Karriärister eller idealister? En studie om sex partiaktivas motiv för sitt politiska engagemang.

Sammanfattning: This essay is about why people participate in political parties in Sweden. The purpose of this essay is to gain more knowledge of people’s incentives for participation to help the political parties to recruit more members. I will use Panebiancos theory about the displacement of incentives for people to participate in political parties; collective incentives (idealists) such as ideology and social connection, to selective incentives (careerists) such as power and political career. Panebianco means that the motives have changed from idealists to careerists and this essay will try to explain if today’s party members, who have participated in political parties, are “believers” or “careerists”. The empirical analysis is done with individual interviews with six party members from three different parties; the moderate party, the social democratic party and the green party in Lund, Sweden. The modest results of this essay are that both collective and selective incentives are reasons for party members to participate, with a tendency to selective incentives and exercise of power.