Party leadership selection and party leaders’ powers

Empowered grassroots or leader-centric parties

Bibliographic Data

ID6310071
AuthorsThomas Poguntke (0000-0002-3722-3211, Düsseldorf Party Research Institute (PRUF), Heinrich Heine University , D-40225, Duesseldorf), Susan E Scarrow (0000-0003-1261-730X, University of Houston), Susan Scarrow (University of Houston), Paul D Webb (0000-0003-3458-000X, University of Sussex)
Year2025
Volume79
Issue2
Pages243-262
Publication date2025-05-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueParliamentary Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-2290 • E-ISSN: 1460-2482
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pa/gsaf020
OpenAlexW4410520777
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited25

This paper explores whether parties’ leadership selection procedures carry broader implications for intraparty power. Prior scholarship has documented an ongoing shift in the ways that parties select their leaders, with a growing tendency to include grassroots supporters in such decisions, sometimes described as ‘plebiscitary intraparty democracy’. Some have portrayed moves towards more inclusive leadership selection as part of a more general shift towards the empowerment of individual party members and supporters; others have dismissed it as mere window dressing, and part of a trend towards more leader-centric parties. This study investigates these relationships, asking whether the extent of grassroots involvement in party leadership selection procedures in contemporary democracies relates in any way to the broader distribution of formal powers within parties. Contrary to some sceptics, we find no support for the argument that parties with bottom-up forms of leadership selection generally grant greater formal powers to leaders. Rather, the opposite, in fact: moreover, parties that use inclusive leadership selection procedures also tend to use plebiscitary methods across a wider array of intraparty decision-making procedures. Thus, the highly publicized spread of inclusive leadership contests can be seen as a symptom of wider shifts in the norms and practices of intraparty governance

Grassroots · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Selection (genetic algorithm · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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Open DOIOpen Access