Democratization of party leadership selection: Do wider selectorates produce more competitive contests?

Kenig, Ofer

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2008.11.001

Cited by 165 publications

(140 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

130

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In France, the French Parti Socialiste (PS) held its first membership ballot for the selection of the Premier Secrétaire in 1995; the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) has held similar elections since 1997. 3 The Danish Social democrats, the PASOK, Irish Labour, the Dutch Labour and Liberal parties, the Portuguese Socialists and Social Democrats, the British Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have opened the leadership selection to party members (Kenig, 2009b).…”

Section: Democracy and Participation As Incentivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

New forms of political participation. Changing demands or changing opportunities to participate in political parties?

Faucher

2014

Comp Eur Polit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the past 30 years, party membership has dropped significantly across Europe, whereas other forms of political participation have developed. I first show how political parties have sought to be more attractive by lowering the cost of membership and creating new selective incentives (such as the right to vote in internal ballots), leading to a convergence of party rules across European parties. To understand the logic behind such reforms, one needs to take into account the broader political context and I focus on the United Kingdom to show how competition between and within parties provided the justification for changes that mostly aligned them with organisational myths. The third part argues that such changes in opportunities to participate in political parties contribute to explain why membership has continued to fall. This article draws on extensive qualitative research (including my own) conducted in and on political parties in the United Kingdom and France to provide a new account of membership recruitment crisis that contrasts with the traditional emphasis on supply/demand.

show abstract

Section: Democracy and Participation As Incentivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

New forms of political participation. Changing demands or changing opportunities to participate in political parties?

Faucher

2014

Comp Eur Polit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Consistent with developments in other parliamentary democracies (LeDuc, 2001;Kenig, 2009a: Kenig, 2009bCross and Blais, 2012a;Cross and Blais, 2012b;Pilet and Cross, 2014;Cross and Pilet, 2015) they have expanded their leadership selectorates beyond parliamentary elites to include party members (Quinn, 2010), delegates and members of affiliated organizations, particularly trade unions (Drucker, 1981;Quinn, 2004;Wickham-Jones, 2014) and even latterly, in the case of the Labour Party, their affiliated and registered supporters (Quinn, 2015;Dorey and Denham, 2016). Building on a recent comparative study of party leadership selection in the five principal Anglophone ('Westminster') parliamentary democracies (Cross and Blais, 2012a), this article first sets out its theoretical framework that purports to explain why the major parties in three of those countries, including Britain, have adopted such reform.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Choosing party leaders: Anglophone democracies, British parties and the limits of comparative politics

Denham

2016

Br Polit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since 1965, Britain's major political parties have radically, and repeatedly, changed the ways in which they choose their leaders. Building on a recent comparative study of party leadership selection in the five principal Anglophone ('Westminster') parliamentary democracies (Cross and Blais, 2012a), this article first outlines a theoretical framework that purports to explain why the major parties in three of those countries, including Britain, have adopted such reform. It then examines why five major British parties have done so since 1965. It argues that, while Cross and Blais' study makes a significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of processes of party leadership selection reform in Anglophone parliamentary democracies, it has limited explanatory power when applied to changes enacted by the major parties in modern and contemporary Britain. Instead, the adoption of such reform in the British context is ultimately best understood and explained by examining both the internal politics and external circumstances of individual parties.

show abstract

“…It has been demonstrated, for example, that some selection procedures lead to more representative candidate lists than others (Rahat, Hazan, & Katz, 2008). Some authors even argue that more inclusive participation enhances competitiveness (Cross, 1996), but this has not always been empirically confirmed (Kenig, 2009).…”

Section: Trespassing the Secret Garden: A Theoretical Framework For Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Choice of Spitzenkandidaten: A Comparative Analysis of the Europarties’ Selection Procedures

Put

Hecke

Cunningham

et al. 2016

PaG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The selection of leading candidates by the political families, the so-called Spitzenkandidaten, is relatively groundbreaking as it is the first form of political recruitment organized at the EU level. The literature on candidate selection procedures has so far concentrated on national parties and their procedures. To our knowledge the analytical model has not yet been applied at the EU level. This article will fill this gap by examining the selection procedures of Europarties, more particularly for their EC presidency candidates, a novelty of the 2014 European Parliament elections. Based on the analysis of the procedures applied within the European People's Party (EPP), the Party of European Socialists (PES), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE), the European Green Party (EGP), and the Party of the European Left (EL), one of the main findings of this article is that the procedures are largely copy-paste from the Europarties' internal procedures for selecting a president. This can largely be explained by the lack of time and experience their party elites had in the run-up to the 2014 elections. We therefore expect the Europarties to further professionalize their selection procedures and start the process earlier with more high profile politicians to stand as candidates in 2019.

show abstract

Democratization of party leadership selection: Do wider selectorates produce more competitive contests?

Cited by 165 publications

References 17 publications

New forms of political participation. Changing demands or changing opportunities to participate in political parties?

New forms of political participation. Changing demands or changing opportunities to participate in political parties?

Choosing party leaders: Anglophone democracies, British parties and the limits of comparative politics

The Choice of Spitzenkandidaten: A Comparative Analysis of the Europarties’ Selection Procedures

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About