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 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.

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to many of the topics and concepts that will be discussed in the book. The concept of a group and what differentiates it from a team, or a simple gathering of people is discussed. Additionally, the influence of social media on group establishment and membership is explored, along with a brief introduction to many other concepts. The chapter is intended to draw the reader in and to set the stage for much further and deeper investigation and discussion of the contents of the chapters that follow.

In Chapter 7, we explore why people choose to join groups and the factors that influence their membership decisions. We discuss factors that make groups more attractive as well as less attractive in the eyes of prospective members. We also discuss the challenges and benefits that can be derived from multiple group memberships.

The All-Affected Principle (AAP) is a simple idea that captures a core democratic intuition: enfranchising the people who are governed. Yet democratic theorists have often shied away from the various conceptual challenges that explicating its meaning arises. This chapter therefore articulates a reformulation of the AAP that is (a) pluralistic, which means it is more flexible in terms of both the kind of effect it examines as triggering right for participation as well as the kind of influence and forms of participation that may be required and (b) refocuses the principle around social power rather than mere affectedness. The implications of this reformulation are briefly considered in the context of referenda as a tool for determining the boundaries of political communities and it is concluded that such referenda need to be institutionalized and built into democratic system, in the same way procedures for constitutional amendments allow for infrequent but crucial examination of the political communitys foundations.

The Introduction proposes that a microhistorical lens on the departure of over 40,000 Italians from Egypt after the Second World War helps us to understand how historical temporalities and political membership shape migrant departures. It takes as its starting point the question of the memory of Italian departures from Egypt among Egyptian migrants in contemporary Italy. It frames the book’s argument in relation to ideas about historical time and conflicting notions of the Italian population in Egypt as ’out of time’, demonstrating that a history of temporalities which focuses on the future, present, and past can shed new light on processes of migration in the Mediterranean. It then articulates how political membership, as an encompassing concept functioning within these temporal frameworks, illustrates the construction of the categories normally ascribed to migrants and migrant communities in and beyond the Mediterranean. Finally, it draws these theoretical and methodological threads together to rethink periodisations of European and Mediterranean empires and decolonisation.

It is habitual among scholars to suggest that European nations were formed during, and to some degree because of, the colonial expansion.1 Many argue that this expansion, which placed colonizers in opposition to the natives they sought to control, to other Europeans with whom they competed, and to the large African population that they enslaved, led to the emergence of new identities. In the Spanish case, it enabled the move from multiple local distinctions to a unitary national designation, allowing individuals originating from the different Iberian kingdoms (Castile, Navarre, Aragón, and so forth) to assume a single identity as Spaniards. While some scholars pointed to the formation of nations (or proto-nations), others concluded that the colonial experience led Europeans to think of themselves as participants in a community, members of which belonged to a particular race. Imagining themselves to be distinct from both natives and Africans, these Europeans refashioned themselves as “white.”2

This chapter highlights the central role that burial grounds play in the construction of diasporic memory and collective identity through a visual ethnography of tombstones located in several Islamic burial grounds across Western Europe. In spite of the long-term settlement of Muslim communities, such spaces are extremely rare and suffused with deep cultural meaning. Displays of belonging through epitaphs, images, and grave design are strategies to demonstrate connections to various collectivities. As places where the physical landscape is symbolically inscribed and signified, Islamic burial grounds in Europe offer insight into the changing contours of membership and identity in contemporary multicultural societies.

International organisations include global organisations such as the United Nations and regional organisations such as the European Union. The chapter examines constituent instruments and their interpretation, membership (which may include non-state entities) and withdrawal, including the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. International organisations have the capacity to enter into treaties but may only conclude agreements in those areas in which they are competent to act. The Vienna Convention of 1986 adapts the rules of the 1969 Convention to apply to international organisations, but it is not yet in force. The chapter examines bodies which play a role in recommending or negotiating treaty texts (including the United Nations, UN Sixth Committee and the International Law Commission) and those which play a role in settling disputes (such as the International Court of Justice) and in monitoring compliance (such as the Human Rights Committee). It looks at special cases, including the OSCE, Commonwealth and European Union.

This chapter provides a detailed systematic overview of the operational rules of seven prominent standards development organizations, each having a different institutional background and developing different types of ICT standards, namely: ITU, ETSI, 3GPP, IEEE, IETF, W3C, and Bluetooth SIG. It examines these bodies’ governance rules, such as their membership admissions, composition of decision-making bodies, policy-making processes, mechanisms for appeal and review of their officers’ decisions, and their Intellectual Property Rights policies and offers comparative observations to the extent that the different institutional settings of these organizations allow.

Scholars often point to pressure from the United States as a key factor in driving membership in the nuclear nonproliferation regime, but this explanation has trouble explaining the changes we see in patterns of membership over time. This chapter shows that variation in the perceived effectiveness of the regime – as indicated by overall membership, the strength of verification measures, the effectiveness of enforcement, and a history of cooperation – better explains why states join. Member states are reluctant to forgo nuclear weapons without assurances that others will comply as well, and signals of regime effectiveness reassure states that their commitments will be reciprocated. This argument runs counter to the conventional wisdom among international organizations scholars, that there is a “depth versus breadth” tradeoff in institutional design. Drawing from archival documents, this chapter discusses the illustrative cases of the NPT ratification decision in Australia and Switzerland. It then tests its theory using data on state membership in the NPT.

Liberal democracy arguably requires a sense of equal membership in a shared society, and in today’s world, this “shared society” is inextricably linked with ideas of nationhood. Defenders of majoritarian nationalism worry that this sense of membership in a shared national society is being eroded by multiculturalism, and argue that we must instead reaffirm the centrality of shared national identities, perhaps through “majority rights.” In this chapter, I argue that while the idea of a shared society is indeed important for liberal democracy, and that it will inevitably reflect ideas of nationhood, this is in fact an argument for strengthening, not weakening, multiculturalism and minority rights. The fact that membership claims are filtered through the lens of nationhood creates a series of formidable “membership penalties” for minorities. A robust commitment to multiculturalism and minority rights can be seen, not as a threat to the ideal of equal membership in a shared society, but as a remedy for membership penalties, and as a way of building a more inclusive ethics of membership.

In the rapidly changing context of twenty-first-century psychology, graduate students and early career professionals have many options for career development.While membership in professional associations has historically been an unquestioned step to career development, that is no longer true.So, should professionals still join membership organizations?The authors make the case that psychological organizations foster personal and professional development, professional networking, and opportunities to serve the discipline and society.The authors provide multiple examples of opportunities and benefits of membership, with several examples included.

International organizations perform activities in areas in which states can no longer operate effectively in isolation, and in which there is a common interest in cooperation within a permanent international framework. This chapter will examine international organizations primarily from a legal perspective. The chapter aims to present a general overview of the law of international organizations. It discusses the legal status, privileges, and immunities of international organizations. The chapter further deals with membership issues, powers, and institutional structures. The chapter also looks at decisions of international organizations: the way in which they are taken and the different types of decisions. The chapter will briefly examine the finances of international organizations. There has been an exponential increase in activities of international organizations over the years. Not all of these activities have been successful, however, and there have been failures and wrongdoings. In recent years, a much-debated issue is the extent to which international organizations and/or their members may be held responsible for such failures and wrongdoings.