ELITE–ACTIVIST RELATIONSHIPS IN POLITICAL PARTIES: A SOCIAL EXCHANGE ANALYSIS OF CANADIAN PARTIES

How can we understand interactions and relationships between party elites and activists? We argue that social exchange theory (SET) provides a useful framework to understanding interactions and relationships between party actors. This article develops a SET framework to analyse intra-party relationships and marshals the framework (in addition to interview and observation data) to analyse one set of relationships, those between Canadian Members of Parliament and the party acti-vists in their constituencies. The nature of relationships between elites and rank-and-file activists in political parties is an ongoing theme in the study of party organisations. However, we lack a unified theory of elite–activist relationships within political parties. This article proposes that social exchange theory (SET) provides substantial insight into such relationships, and applies a SET framework to one set of intra-party relationships, those between Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) and the party activists in their constituencies. SET defines relationships in terms of cost– benefit analysis, with the exchange of both material and, crucially, non-material rewards essen-tial to the maintenance of the relationships (see Blau 1964). Conceptualising elite–activist relationships as social exchange relationships elucidates characteristics of intra-party exchang