Party youth wing membership in the Netherlands: the role of organization-level characteristics
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Party youth wing membership in the Netherlands: the role of organization‑level characteristics Charlotte de Roon1
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract Party youth wings are common all over the world. They are expected to play an important role in linking young people to political parties. However, empirical research on the performance of party youth wings is scarce and political youth participation is seen as problematic. To what extent have party youth wings actually succeeded in attracting members over the last decade? And how can variations in party youth wing membership levels be explained? In order to answer these questions, this article develops and tests organization-based explanations on a unique dataset that contains data for nine party youth wings and the corresponding mother parties in the Netherlands over a period from 2001 to 2016. It is found that youth wings are still a popular form of organizational linkage for parties. While the total party youth wing membership in the Netherlands is on the rise, large variations between party youth wings and their mother parties exist. Youth wing membership levels appear to be affected by the membership levels of the mother party. Other party-related characteristics, such as ideology and electoral success, do not seem to play a role. Keywords Party youth wings · Membership · The Netherlands · Time series · Multilevel analysis
Introduction “Youth should be able to develop the skills and motivation to be successfully engaged in political parties, and parties should be encouraged to create space for youth. Affirmative action measures such as youth and women’s quotas and party youth wings can help move these processes forward” * Charlotte de Roon [email protected] 1
Faculty Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University, Schouwburgstraat 2, 2511 VA The Hague, The Netherlands Vol.:(0123456789)
C. de Roon
(United Nations Development Programme 2013, p. 28). Today, an important challenge for political parties is to attract engaged young people. Most parties in Western democracies have not only been suffering from declining memberships for over several decades now (van Biezen et al. 2012), their membership base has been increasingly ageing as well (Scarrow and Gezgor 2010). In fact, a lack of generational replacement has been argued to explain the decline in party membership in European democracies (Whiteley 2007). The interplay of these developments has led scholars to express concerns about the current and future functioning of our democracies. Parties play a central role in connecting society to the state, a function which cannot be fully fulfilled without the support and supply of young people. Within this context, one relevant aspect has attracted little attention in the literature: party youth wings. These party sub-organizations are political organizations led by young people and open to membership of young people within a limited age range, in order for political parties to establish a connection with young people. The relatively low
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