What is new on party activism in Southern Europe? An introduction

This special issue introduction argues that the study of party activism requires to be extended to new regional areas in order to capture different perspectives of new developments in this topic. The articles included in the volume cover some cases in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, France) that show a different evolution of what the academic literature had observed in traditional Western democracies. In this respect, our findings suggest two potential contributions. First, newer democracies might have a different structure of incentives for party activism. Second, alternative methodological strategies of party activism research may enlarge our understanding of new forms of party involvement. All in all, the volume shows the need of using different prisms to provide a more comprehensive explanation of how party activism is evolving nowadays.