Professional paper
Political Party Membership: a Comparative Review of Political Parties in Western Europe and Croatia
Sanja Badanjak
Abstract
Most of the authors in contemporary political science agree that the subject-matter of political science is very wide, but that the research of political parties forms its core. There are many aspects of the problem of political parties, from the legal aspect, where the doubts on their position in the public legal and private legal continuum still seem to exist, to the question of intra-party democracy. The problem I will try to present here is closely related to the question on intra-party democratization and organization. I intend to outline various aspects of political party membership: definition of the notion, short historical development, contemporary tendencies and the current situation in the Croatian political party landscape. Through comparison of the situation and trends in the western European political parties and Croatian, I will try to show the lagging of our political forces. In my estimate, our political forces and their elites have not adopted the European norms of intra-party activities, which directly affects the question of membership.
Keywords
political party; intra-party democracy; party membership; intra-party organization
Hrčak ID:
179055
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2003.
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