Not all parties lose members but those that do are older and more institutionalised

Party membership is often cited as uniformly in decline across European democracies. However, this might be an untenable statement as a look at annual party-level data of 47 parties in six European countries between 1960-2010 reveals. Ann-Kristin Kölln argues that almost a quarter of the parties have not been losing members and that membership decline can be explained by a party’s level of institutionalisation. The more consolidated parties are, the fewer members they have. Only few differences between party families are observable.