Although they are stable, party constitutions are not immutable. Over the past decade, parties have become increasingly decentralized – especially with respect to leadership selection. Chapter 7 concludes by assessing the implications of the book’s findings for strategically motivated party leaders contemplating institutional change. The chapter also considers similarities and differences with US primaries and discusses how decentralized structures may shape candidate quality. Kernell concludes by discussing avenues for future research, arguing party – as well as electoral – institutions should be accounted for in studies of democratic responsiveness.

Chapter 4 tests the effects of entry costs and decentralized rules on membership. After describing overall membership trends, the chapter tests the effects of party decentralization on both aggregate membership and individual enrollment. In line with the model’s predictions, the empirical analyses reveal that voters are more likely to join decentralized parties, but that this relationship is driven by the preferences of extreme voters. The chapter also examines the effects of membership fees on enrollment and employs two member surveys from Canada to investigate how individuals’ reported reasons for joining relate to their participation in various party activities.

Chapter 6 shifts the focus from individual voter behavior to party responsiveness. Where decentralized rules foster internal competition, parties should select candidates and adopt positions that are more responsive to their core supporters and less responsive to the general electorate. To test these spatial hypotheses, Kernell employs computational simulations to identify vote-maximizing positions in the electorate and finds that decentralized parties adopt less competitive positions than their centralized competitors. All else equal, the electoral advantage for a party whose leaders select candidates over one whose members play a decisive role is close to 7 percent.

This chapter examines popular appeal to local Heimat as a site of political renewal in Cologne. It shows how democratically engaged localists advanced narratives of “Cologne democracy” and “openness to the world,” while replacing nationalist narrative of their region as a “Watch on the Rhine” with that of the Rhineland as a “bridge” to the West. Democratically engaged localists further argued that Heimat should be about promoting European unity and post-nationalist ideas of nation. Such groups constructed these narratives by pulling on useable local histories and reinventing local traditions. Such early democratic identifications, however, existed alongside major failures in democratic practice and frequent depictions of the Eastern bloc as an “anti-Heimat.” Emphasis on democratic local histories also aggravated failures to confront guilt for the Nazi past. Exclusion of newcomers also represented a significant challenge. More inclusively minded Cologners attempted to combat persistent exclusionary practices by arguing for “Cologne tolerance” as a local value and by insisting that a correctly understood Heimat concept should generate sympathy for the displaced.

The chapter examines conflicts between German expellee organizations and their critics about how the Heimat concept should be understood. It traces these conflicts through a study of annual expellee Heimat meetings – dynamic and often explosive events which involved personal reunion, cultural displays, political spectacles, children’s events, and medialized debates. Expellee leaders and their critics conflicted over whether Heimat should moderate or strengthen national sentiment. Loss of Heimat based on national ethnicity and redrawing of national borders underpinned more nationalist interpretations of Heimat in the expellee organizations. National politicization of expellee Heimat feeling, however, did not rely on personal intention to return to the East as some have argued. Nationally strident demands for a right to the Heimat in the East were also deeply bound up in recognition politics. Claims that expellee children had a right to Heimat in the East triggered further conflicts over the concept. Opponents of the expellee societies denounced their efforts to depict Heimat in the East as an ethnic inheritance and argued that personal experience of place was essential to the concept.

Moving from Cologne to the Hanseatic cities, this chapter demonstrates remarkably similar Heimat revivals and trends in local identity narratives in early post-war Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen. All three cities saw a major renaissance of local culture and emphasis on the value of Heimat in repairing community bonds and mobilizing for reconstruction. Democratically engaged locals argued for “democracy” and “openness to the world” as Hanseatic values and redefined the long-standing metaphor of their cities as “gates to the world.” Abandoning nationalist narratives of them as exit points of German power, such groups argued for their maritime cities as sites of international reconciliation. Locals wove such narratives by drawing on useful local historical memories. Hanseatic locals, however, reflected the same shortcomings in democratic practice, including persistent attempts to evade guilt for the Nazi past, gendered understandings of Heimat, and exclusion of newcomers. As in Cologne, more inclusively minded locals, however, sought to combat hostilities towards newcomers by engaging with the Heimat idea and arguing for “tolerance” as a local value.

This chapter examines major revivals of Heimat culture in the ruins of post-war Cologne and appeals to “Heimat” as a site of new beginnings. To put this case study in context, it begins with a brief pre-history of the Nazi years and shows how the regime selectively appealed to Heimat when in the regime’s interest, while suppressing ideas about Heimat which were out of step with the regime’s goals. The chapter then examines post-war appeal to local Heimat as a vital tool for repairing local community, healing biographical rupture, mobilizing for reconstruction, and providing a sense of therapeutic community. The chapter outlines how the script of finding new life through Heimat differed significantly from that of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft, and it explains how these differences redounded to the benefit of cultural demobilization in the aftermath. This and Chapter 2, however, also highlight Heimat enthusiasts’ considerable failures. This chapter concludes by exploring one failure in particular: persistent gendered ideas about home and Heimat in which male visions of home were privileged over those of women, re-enforcing the conservative gender norms of the period.