Joining Political Organizations

About the Book

From political parties to environmental organisations, citizens join a host of associations in order to influence policymaking and political agendas. Yet why in some western democracies do citizens join political organisations much more than in others? Drawing on a large number of crossnational surveys and data sets, Morales shows that huge crossnational variations in political membership are not so much related to social or attitudinal differences between these countries' citizens, but are explained to a great extent by the structure of the political system of each nation.

Author Biography

Laura Morales is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Change of the University of Manchester. She has previously taught Political Science and Research Methods at Universidad Aunoma de Madrid (2001-2003), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2003), and the Universidad de Murcia (2003-2007). She was awarded with the ECPR and the Spanish Political Science Association prizes for the best Ph.D. thesis in 2004. Her interests lie, especially, in the areas of electoral behaviour, political participation, and comparative politics. She has published extensively on associational involvement, political participation, and political parties.