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.