From May’s Laws to May’s legacy: On the opinion structure within political parties
Abstract
For over 40 years now, the debate on the hierarchical opinion structure within political parties has been colored by May’s laws of General and Special curvilinear disparity. Their essence is that, compared to non-leaders and top leaders, the mid-level of sub-leaders of parties consists of radicals as regards their ideological, substantive positions. Persistent as this vision is, however, there have been few comprehensive empirical tests. In this paper such a test is employed for Dutch parties, consisting of: a) a comparison of average positions on issues and in terms of left and right of voters, members and MPs; b) a comparison of the full opinion distributions on particular political issues for these groups; and c) an exploration of perceptions among top leaders and sub-leaders of the opinion structure within their party. We conclude that there is not enough support to uphold May’s laws any longer. His laws should be dismissed, but May’s legacy should consist of a more open study of the opinion structures of parties, which are still crucial actors in Western representative democracies.
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Biographies
Joop JM Van Holsteyn is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research focusses on elections and voting behavior, public opinion and opinion polling, and parties and party membership in the Netherlands. His previous work (in English) has appeared in various edited volumes and in Acta Politica, Electoral Studies, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Public Opinion Quarterly and West European Politics.
Josje M Den Ridder is Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP), the Netherlands. In 2014 she published a dissertation (in Dutch) on political parties and party members in the Netherlands, which focusses on the fundamental question whether party members are linkages or obstacles in representative party democracy. Her main research interests are political parties and party members, public opinion and political trust.
Ruud A Koole is Professor in Political Science with an emphasis on Dutch politics and its institutional development at the Department of Political Science, Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research focuses on Dutch political history, the Dutch political system, the organization of political parties, party finance, candidate selection, and party membership. His previous work (in English) has appeared in various edited volumes and in Acta Politica, European Journal of Political Research and Party Politics.
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