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Explaining Activism Amongst Fine Gael Members: A Test of Seyd and Whiteley's General Incentives Model

In the 1990s Seyd and Whiteley devised a 'general incentives theory' to explain variation in levels of activism among members of political parties. The theory takes into account individual members' assessments of a variety of potential costs and potential benefits that might result from activism. The model performs reasonably well on data derived from British party members. In this article it is tested on data from members of Fine Gael, the second largest Irish party. Its explanatory power proves to be similar to that found for the British data, though it works less well when applied to those Fine Gael members whose primary allegiance is to an individual local politician than to those who support the party as a whole. The article raises some general questions about the validity of some assumptions of the general incentives theory.