Data collection - Q2 ‘what consequences’

3.3.2 Data collection - Q2 ‘what consequences’

Member interviews

The consequences of multi-speed membership are explored through the eyes of the members themselves. In order to understand the relationship between members and their party, there is a need to look in more depth at how members come to join, why they join, what they do, and crucially, how that relationship develops. Only with this level of detail can an assessment be made about how multi-speed organising affects partisan attitudes and behaviours. Member interviews focused on the nature of members’ relationship with the party at the national and local level. They explored the attitudes, motivations and political activities of members (particularly those engaged in face-to-face, high-intensity activity).

In-depth interviews with party members add another level of detail to our understanding of party membership gained from survey data. They enable us to fully understand the complex motivation structures behind party membership and activism. Examining members’ attitudes, attachments and activity over time (in-and-out of the party, between active and passive engagement) helps to see party activity in the fluid and dynamic sense that Scarrow’s ‘quantum model’ suggests (2015). Whilst not a longitudinal study, this research taps into these dynamics by taking a biographical approach to interviews.

In adopting elements of a biographical approach, the interviews sought to draw out interviewees’ stories about their relationship to politics, activism and party politics over the course of their lives. This narrative approach to the interviews uncovers both the movement between categories of support and the values, attitudes and motivations underpinning the interviewees’ political behaviours. By encouraging interviewees to place their current political activity in context of their political activity over a lifetime, the interviews reveal members’ relationship to politics and the party. Interviewees were encouraged to reconstruct the story of their political activism from the beginning up to their engagement in the current campaign. Interviews explored participants’ routes to political and partisan activity: when, how and why they joined, their expectations and first

impressions, what they did, what they do, and what it means to them to be a party member.

Whilst largely biographical and led by the interviewee, the interviews were semi-structured in order to keep within the issues of interest. However, it was also important to maintain space within the interview for participants to introduce issues and concepts that were not already addressed in the literature.

The biographical approach used in the interviews also facilitated an analysis of party exit.

Analysing exit typically presents practical challenges: it is far easier to locate and survey current party members than ex-ones, especially as party member surveys are often based on member lists provided by the parties themselves. Surveying party member exit

therefore usually requires either a panel survey or analysis of current party members’

willingness to leave. A biographical approach in interviews can not only capture the fluidity in members’ party attachments, it resolves the practical issue of locating ex-members: many one-time ex-members are current members.

Issues of recall of course have an impact on the accuracy of the descriptions. In asking these types of questions it was important to acknowledge that time has an effect on these relationships, that memory can fail, motivations change, and that the present shapes how the past is understood and explained. Authors of major quantitative studies in this field also acknowledge the difficulties asking participants about motivations. In their seminal work on civic participation, Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995) recognise the influence perceived current benefits of participation can have on reflections of past incentives.

However, they conclude that such reports are, ‘at a minimum, meaningful contemporary interpretations of past activity, respondents’ current understanding of the gratifications attendant to participation’ (Verba et al., 1995). They argue that as well as indicating reasons activists may have for participating again in future, respondents’ ‘rhetoric of participation’ reveals the culture of civic participation at work.

These interviews sought to look beyond initial responses to reveal the relationships and attitudes underpinning behaviours and to remedy some of the category issues in survey data. Taking an interpretivist and individualised look at party membership, by setting the act of joining the party in the context of interviewees’ political lives and giving

interviewees the opportunity to talk in depth about their party membership, these

interviews offer a more rounded, detailed and arguably accurate picture of the motivation

structure behind party membership. In this way, the reconstruction of past incentives in light of benefits accrued since joining tells us something interesting about how party membership shapes participants, about how their relationship with the party develops and what persuades party members to stay (or leave). In this way, the rhetoric of party membership tells us a great deal about the culture of party participation.

Examining the narratives that politically active citizens develop to explain their political lives reveals a great deal about the nature of partisan behaviour and helps to uncover cultures of political participation within the party. Understanding the nature of partisan attachment in this depth therefore enables a more detailed assessment of the impact of multi-speed changes to party organisation.

Observation and participation

The study employed some observation and participation at the initial stages to scope out the conditions and context of the research. Whilst stopping short (for practical as well as methodological reasons) from a full ethnographic study, participant observation was included as a complementary method to improve understanding of the daily operation of the research context. Observation was overt and with the consent of gatekeepers. It also helped to build relationships in advance of member interviews.

An individual constituency party campaign provided the initial site of observation.

Constituency Labour Parties are a mini-ecosystem of the party at the local level, with a range of actors in different roles and with different links to the national party. They are also the site of most members’ party activity. Interviews with key individuals who were involved in campaigning and organising members and supporters formed a key part of the observation strategy. This process revealed the practical operation of some elements of the multi-speed membership strategy. It revealed the priorities of the party at the local level and helped answer contextual questions about the multi-speed strategy, for instance, whether there is an emphasis on activity over category of supporter and whether there is a drive to move supporters to membership. Observation also revealed how the

member/non-member relationship is managed at the local level.

This period of participant observation also provided context for the individual elements in the research design. It helped refine the member interview questions and gave some empirical shape to the issues raised in the theory.

3.3.3 Sampling strategy

The rationale for selecting the British Labour Party as the primary case has already been outlined. This next section will discuss the theoretical rationale for selecting the units within this case, both at the elite level and the embedded subunits. Because the research employs different methods and different sources of data generation there are different sampling strategies for each.

Elite interviews – purposive sample.

The elites selected for interview were chosen by reputational and positional criteria.

There are a few key figures who are known to have been centrally involved in Refounding Labour and the Collins Review and whose position gives them decision-making

responsibility in the organisational structure.

Documents

The beginning of the ‘Refounding Labour’ process creates the first boundary for document case selection and the ratification of the Collins Review the end point. These two party-wide consultation processes (conducted online and in public and private meetings) create a substantial amount of written material, from official documents to individual member blogs, as well as a number of consultation submissions from individuals, CLPs and party affiliated groups. Yet whilst a lot has been written about the process, the research was focused on particular elements of it (namely those relating to supporters and political rights). This tighter focus reduced the amount of relevant material. Likewise, there is a small group of key individuals who would be considered to have direct influence on the strategy under analysis which further reduced the volume of relevant material.

Observation (CLP/campaign)

The choice of Constituency Labour Party and campaign depended largely on access, permission and timing. The CLP is not itself the case being researched and therefore any constituency involved in campaigning would have provided a suitable test. The CLP selected was a marginal seat in a constituency with a large party membership which provided a particularly useful site for observing the operation of the multi-speed elements of a constituency campaign.

Party members – theoretical and snowball.