The democratisation of party leadership selection: The Portuguese experience

Abstract

In recent years, members of established political parties have received increased powers to select candidates and leaders. Several explanations have been advanced to account for this trend, focusing on the evolution of the political system, the characteristics of party systems or intra-party dynamics. The aim of this article is to examine the introduction of democratising reforms for leadership selection in Portuguese parties. Despite the high degree of centralisation and the low levels of internal participation, all governing parties have expanded members' rights during the last decade. The main findings suggest that party leaders have decided to change methods for leadership selection mainly for instrumental purposes in order to consolidate their internal power or gain electoral benefits. Moreover, this organisational transformation has had reduced effects on the internal party functioning. Regardless of these similarities, the data show that there are important differences between parties with regard to levels of participation and internal competition.

Intra-party democracy from members’ viewpoint: the case of left-wing parties in Portugal

“…Portuguese political parties have made important democratising reforms over the last 20 years (Lisi 2010(Lisi , 2015a. The PS was the first party to introduce closed primaries for leadership selection in 1998.…”

Vers des primaires ouvertes : des partis en quête de légitimité populaire. Les cas du PQ et du PLC

“…Cette dernière prédiction ne s'avère cependant pas toujours. Au Portugal, par exemple, le processus d'ouverture de sélection des chefs n'a pas été accompagné d'une perte de contrôle des élites des partis (Lisi, 2010).…”

Party leadership in Poland in comparative perspective

“…Referring the Polish case to comparative studies, it needs underlining that election turnout on the nationwide level [Fauvelle-Aymar, François 2006] and on the internal one within the party [Lisi 2010;Wauters 2015] is linked to competition. However, the analysis of Polish cases has not confirmed this regularity.…”