Local Party Activists in Dublin: Socialization, Recruitment and Incentives

Definitions of the political party in the context of Western competitive electoral politics have usually centred on the notion that the critical function of the political party is power-seeking or power-wielding. In practice, of course, Western parties of the unpaid voluntary kind cannot be solely concerned with power-seeking in the sense of vote-getting; they must also take the opinions and wishes of their own activists into account, at least to some extent. Thus, Epstein's emphasis on the nomination and electoral functions of political parties, although fundamentally correct, should not be allowed to obscure other central preoccupations of party leaders, in particular the problems they often face in attempting to keep an organization in being between elections without recourse to extensive material payoffs in the shape of patronage or regular salaries for large numbers of activists.