Recruitment Patterns Among Local Party Officials: A Model and Some Preliminary Findings in Selected Locales

An ongoing political system requires a continuing process of recruitment in order to maintain the small but active cadre of citizens who assume the primary responsibility for the operation of the system. These political activists are involved in recruiting the official leadership, campaigning for their election, and sometimes serve as governors of the system themselves. In American politics, the recruitment of political activists is effected through processes which political scientists have only recently begun to investigate in depth. Most of the studies of recruitment to positions of political activism have investigated the social backgrounds and the patterns of recruitment of public officials. Not as much attention has been directed toward the personnel who operate the local political party organizations, and the processes of their recruitment. Our data add to the literature about political party activists at the lower echelons of the party organizations by reporting the findings of research conducted among local party officials in selected locales in North Carolina and Massachusetts. These local party officials constitute the lowest level of party officialdom in their respective party organizations. We have investigated the process of their recruitment to their party positions, and have used the data to test a model of political recruitment. Several questions guiding our research included: What are the social correlates of recruitment to local party positions? What are the patterns and channels of recruitment? What triggers political party activism—is there an identifiable “threshold” or “political opportunity structure” which serves as an indicator of political party activism? Are recruitment patterns and channels related to role definitions? We have also examined the relationship between the recruitment pattern of the party worker and his orientation to his job as party worker.