this function. Both parties bemoan a recent lack of campaign foot soldiers which, while suggesting that emphasis on technologically sophisticated campaigning may be overstated, is not reliant on members for a fix. Rather, engagement of supporters, who may simply be friends or associates of the candidate rather than strong party adherents, may be sufficient for these purposes. The value of a vibrant membership may be the presence of a potential pool of volunteers for a candidate to draw on, but these also may be interchangeable with his or her own supporters. In terms of candidate selection, we see the parties constantly tinkering with the ways in which their members are involved. There is a long accepted norm that the rank-and-file should play a role in pre-selections, yet there is real reluctance to grant them full authority. Instead, we see the parties trying to balance the influence of members with others. On the one hand, central party elites are unwilling to give up authority, and thus the most common methods involve power-sharing between an electorate association’s members and the party’s central office. On the other hand, as a reflection of the dwindling number of members, and their often being unrepresentative of the parties’ general election supporters, there is growing interest in allowing non-member, local supporters to participate. The parties’ interest in attracting new activists, in rewarding long-term members and preserving influence for the centre are often achieved through complicated processes that seek to share influence among these three groups. In large part, these perceived benefits confirm the advantages of maintaining a membership organisation that was identified in the scholarly literature almost two decades ago. In this sense, membership still matters to political parties. Yet, analysing the role played by members reveals a more fluid and evolving model of engagement, which maintains the pre-eminence of financial party membership, but also seeks to integrate non-members and non-geographic members into intra-party decisionmaking. The implications of these recent developments are not yet clear. On the one hand, they could be seen as an effective response to the increasing reluctance of many supporters to formally join the party. NSW President Michael Lee’s assertion at the 2014 ALP State Conference that membership had grown by 5000 as a result of party reforms would support this view (Lee 2014). On the other hand, a more open and inclusive membership might create a different set of issues for the party, as the membership becomes more transitory and prone to fragmentation. Inevitably, there is also a co-ordination challenge. The Australian parties clearly want members and provide them with privileged positions in terms of personnel selection and participation in intra-party policy-making. In part, they do this because they believe their membership helps them perform these functions better. Meaningful influence in these areas also serves as an incentive to membership and the parties believe that having a large, representative membership is advantageous in their quest for electoral success. Yet, they are not willing to cede full authority in any area to the rank-and-file and thus what ensues is a constant tension between the two levels for influence. The centre needs members to fulfil many of the tasks

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that are required for it to win elections, yet it also knows that if it gives away too much authority it risks being captive to the more ideologically extreme elements among its supporters who are likely to be the most active (as was the case with UK Labour in the 1970s and 1980s). Formal party membership may be in decline, but the way in which it is used by political parties for different purposes, suggests that membership still matters for parties, and that accounts of party decline which rely on formal membership alone are likely exaggerated.

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