Democracy within Parties: Candidate Selection Methods and their Political Consequences

Political parties, both within Britain and throughout the world, have been criticised for failing in their democratic performance. There is widespread evidence to suggest that citizens are increasingly disconnected from and disaffected with the institutions and formal processes of representative democracy, and in part, political parties are to blame. Scholars point to declining party memberships, policy convergence between parties, declining partisan attachments, parties’ increasing reliance on the resources of the state and their movement away from civil society as indicators of this trend. The weakening of political parties is said to, in turn, weaken democracies. At the same time, parties are reviewing their own performance in response to ongoing membership decline and calls for reform, and implementing organisational changes aimed at reversing this trend and maintaining their popularity. These changes, such as the Conservative Party's use of primaries to select its parliamentary candidates, could be viewed as part of a broader movement to ‘democratise’ political parties by granting individual members and supporters new or expanded powers to select party leaders and candidates. It is in this context that the title of Hazan and Rahat's book, Democracy within Parties, is particularly salient. Although often lauded as a panacea for the failings of political parties, are more inclusive candidate selection mechanisms actually necessary and are they appropriate? As the authors suggest, the relationship between participation, representation and competition is not a straightforward one. For example, it is not necessarily the case that greater participation might lead to more desirable representative outcomes. Indeed, one of the major contributions that this work makes to party scholarship is in alerting us to the fact that how political parties choose to select their candidates for public office matters—each selection mechanism has distinct political consequences, which are felt both inside and outside the party.