Intra-Party Democracy and Party Unity: Varied Rules, Varied Consequences

ABSTRACT

Do parties’ internal dynamics change when they adopt party-wide ballots for important policy and personnel decisions? Parties in parliamentary democracies are increasingly using such procedures, but researchers still disagree about their impact on partisan politics. This article argues that in order to pin down such effects, researchers should more systematically account for how such ballots are conducted. The argument is developed with respect to party unity. Intra-party ballots are described as multi-stage procedures with key rules at each stage whose attributes can exacerbate or mitigate the tensions unleashed by contestation over party decisions. It demonstrates the feasibility of such an approach by proposing measures taken from the Political Party Database (PPDB). It then uses examples from PPDB data to show that these procedures do vary in practice. Having demonstrated how rule differences can be measured using existing or easily gathered data, the paper concludes by calling on future research on intra-party democracy to accept the challenge of studying party ballots in their full procedural diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Political parties
• intra-party democracy
• party cohesion
• leadership selection
• party primaries

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a more detailed discussion of the differences between party cohesion, party discipline and party unity see Van Vonno et al. (2014). This article follows their logic in using the term ‘party cohesion’ to refer to voluntary aspects that unite a party, and ‘party discipline’ to refer to more coercive mechanisms.

2 The other criteria were: ‘1. aid in preserving the two-party system; 2. help secure vigorous competition between the parties; 4. produce candidates who have some likelihood of winning voter support; 5. lead to the choice of good men; 6. result in the acceptance of candidates as legitimate’ (p. 308).

3 Thanks to William P. Cross for the latter example.

4 One that did not was a new party, which was holding its first formal leadership selection.

5 In the 2017 Canadian Conservative Party competition, would-be candidates were required to pay a $100,000 deposit, half of which was refunded if the candidate complied with party rules during the contest.

6 For selecting legislative candidates, a vetting board appointed by the national party can play a similar role of limiting choices at the most inclusive party voting stage.

7 These are sometimes dubbed ‘coronation’ ballots (Kenig, 2009; Cross & Blais, 2012). Given the lack of competition, they seem unlikely to heighten discord, but there could be some counter-campaigning (or organized abstention) if rules require winners to secure the votes of a minimal percentage of members (Aylott & Bolin, 2017).

8 The PPDB Round 2 questionnaire does ask about gatekeeping for both candidate and leadership selection, so future PPDB data will include such information. See the PPDB Round 2 codebook at www.politicalpartydb.org for more details.

9 For logistical reasons, parties must stop registration prior to the polling date unless members/supporters cast ballots in person, for instance at local polling stations or national party meetings.

10 Non-eligible members could vote if they also signed up as registered supporters.

11 Vote share of top candidate in first round comes from PPDB variable C54PLVOT1A. Number of candidates comes from variable C53PLCAN1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation: [grant number 106498].

Notes on contributors

Susan E. Scarrow

Susan E. Scarrow is Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston She has published extensively on political parties and intra-party democracy, including Beyond Party Members (Oxford University Press). She is co-director of the Political Party Database project, Email address: [email protected]