engleski

Intra-Party Democracy: Criteria for Assessment

Intra-party democracy (IPD) is an emerging research topic of empirical political science dealing with political parties. This paper reviews contemporary empirical work on IPD (or some aspects of it like candidate selection or party leadership selection) and tries to identify different normative and conceptual approaches to IPD and its relationship to system-level democracy. There are three main dilemmas concerning IPD. First, should we conceptualize IPD in much the same vein as system- level democracy or does it require a simple account of whether citizens (party members) “have more say in politics”? Second, should we have an a priori positive view of IPD or should we favor it only if it contributes to the functioning of system- level democracy? Finally, does IPD refer to the overall intra- party decision-making processes or only to those decisions that have direct consequences for the quality of the democratic political process? Based on literature review and discussion of key issues, the paper proposes an operationalization of the IPD concept, as well as dimensions and indicators of party organizational life that enable empirical measurement of the concept in a theoretically meaningful way.

democracy ; party members ; political party ; intra-party democracy

nije evidentirano