Most of the political
parties in democratic societies try to involve their members by giving them a
role in the process of selecting local and national party leaders as well as
candidates for a range of elected offices. Here, the focus will be on internal
selection of party leaders only. To read about candidate selection within
political parties, see the file "Candidate Selection within Political
Parties".
There are three concepts
that are central to the issue of party selection of leaders. One is centralisation,
which is what level in the party – local, regional, or national –controls the
candidate selection. The second is participation, meaning who –
ordinary members or top leadership – controls the process at the level where
the decision is taken. A third is mediation, the mechanism through which
organized interests within the party can gain influence.[1]
Centralisation
In an extremely centralised
system, a national party agency would decide on the leadership selection
without any involvement by the local branches of the party. At the other end of
the scale would be a system where the most local branches of the party would decide
on their leaders and possibly also representatives on national leadership
bodies without any approval or participation from the national level. As in so
many other fields, the actual practice is usually somewhere between the two
extremes.
In most political parties,
local selection processes deal mostly with local candidates to general
elections, while the national leadership is selected on a national basis. In
both cases, the party has to strike a difficult balance between national level
strategies and local sensitivities while considering the party’s overall role
in the political process at all levels.
Participation
A situation with extremely
low participation would be if the party leader alone would decide on his or her
leadership body. The other extreme would be if the ordinary members of the
party would decide with limited or nonexistent participation by current party leaders.
Parties in different
countries have chosen varying degrees of
member participation in the selection process, from party-run primary elections
to indirect elections where party branches send delegates to a national
congress.
Mediation
Mediation describes the
problem of recognizing, and the process of mediating, the distinct interests in
a political party and its organisations. Most political parties consist of
different wings, subunits or special groups, which constantly seek to influence
the party’s leadership and therefore also the selection process of party
leaders. High mediation of different interests would lead to a fair
representation and participation of all distinct groups in the leadership
selection and as a consequence in the leadership committee, too.
Mechanisms of party
leadership selection[2]
The three concepts of
centralisation, participation, and mediation need to be balanced in party
leadership selection processes. Some parties put more emphasis on one of them
while others try to include all, and it will ultimately depend on issues of
political culture, party ideology, and organisational traditions what the
outcome will be. Some parties also apply internal quotas to diversify the
representation on the top national leadership body.
Common mechanisms of
leadership selection include the following:
- Only the members of the party's parliamentary
caucus decide. The group that makes the decision about who
is going to be the next party leader therefore consists of a small number
of people. This shows a high level of centralization and low levels of
participation and mediation.
- Another selection method is
election by an Electoral
College, which consists of a limited group of, for
example, the parliamentary caucus, representatives of constituency
associations, and representatives of any affiliated trade unions or trade
associations. Each of the groups usually holds an equal share of the votes
necessary to elect the party leader. This mechanism reflects a compromise
and the aim to mediate between different interests.
- Some parties let widely open party conventions
(also called direct party vote or open primary) decide rather than the
parliamentary party. A certain similarity to American primary elections
for election candidate selection cannot be overlooked. This method
emphasizes participation.
- Another type of selection
method would combine restricted participation in the election with a wide
mediation of interests (especially those linked to de-centralization)
called the indirect
party vote (Carty and Blake 1999). Voting can be
restricted to party membership or parliamentary membership and can be set
up with fees to pay. A fair mediation of the votes is achieved through
weighing the votes with results of the constituency associations or voting
results in the regions in order to ensure representation of regional
interests in the political party’s decision on leadership.
- The last type can be named a structured selection,
because the voting is on the one hand universal to everybody who wants to
participate, while the results are strongly structured through mediation,
i.e. different interests are recognized more than others. This means that
the result of the leadership election will be modified ex post in a way
that the votes of for instances regional party branches, women’s wings and
subunits will gain more influence than others,
Consequences of different
selection methods
The leadership selection
mechanism a political party applies has implications on what types of leaders
are selected.
Leadership selection
through only parliamentary party members by caucus tends to lead to the
election of a leader from within the parliamentary circle, usually with long
experience in the parliamentary arena.
When the concept of
mediation dominates the process, organized party branches and/or auxiliary
organisations get a bigger role, and the negotiation between them can be
clearer than in internal struggles between member interests. In the best-case
scenario, leaders selected through this process enjoy legitimacy within the
party, but mediation processes can also leave the general membership with no or
little influence over the decision.
Mechanisms with emphasis on
decentralization clearly shift the balance towards candidates from states or
regions and open opportunities for persons outside traditional areas of office
to be selected.
Open selection processes[3]
with a high level of participation from ordinary party members tend to lead to
the election of the most popular and well-known candidate, often irrespective
of the candidates level of experience in
legislative and party work. Since the party leadership has no influence on the
selection process (such as through mediation of certain interests), even party
leaders with rather short parliamentary careers or with no experience in an
elective office may be elected.
The opening of internal
leadership selection mechanisms to more general participation or
democratization has also led to unintended consequences such as to the rise of
internal battles between party groups and factions or even to the phenomenon of
candidates taking part in leadership elections without any dedication to the
party itself but rather to a single issue that in their view needs to be
addressed publicly.
In general, political
parties all over the world tend to want to have a wide involvement in their
leadership selection, but decisions vary on how to balance different regional,
issue-based, and participatory interests.
