Introduction
It has often been lamented that there is a national-level bias in Canadian party politics research, leading some scholars to call for more academic attention to be devoted to party politics at the constituency level (see, for example, Cross, Reference Cross2016).Footnote 1 An increasingly vibrant constituency-based parties research agenda has emerged in recent years and there is now a growing literature that tackles questions related to this very issue. This includes analyses of candidate recruitment (Tolley, Reference Tolley2019; Pruysers and Cross, Reference Pruysers and Cross2016; Albaugh, Reference Albaugh2022), nomination dynamics (Everitt and Tremblay, Reference Everitt and Tremblay2023; Lapointe et al. Reference Lapointe, Ferland and Turgeon2024), local candidate characteristics (Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Tolley, Thomas and Bodet2021; Sevi, Reference Sevi2021), constituency campaigning (Robbins-Kanter, Reference Robbins-Kanter2022; Marland and Giasson, Reference Marland and Giasson2022), local party financing and spending (Currie-Wood and Pruysers, Reference Currie-Wood and Pruysers2023; Currie-Wood, Reference Currie-Wood2020; Cross et al., Reference Cross, Currie-Wood and Pruysers2020), candidate/district effects in election outcomes (Bodet et al., Reference Bodet, Bouchard, Thomas and Tessier2022; Stevens et al., Reference Stevens, Islam, de Geus, Goldberg, McAndrews, Mierke-Zatwarnicki, Loewen and Rubenson2019; Sevi et al., Reference Sevi, Aviña and Blais2022), multilevel integration between federal and provincial party associations (Pruysers, Reference Pruysers2018), and constituency representation/service (Marland and Snagovsky, Reference Marland and Snagovsky2023; Koop et al., Reference Koop, Bastedo and Blidook2018)—just to name a few. While a renewed focus on constituency-level politics is undeniable, a number of important questions remain unanswered.
One such gap concerns the motivation to join an electoral district association's (EDA) executive. The comparative, and to a lesser extent Canadian, party literature has explored why individuals join political parties as members (Young and Cross, Reference Young and Cross2002a; Whiteley and Seyd, Reference Whiteley and Seyd1996; Scarrow, Reference Scarrow2015; van Haute and Gauja, Reference van Haute and Gauja2015). This has been, at least in part, due to an ongoing concern regarding the decline of parties. In the context of declining membership and activism (van Biezen et al., Reference van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke2012), scholars have been interested in knowing why some take the leap and join a party. Virtually no work, by contrast, has considered incentives to join other party positions, especially at the constituency level. Pruysers (Reference Pruysers2016: 315), for example, suggests that “we know very little about constituency associations or the individuals who populate them.” A similar claim is made by Koop (Reference Koop2010: 894) who writes that “political scientists know very little about constituency association executives” in general. This is somewhat surprising given the consequential role—both formal and informal—that party EDAs and their presidents have been known to play in intra-party politics. Under Canada's single member plurality electoral system, constituency associations serve as a fundamental building block of democratic life (Carty, Reference Carty1991). They are the organizational apparatus that allow national political parties to have a formal and organized presence in each of the country's electoral districts. By organizing in an inherently grassroots way, local party associations connect the broader party organization, and the state when the party is in office, to civil society (Clark, Reference Clark2004); offer ordinary members a crucial venue to participate in party politics in their local communities (Sayers, Reference Sayers1999); provide public legitimacy to the party, especially when the local organization is healthy and vibrant (Koop, Reference Koop2011); and mobilize and integrate members of the electorate into democratic politics (Denver and Hands, Reference David and Hands1997). Moreover, the stratarchical nature of Canadian party politics that provides local associations with considerable agency over local affairs (Carty, Reference Carty2004; Cross and Young, Reference Cross and Young2011) means that EDA presidents and their executives perform a number of essential party tasks: EDAs recruit candidates for nomination (Cheng and Tavits, Reference Cheng and Tavits2011; Tolley, Reference Tolley2019; Cross and Pruysers, Reference Cross, Katz and Pruysers2019); aid in the organization and execution of local constituency campaigns during elections (Sayers, Reference Sayers1999; Carty and Eagles, Reference Carty and Eagles2005); attend party conferences, often as automatic delegates (Cross et al., Reference Cross, Pruysers and Currie-Wood2022); and engage in inter-election maintenance activities like recruiting new members, organizing social events and so forth (Koop, Reference Koop2012; Pruysers, Reference Pruysers2016; Carty, Reference Carty1991). As individuals who play an important, albeit understudied, role within Canadian party politics, understanding the motivation to join a local EDA and serve on its executive is important as it likely has downstream consequences for the kinds of decisions and activities that the association engages in.
Why do some individuals join their local EDA executive and take on a leadership role within their local party organization? This article addresses this and considers three interrelated questions. First, what are the incentives to EDA executive membership? Second, what are the individual differences in these incentives/motivations? Third, and finally, do initial motivations to join an EDA influence the subsequent character and activities of that EDA? To answer these questions, this article makes use of data from a survey of constituency association presidents in Canada. Drawing on Clark and Wilson's (Reference Clark and Wilson1961) framework of incentives to membership, results reveal that material and social incentives play only a minor role in the decision to join a local party executive. Instead, policy related goals and the ability to participate in the selection of a local candidate are far more relevant for most individuals who take on local leadership positions within an EDA. At the same time, however, the analysis does reveal considerable variation among individuals (younger individuals, for example, are more motivated by material incentives than older ones). Although causality cannot be determined, the data also provide some preliminary evidence to suggest that the original reason for joining an EDA may be related to the kinds of activities that the EDA engages in afterwards. For example, constituency associations whose president was initially motivated by solidary incentives tend to host significantly more social events throughout the year compared to those who were motivated by other incentives. Overall, then, the results provide new insight into the incentives to membership literature by examining an understudied cohort of party actors: constituency association presidents.
Party Members, EDAs and Incentives
Much has been written about the apparent “decline of parties” in recent decades (Dalton and Wattenberg, Reference Dalton and Wattenberg2000; Mair, Reference Mair2013; Rahat and Kenig, Reference Rahat and Kenig2018). Declining rates of membership and activism (van Biezen et al., Reference van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke2012; van Haute and Gauja, Reference van Haute and Gauja2015; Scarrow and Gezgor, Reference Scarrow and Gezgor2010), waning levels of partisanship and party identification (Dalton and Wattenberg, Reference Dalton and Wattenberg2000; Clarke and Stewart, Reference Clarke and Stewart1998; Garzia et al., Reference Garzia, da Silva and De Angelis2021; Klar and Krupnikov, Reference Klar and Krupnikov2016), and a growing distrust and dissatisfaction towards political parties in general (Dalton and Weldon, Reference Dalton and Weldon2005; Bergbower and Allen, Reference Bergbower and Allen2021) are increasingly common features of contemporary party and electoral politics. In this context it is important to understand why individuals join political parties, but also why some take on additional leadership roles within their local, grassroots, party organizations.
The study of group membership and activism has a long history. Building on the work of Olson (Reference Olson1965), for instance, a large body of research has explored why individuals join political parties (Ammassari, Reference Ammassari2023; Gomez et al., Reference Gomez, Ramiro, Morales and Aja2021; Young and Cross, Reference Young and Cross2002a; Heidar and Kosiara-Pedersen, Reference Heidar, Kosiara-Pedersen, Demker, Heidar and Kosiara-Pedersen2020; Power and Dommett, Reference Power and Dommett2020; Whiteley and Seyd, Reference Whiteley and Seyd1996; Scarrow, Reference Scarrow2015; van Haute and Gauja, Reference van Haute and Gauja2015; McCulloch, Reference McCulloch1990; Achury et al., Reference Achury, Scarrow, Kosiara-Pedersen and Van Haute2020). As parties often provide collective benefits, they are said to face an inherent collective action problem: How can the organization convince individuals to join, pay dues and volunteer their limited time and energy, when the primary benefits of party membership are collective in nature? To address the collective action problem of free-riders, political parties offer their members selective incentives—benefits that are generally not offered to non-members. Clark and Wilson's (Reference Clark and Wilson1961) typology of incentives to membership is perhaps the most well-known articulation of such benefits/incentives. Here the authors introduce a tripartite typology of material incentives, solidary incentives and purposive incentives.
Material incentives offer party members with personal, often tangible, rewards for their membership.Footnote 2 As Young and Cross (Reference Young and Cross2002a: 549) note, these material rewards can “range from patronage appointments or government contracts to more general inducements like career advancement.” Common examples of material incentives include learning new skills, networking and job opportunities. Solidary incentives, by contrast, are more intangible and offer members the ability to socialize with like-minded individuals and spend time with co-partisans. Clark and Wilson (Reference Clark and Wilson1961: 134–35) note that solidary incentives include rewards such as “socializing, congeniality, the sense of group membership and identification, the status resulting from membership, fun and conviviality, the maintenance of social distinctions, and so on.” Examples of solidary incentives include party-sponsored BBQs, pub nights and other social events. Finally, purposive incentives allow members to aid in the party's pursuit of collective policy goals. Purposive incentives differ from solidary incentives insofar as the rewards are derived from seeing the party's goals realized “rather than from the simple act of associating” (Clark and Wilson, Reference Clark and Wilson1961: 135).
While others have adapted the Clark and Wilson model, making changes around the margins, the incentives model remains among the most common frameworks for understanding why individuals join political parties. Seyd and Whiteley (Reference Seyd and Whiteley1992), for example, offer a similar model, the general incentives model (GIM). This framework outlines a number of incentives that parties offer to prospective members. This includes selective incentives (that is, material reward), collective incentives (that is, collective policy outcomes) and affective incentives (that is, group solidarity and connections). Likewise, Young and Cross (Reference Young and Cross2002a) add to the standard incentives of material, solidary and purposive by including a desire to influence the outcome of a candidate nomination or leadership election. As politics becomes increasingly personalized (Cross et al., Reference Cross2018; Rahat and Kenig, Reference Rahat and Kenig2018), it has been argued that the opportunity to participate in the selection of party personnel may be an important selective incentive that parties are able to offer those who join (Faucher, Reference Faucher2015).
The importance of the kinds of benefits or incentives that Clark and Wilson (Reference Clark and Wilson1961) identified have been largely confirmed in subsequent research (Young and Cross, Reference Young and Cross2002a; Poletti et al., Reference Poletti, Webb and Bale2019; Cross et al., Reference Cross, Pruysers and Currie-Wood2022; Seyd and Whiteley, Reference Seyd and Whiteley1992; Whiteley and Seyd, Reference Whiteley and Seyd1998). In general, the literature has found that material incentives, while important in previous decades, have become less important to prospective party members over time (especially as patronage and clientelism decline and professionalization increases) while other incentives, primarily purposive ones, have become more important. The influence of various incentives, however, have not just changed over time. They are also more or less important for different cohorts of individuals. A number of studies, for instance, have revealed that material and career-related incentives, which are less important overall, tend to be more relevant for younger individuals (Bruter and Harrison Reference Bruter and Harrison2009; Weber, Reference Weber2020; Fjellman and Sundström, Reference Fjellman and Sundström2021) as well as more active and committed activists (Seyd and Whiteley, Reference Seyd and Whiteley1992).Footnote 3
Recent research has extended the question of why members join political parties and has begun to consider why only some supporters of a party take the leap and become members. In other words, why do some people join the party while other individuals, who support the party nonetheless, fail to formalize their affiliation as party membersFootnote 4 (Poletti et al., Reference Poletti, Webb and Bale2019; Gomez et al., Reference Gomez, Ramiro, Morales and Aja2021)? Such questions are important as recent research reveals that members do considerably more labour-intensive work during elections than supporters (Webb et al., Reference Webb, Poletti and Bale2017). While the literature has concerned itself with party members, and now supporters, far less attention has been devoted to other positions within the party beyond membership. In many national contexts, political parties maintain decentralized, and local, organizations/branches at the district level (Clark, Reference Clark2004). Incentives to join a local party association's executive team—to take on a leadership role within the grassroots party organization—have not been well-explored in the Canadian or comparative party literature.
In the Canadian case, these local party branches are termed “constituency associations,” “riding associations” or “electoral district associations” (EDAs). Local party associations are made up of an executive team—a small group of “local activists who provide leadership for constituency associations and conduct their month-to-month business” (Koop, Reference Koop2010: 896). EDAs are led by a local party president and typically include 8–10 additional executive members (vice president, policy chair and so forth; see Cross et al., Reference Cross, Pruysers and Currie-Wood2022).Footnote 5 These local organizations provide Canadian parties with a formal presence in each of the single member districts across the country and act as an essential building block for Canadian party politics (Carty, Reference Carty1991; Pruysers, Reference Pruysers2015). As Carty and Eagles (Reference Carty and Eagles2005: 2) write, “constituencies and the political organizations and processes that they frame, stand at the very core of Canada's political life.” Constituency associations broadly, and EDA presidents specifically, play a crucial role in Canadian party politics by engaging in candidate recruitment and nomination (Tolley, Reference Tolley2019; Cross and Young, Reference Cross, Young, Bittner and Koop2013; Pruysers and Cross, Reference Pruysers and Cross2016), providing support to party-endorsed candidates during elections (Sayers, Reference Sayers1999; Carty and Eagles, Reference Carty and Eagles2005; Cross, Reference Cross2016), sending delegates to party conferences (Cross et al., Reference Cross, Pruysers and Currie-Wood2022) and engaging in inter-election maintenance and renewal (Pruysers, Reference Pruysers2016). Joining the local EDA executive, therefore, is very different than becoming an ordinary, dues-paying party member. While the latter requires a small membership fee and has no participatory obligations or responsibilities, joining an EDA executive requires taking on a leadership role within the local party organization, attending frequent party meetings and contributing to the general stewardship of the party in the district (Cross et al., Reference Cross, Pruysers and Currie-Wood2022; Koop, Reference Koop2010).
Not only do EDAs engage in important and wide-ranging functions, but the nature of Canadian parties means that who populates an EDA executive is likely to matter as well. Cheng and Tavits (Reference Cheng and Tavits2011), for instance, demonstrate that EDAs who are led by a woman president tend to nominate more women candidates (see also Tremblay and Pelletier, Reference Tremblay and Pelletier2001; Cross and Pruysers, Reference Cross and Pruysers2019). This finding has been replicated by Tolley (Reference Tolley2019) with regard to racialized EDA presidents and racialized candidates. High levels of personalization (Lalancette et al., Reference Lalancette, Raynauld, Ozorai, Marland and Giasson2022; Pruysers and Cross, Reference Pruysers, Cross, Cross, Katz and Pruysers2018; Cross and Young, Reference Cross and Young2015) and a stratarchical arrangement that provides local party associations with considerable agency in conducting local party business (Carty, Reference Carty2004; Cross, Reference Cross2018) combined with a party structure that is relatively open and permeable (that is, allowing noncitizens and youth to join and become members) suggests that individual EDAs will operate differently from one another depending on their composition. Diversity, therefore, is not only expected between political parties but within parties. Given this local freedom, the initial motivation to join an EDA's executive may have important implications for the kind of activities and decisions that the EDA takes, as well as the general ethos of the local organization.
Why do individuals take on additional responsibility and join their local EDA executive? This article considers this and three interrelated questions. First, what are the incentives to join a local party association? We revisit the work of Clark and Wilson (Reference Clark and Wilson1961) and consider whether the same kinds of incentives that explain why members join their party also contribute to our understanding of why individuals join their EDA and take on a leadership role within the party. Second, who is motivated by the various kinds of incentives? Here we consider differences in sociodemographic background (age, gender and so forth), party and geographic context (competitive district, urban vs. rural and so forth). Finally, we explore whether the motivation to join an EDA is related to the subsequent character of that local association. For instance, do EDAs who are led by an individual who was motivated to join for policy-related reasons (that is., purposive incentives) have more policy-related discussions with their members compared to EDAs whose president was not motivated by such concerns? We explore these questions in the remainder of the article.
Data and Methods
To explore the question of incentives to local party leadership we make use of data that was derived from an online survey of constituency association presidents in Canada.Footnote 6 The survey was conducted online, using the Qualtrics platform, in the summer of 2019 (June and July). The data include 367 responses from four federal political parties: 83 Conservative, 93 Liberal, 98 New Democrat and 77 Green party associations participated. Additionally, 16 individuals declined to provide their party. The 367 respondents who participated in the survey represent about 30 per cent of all EDAs in the four federal parties for which up-to-date contact information was available. We paired the survey responses with data from other sources—namely Elections Canada—to ensure accurate information regarding election outcomes, competitiveness, and geographic location (urban vs. rural). As for sample characteristics, the mean age of respondents in the dataset is 55 years (SD = 15.5; ranging from 22 to 67) with approximately 23 per cent being 40 years or younger. Nearly one-in-five (18%) respondents were born outside of Canada. Consistent with the actual universe of EDA presidents, the majority of respondents are men (69%). In terms of geography, half of respondents are located in urban districts (50.4%) while the remaining 49 per cent are from less urban and more rural districts.Footnote 7
To capture motivations/incentives, we asked EDA presidents to think about their reasons for originally taking a leadership position within the party: “We are interested in knowing your reasons for originally joining your party's executive.” Participants were then asked to rate the importance of a series of potential incentives that tap into Clark and Wilson's (Reference Clark and Wilson1961) framework. This includes “To meet interesting people and extent my social life/participate in social activities”; “To acquire new skills (administration, organization)”; “To have greater influence in party policy”; and “To support a candidate for local nomination.” The first item, participation in social activities, taps into solidary incentives, the second item regarding new skills captures material incentives, and the third item about policy influence speaks to purposive incentives. The fourth item, candidate nomination, speaks to Young and Cross's (Reference Young and Cross2002a) contention that personnel selection, especially in the context of increasingly personalized local nominations, acts as an important incentive as well.Footnote 8 Given that EDAs often have the ability to structure local contests, sometimes even manipulating the process (Cross et al., Reference Cross, Kenig, Pruysers and Rahat2016), we include candidate nomination as one of the incentives examined here.Footnote 9
While these incentives are expected to be the primary drivers of membership on a local party executive, a large literature demonstrates that socioeconomic variables—resources in particular—are relevant for understanding political activism more generally (Verba et al., Reference Verba, Nie and Kim1978). As such, we include a number of sociodemographic controls in our analysis as well. This includes age (in years), gender, education, income, foreign born, level of activismFootnote 10 and length of party membership (in years). Additionally, we control for factors related to the district itself in terms of electoral competitivenessFootnote 11, and whether the district is geographically urban or rural. Our final control is party, as research suggests that some parties are more ideological in nature (Cross and Young, Reference Cross and Young2004), which in turn has been shown to influence both organizational and intraparty dynamics (Young and Cross, Reference Young and Cross2002b).
Results
We begin with our first questions: why do individuals join their local EDA, and do the incentives that have been identified for membership broadly also apply to local party leadership? Figure 1 reveals that purposive incentives (a desire to influence policy) as well as the ability to engage in personnel selection (candidate nomination) are viewed as considerably more important than are solidary (that is, attending social events) and material (that is, acquiring new skills) incentives. While nearly half (46% and 45%) of EDA presidents reported that social events and acquiring new skills were unimportant to their decision to join their local party executive, this figure is just 22 and 24 per cent for policy influence and candidate nomination. While not completely irrelevant—more than half of respondents rated these motivations as at least somewhat important after all—joining a local EDA is certainly not driven by a desire to enhance one's social connectedness or gain news skills and career opportunities. While not shown in Figure 1, there are considerable party differences. For example, whereas 22 per cent of Liberals report that social events were important to their decision, less than 10 per cent of New Democrats (8.7%) and Conservatives (8.2%) report the same. Such patterns may be the result of the more ideological nature of the New Democrats and the Conservatives.
Figure 1. Incentives to join a local party executive.
If there are party differences, there are likely individual differences to uncover as well. Figure 2 in the appendix provides some preliminary evidence of significant gender differences in motivation at the bivariate level. For example, women are significantly more likely to rate policy-related incentives as “not important” to their initial reason for joining an EDA compared to men (32% to 22%; p<.05). Our next question, therefore, explores who is motivated by the various incentives. To explore this question, we conducted a series of logistic regression analyses where the dependent variable is reporting that the incentive was very important to their decision to join (see Table 1).Footnote 12 Model 1 includes the results for material incentives; Model 2 for solidary incentives; Model 3 for purposive incentives; and Model 4 for candidate nomination incentives. Each of the models includes the same set of explanatory variables: age, gender, education, income, foreign born, level of activism, length of party membership, urban/rural district, party and competitiveness. Starting with Model 1, we see that material incentives appear to be more important for some individuals than others. Consistent with the existing literature regarding age and incentives to membership (Weber, Reference Weber2020), older individuals are less concerned with material incentives like career advancement and new skills. We find a similar pattern for those located in highly competitive districts. Foreign born individuals, by contrast, tend to place more emphasis on the importance of such material incentives.
Table 1. Correlates of Membership Incentives
Notes: reference category is “Conservative”; *p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
Turning to Model 2, solidary incentives, we find two significant relationships. First, and consistent with the bivariate results reported earlier, Liberal EDA presidents are significantly more likely to report that solidary incentives—the social benefits to membership—were important in their initial decision to join. We also see the same for foreign born individuals. In this regard, membership on a local party executive may play an important socializing and integrating function for new Canadians. Model 3 includes the results for purposive incentives. Here we find that older individuals are less motivated by policy concerns. Conservatives and highly politically active individuals, by contrast, are more likely to be motivated by a desire to shape party policy. Finally, Model 4 provides the results for candidate nomination. Here we find that the more competitive a district is for a party, the more important participating in a candidate nomination is to the original decision to join. This, of course, makes sense as candidates competing in party strongholds are more likely to be successfully elected during the general election and therefore the nomination is more consequential (Cross, Reference Cross2008).
In the above analysis, the incentives to join an EDA were modelled as the outcomes (dependent variables). Now, we use the motivation variables as explanatory variables (independent variables) and consider whether initial motivations to join an EDA are related to the subsequent character and activities of that EDA. The data allow us to explore this question in two ways. First, we consider whether EDAs that devoted more time to policy discussions (operationalized as the number of policy discussion meetings that were held in the 12 months prior to the survey) are led by a president who reported that purposive incentives were important to their initial reason for joining. Next, we do the same for solidary incentives and consider whether EDAs that hosted more social events (local BBQs, pub nights and so forth) in the 12 months prior to the survey are led by a president who reported higher levels of importance to solidary incentives. Table 2 provides the results.
Table 2. EDA Activities and Original Incentives to Join
Notes: reference category is “Conservative”; *p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
Model 1 of Table 2 provides the results for solidary incentives. Here we find that NDP associations report significantly fewer social gatherings than Conservative EDAs (the reference category). At the same time, we find that EDAs located in districts where their party is electorally competitive tend to hold more social functions throughout the year compared to less competitive EDAs. Importantly, we also find that EDAs that have more social meetings are more likely to have an EDA president who was motivated to join for social/solidary reasons. This suggests that the original reasons for joining an EDA might influence the subsequent character of that EDA. Model 2 provides the results for purposive, or policy-related, incentives. Here we find that NDP EDAs, as well as those led by men, tend to have more policy meetings than other EDAs. Local associations whose president has higher levels of formal education, by contrast, tend to have fewer. Unlike the results for solidary incentives, however, we do not find any evidence that EDAs whose president joined for policy-related reasons have more policy discussions throughout the year. The evidence for whether initial motivations to join an EDA influence the character of that EDA are therefore mixed.
Conclusions
Given that Canadian parties are best described by stratarchy and not hierarchy (Katz and Mair, Reference Katz and Mair1993; Carty, Reference Carty2002; Cross, Reference Cross2018), power is not concentrated at the “top” of the party organization. Instead, different actors throughout the party organization play important roles (Cross et al., Reference Cross, Pruysers and Currie-Wood2022). Members of an EDAs executive, local party presidents in particular, recruit and influence nominations, support candidates during election campaigns, attend party conferences, and contribute to the health and vibrancy of political parties during the inter-election period. Given the consequential role that they play, understanding why some members join their local party executive and take on a leadership position within the party is an important question. Applying a modified version of Clark and Wilson's (Reference Clark and Wilson1961) framework regarding the incentives to party membership, this article draws upon data from a survey of EDA presidents to explore the incentives to join a local party association executive. The results reveal a number of important takeaways.
First, and consistent with previous literature which has explored the decision to join a party (see, for example, Young and Cross, Reference Young and Cross2002a), purposive (policy) and personnel selection (candidate nomination) incentives are the most relevant types of incentives for those seeking local EDA positions. Consistent with arguments regarding a growing atomization of political life (Putnam, Reference Putnam2000), solidary incentives that center on social events and community building appear to be no more important than material benefits and rewards. These results speak to the challenges that Canadian political parties currently face. As material and solidary incentives decline in importance, EDA membership is driven by policy and personnel selection. Personnel selection, however, occurs irregularly and generally only when the party's incumbent is not seeking re-election. Policy-related incentives, by contrast, have the ability to be regular activities that can motivate individuals to join even when there is no election in sight. The challenge for Canadian parties is that they do not typically provide much room for party members and EDAs to meaningfully influence policy (Cross, Reference Cross2004; Cross et al., Reference Cross, Pruysers and Currie-Wood2022). In fact, a lack of grassroots influence over party policy has long been a point of concern and frustration for ordinary party members (Cross and Young, Reference Cross and Young2006).
Second, we find that different individuals are motivated by different incentives. Younger individuals, for example, are more likely to be motivated by material incentives than older individuals. This is consistent with the comparative literature on party membership (Bruter and Harrison Reference Bruter and Harrison2009; Weber, Reference Weber2020; Fjellman and Sundström, Reference Fjellman and Sundström2021). Younger individuals have much of their careers ahead of them and likely view EDA executive membership as a stepping stone to their future career aspirations. Rewards such as new skills, an expanding network and potential job opportunities are therefore stronger motivators for younger individuals. Interparty differences are also evident. Liberals, for instance, place significantly more emphasis on solidary (social) incentives and significantly less emphasis on purposive (policy) incentives when compared to Conservatives. Part of this may be the result of Liberals being in government and therefore local Liberal EDAs having greater opportunity to engage in high-profile social events (for example, visits from a cabinet minister). Given the cross-sectional nature of the data it is unclear whether this is a true party difference or whether the “Liberal” variable is also capturing a “governing party” effect (that is, local party officials may have less room to influence policy when their party is in government). Future research should therefore attempt to disentangle the effects of party and governing status. Among the most interesting findings is that foreign born individuals are significantly more likely than Canadian born EDA presidents to report that the social aspects of party life were very important to their initial decision to join their local EDA. In this regard, local party associations have the ability to play an important and understudied role in integrating and socializing new Canadians into party and electoral politics. This is made more relevant by the fact that membership in Canadian parties does not typically require citizenship. As integration is often viewed as a primary party function (King, Reference King1969; Meisel and Mendelsohn, Reference Meisel, Mendelsohn, Thorburn and Whitehorn2001), activities such as EDA-sponsored BBQs, pub nights and other routine social gatherings may be an undervalued aspect of local party life. Parties, especially their local organizations, have the potential to be highly inclusive, participatory and integrating spaces.
Third, and finally, we provide some preliminary evidence of a relationship between the motivations to join an EDA and the kinds of activities that the EDA engages in afterwards. Specifically, EDAs whose president was motivated by social incentives report having significantly more social events during the year than those EDAs whose president was not particularly motivated by solidary incentives. In this regard, the stratarchical bargain that provides local associations with considerable agency in the conduct of local affairs (Carty, Reference Carty2004) appears to provide EDA presidents with the ability to shape the nature and activities of the local organization. While we should be cautious not to interpret these results fully causally (that is, EDAs that are already active socially might attract a president who is interested in joining for social reasons and therefore continues the social activities already in place), the fact that the relationship holds when controlling for a variety of other factors is interesting and suggestive. This pattern, however, was not replicated when examining purposive incentives and the number of policy-related discussions that the EDA engaged in. As such, the results of Table 2 suggest an important avenue for future research and warrant replication.Footnote 13
Funding statement
The research was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant (435 -2018-0385).
Conflict of Interest
None
Acknowledgements
This article benefited from the helpful comments of Bill Cross and the journal's anonymous reviewers.
Appendix
Figure 2. Incentives to join a local party executive and respondent gender.
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