Chapter 2 Theories of Participation and High-Intensity ...

Chapter 2 Theories of Participationand High-Intensity Participationjin the previous Chapter we examinedthe changes to the Britishparty system in the last fty years since the APSA report on the responsi-ble party model. We have suggested that these changes have implicationsfor High-Intensity Participation in political parties. The picture is, how-ever, mixed both at the level of the electorate and in relation to partymembers. There is some evidence, on the one hand, of partisan dealign-ment but also, on the other, of party strength, as demonstrated by the out-come of the 2001 general election. In that election the three major par-ties took 94 percent of the vote in Great Britain (British Election Studywebsite, 2001). It is interesting to note that only one independent MPwas elected to the House of Commons in , while there isevidence of a postwar decline in the party membership, in the strength ofparty identi cation in the electorate, and in the share of the vote of thetwo major parties, Britain s political system is nonetheless still dominatedby parties.

political ef‹cacy (272), and, ‹nally, the recruitment networks aspect is de‹ned as “requests for participation that come to individuals at work, in church, or in organizations—especially those that come from friends, rel-

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