As part of a wider project looking at public attitudes towards political parties, 3 deliberative workshops were conducted to examine attitudes towards political parties. In total 68 people attended the workshops. Workshop 1 - Composed of party activists/ members Workshop 2 - Composed of non-party activists/members (i.e. general public) Workshop 3 - Composed of a 50/50 split of party activists/members and non-activists/members. Participants were selected to represent a range of ages, genders, ethnicities, occupational status. Within the workshops participants were led through a series of tasks designed to create the 'Ideal Party'. The discussion focused on preferences for policy-making, participation/engagement, and governing. These discussions were transcribed to capture participants comments and their responses to tasks (i.e. lists of words produced in response to tasks). The activities aimed to interrogate citizens' desires for parties and to determine which aspects of party behaviour were most important for citizens views. The link between citizens and the state is the crux of democratic politics, yet it is crumbling. Numerous studies have diagnosed a crisis in representative politics with decreased participation and growing levels of distrust bringing the legitimacy of democratic institutions into doubt. For many a solution has been offered by digital technology, leading parties to embrace new digital campaigning software. To explore the capacity of digital innovations to renew democracy this study argues that we need to understand the nature of the 'disconnect' between parties and the people. As such, this study departs from traditional analyses of 'digital democracy' by focusing on public attitudes. Adapting the methodological approach used by Allen and Birch (2015) the project will discern how the public and parties conceive democratic linkage in practice and as an ideal, highlighting contradictions and convergence to diagnose the problem. Correlating these insights to the functions of digital software and theories of democratic linkage (Dalton, Farrell and McAllister, 2011) the capacity of digital innovations to renew party politics is considered. To enable analysis 3 work packages (WP) are conducted. WP1: How do parties perceive democratic linkage, and how have parties used digital management systems since 2010? WP1 will first identify available forms of the type of digital innovation of interest to this project - namely 'digital management software' - and will categorise the functions they perform. Second, it will explore and develop theories of democratic linkage to provide a framework for subsequent analysis. Then, using interviews, internal party data and 3 case studies of constituency parties (1 from Labour, the Conservatives and Scottish National Party) the PI and RA will map perceptions of democratic linkage and usage of digital technology. This data will provide new insight on developments in party politics and will be used to produce case study accounts and articles that trace the form of change and consider the impact of digital technology on party organisation. WP2: How do citizens perceive democratic linkage, and how does parties' use of digital management systems affect public attitudes? WP 2 explores the impact of new technology. Working with YouGov the PI will commission 2 surveys. The first will assess public attitudes towards parties', seeking to discern how the public want parties to engage and how they perceive this to work in practice. Data will be analysed to identify conceptions of democratic linkage (WP1) and then compared with party attitudes to identify synergies and incongruities in public and party conceptions. This analysis offers a diagnosis of the state of current linkage, and will identify areas of 'disconnect' to be further examined in WP3. This WP will also probe public attitudes towards parties' use of digital campaigning techniques. Utilising a split sample survey, designed in collaboration with Dr Chris Jones, the PI will assess whether practices such as social media data mining are compatible with public notions of democratic linkage. This will inform an article, infographics and practitioner briefing papers. WP3: Can digital campaigning methods resolve the disconnect between citizens and the state? In collaboration with the think tank Involve, the PI will use 3 deliberative events to explore parties' and citizens' attitudes towards democratic linkage and test the capacity of different forms of digital technology to reconcile these perceptions. Building on survey data these events will test attitudes; exploring whether sustained reflection affects how public and party desires are conceived (drawing on work by Stoker, Hay and Barr, forthcoming). Events will identify ideal forms of linkage - findings that will be used, returning to WP1, to consider the capacity of different forms of digital technology to promote linkage and hence renew party politics.

The workshops themselves had different compositions, with one composed of people with no formal engagement with political parties, a second group composed of party activists and campaigners, and a final group composed of a 50/50 split of the prior two groups. In total 68 people participated in these workshops, with an average of 22 people in each session. In terms of demographics, the workshop participants had a mean age of 52. Women were slightly more prevalent in the workshops (56%). When it comes to education, the workshop participants were highly educated, with 75% having a degree. In terms of employment, 27% of workshop participants were full time employees, whilst 33% worked part time. This is not unexpected considering that the workshops were 4-hours long and some were held on a weekday, making it harder for full-time employees to attend. Workshop participants were notably more politically interested; 56% considered themselves ‘very interested’.