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First published May 2001

Bringing the Members Back in?: Democratizing Candidate Selection in Britain and Spain

Jonathan HopkinView all authors and affiliations
Volume 7, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068801007003005

Abstract

Primary elections and membership ballots are becoming more common as a means of selecting candidates in European parties. This article assesses the likely implications of these changes for party cohesion by examining the American experience of primaries and contrasting US candidate selection with the membership ballots and primaries recently adopted by parties in the UK and Spain. It is argued that, in the absence of state regulation of candidate selection in European parties, these changes are unlikely to undermine party organizations as primaries have in the US. Instead, the European experience suggests that party leaders have been able to retain ultimate control over candidate selection, and that the democratization of the process has been more formal than real.

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The author would like to thank Reuven Hazan, Paul Pennings, José Ramón Montero and participants in the 1999 ECPR workshop on candidate selection for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. They are not responsible for the faults that remain.
1 Although the use of primaries in both Israel and the US has not significantly undermined the strong position enjoyed by incumbents (Rahat and Sher-Hadar 1999: 243).
2 Similar `pluralistic' approaches, which recognize the diverse motivations for political action, can be found in Kitschelt (1989) and Seyd and Whiteley (1992).
3 This has been the case in Israel, where membership did rise after the introduction of primaries, although accompanied by dubious manoeuvrings by candidates and special interests (Rahat and Sher-Hadar 1999: 244-7).
4 Although some scholars argue that primaries are a symptom, rather than a cause, of American parties' organizational weakness (for example, Epstein 1980).
5 In 1997, Labour had one member for every 33 voters, whilst the Conservatives' ratio was 1: 24. These are low figures by European standards.
6 The Conservatives' vote share has declined from 48-9 percent in the 1950s to 42-3 percent in the 1980s and early 1990s to just over 30 percent in 1997; Labour polled 44-8 percent in the 1950s, 37-43 percent in the 1970s and 27-30 percent in the 1980s, before recovering to 43 percent in 1997.
7 At national level, candidates require either a majority backing from the national executive (Comisión Ejecutiva Federal), backing from 15 percent of the party's standing assembly (Comité Federal), majority backing of the party's territorial assembly (Consejo Territorial), or the signatures of 7 percent of party members (PSOE 1998: Art. 22).

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Published In

Volume 7, Issue 3
Pages: 343 - 361
Article first published: May 2001
Issue published: May 2001

Keywords

  1. candidates
  2. cohesion
  3. membership
  4. primaries
  5. selection

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