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In this article I discuss the empirical validity of the cartel thesis, and review three analytical dimensions of the concept: organizational change, functional change and change of party competition in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. I use the empirical findings to elaborate the cartel party model, with three main results. First, in Denmark and Germany party cartels have developed in different ways; second, while the cartel thesis points to important developments, some assumptions are far-fetched and we therefore have to look for the core defining elements of cartel parties; third, the favourable and unfavourable conditions facilitating or hindering the development of party cartels have to be clarified.

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In many Western democracies, political parties have started to open to members the selection of their leaders. While most studies focus on the introduction of this new selection method, its subsequent practice is still understudied. The article contributes to our still limited knowledge of this process by looking at two multilevel countries, Germany and Spain, where the mainstream parties have sometimes organized membership ballots, especially at the regional level, for leadership selection. Thanks to two original databases on party conferences and membership ballots, the article analyzes the background of this process and reviews the most common explanations offered by the literature. It shows that they are not held when parties want to regain power, or party chairs seek their nomination, as commonly believed, but when there are intraparty leadership disputes.

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Symmetry has been a prominent feature of multilevel electoral competition in postwar Germany. However, regional parameters affecting the degree of symmetry have changed significantly over time. Looking at voting behaviour, coalition formation, party systems and party organizations, we distinguish three different phases: (a) an initial period (late 1940s to early 1960s) with a rather complex and uneven party system configuration; (b) the classical period (early 1960s to late 1980s) with a very high degree of symmetry; (c) the postunification period (since 1990) with a tendency towards a stronger regionalization of party competition. The article argues that these changes can be explained by the interaction of three different factors. First, a structural explanation focuses on the institutional framework of German `cooperative federalism', which was, at least until the 1990s, characterized by a constant trend towards more interdependence between the different political levels. Second, a socio-cultural explanation emphasizes the (varying) degree of homogeneity among the German electorate. Third, an actor-centred explanation points to the organizational capacities of political parties. German parties have developed a high degree of vertical integration and are (were) thus able to resolve disputes between the different levels of the political system or between different regions within their own ranks. In the 1990s, German parties found it more difficult to maintain their levels of vertical integration. Since reunification, territorial politics has therefore played a much greater role in multi-level electoral competition in Germany.

In comparative terms, the strong legal regulation of internal party processes is a specific feature of the German party democracy. Local and regional party conventions are the formal sites of decision making in selecting parliamentary candidates. The national party level is relatively excluded from the procedures. The article argues that the decentralization of intraparty competences has facilitated a gatekeeping role for local and regional party elites. At the constituency level, most often a single candidate is presented to the party convention after he or she has been appointed in the informal preselection activities of local party elites. Gaining a local nomination is the crucial step for obtaining a federal parliamentary mandate, either by winning a direct constituency mandate or being awarded a safe list position. At the regional level, Land party elites are in control of producing balanced party lists. The article also looks at newer developments, such as the introduction of party primaries and gender quotas. It shows that these developments have somehow weakened, but not fundamentally altered, the predominance of subnational party elites in candidate selection.