Are Political Staffers out of Touch with Grassroots Party Members? Assessing Congruence between Professionals and Volunteers

Abstract

This article examines whether political professionalization causes attitudinal incongruence within political parties. In this first of a kind study, the internal opinion structure of five Belgian political parties based in Flanders is analysed by comparing the political attitudes of staffers and party members. The analysis combines original survey data collected among the staff of five Belgian political parties based in Flanders ( N = 560) and survey data collected among their party members by the MAPP project ( N = 10,022). The results demonstrate that staffers are mostly congruent with party members, with a few remarkable exceptions. As anticipated by my reinterpretation of cleavage theory, incongruences are more prevalent among mainstream parties and mostly appear on issues concerning globalization. This cosmopolitan bias among staffers is primarily driven by an educational and generational divide with party members.