Does intra-party democracy affect levels of trust in parties? The cases of Belgium and Israel

Shomer, Yael; Put, Gert-Jan; Gedalya-Lavy, Einat

doi:10.1057/s41269-017-0044-2

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…To begin with, in contrast with the above-mentioned studies documenting the undesired effects of intra-party democracy, the cross-national study by Shomer et al (2016) indicates that citizens display higher levels of satisfaction with democracy when their preferred party utilizes inclusive selection procedures to select candidates. A follow-up study focusing on levels of trust in parties points in a similar direction (Shomer et al 2018).…”

Section: How Intra-party Democracy Mobilizes Citizens Voters and Part...mentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Other studies only point to short-term effects on public excitement and higher scores in opinion polls, and a lack of long-term electoral effects (Cozza and Somer-Topcu 2021; Pedersen and Schumacher 2015). Finally, Shomer et al (2016; 2018) do find evidence for a positive association between democratic candidate selections and citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and trust in political parties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

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Are Citizens More Politically Engaged when Candidate Selection is Democratic? Analysis of Seven Parliamentary Election Cycles in Israel (1996–2015)

Put¹,

Shomer

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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Previous research finds limited evidence for a positive link between intra-party democracy and citizens’ inclination to vote for democratizing parties or to become more involved in partisan activities. This article investigates the association between democratic candidate selection processes and citizens’ political engagement levels, which can be considered a crucial predisposition for actual political participation. First, we test the selection processes’ effect on the two forms of political participation that are likely to be affected by democratizing intra-party reforms: electoral and partisan participation. Second, we examine how inclusive candidate selection processes are linked to three forms of engagement: watching campaign ads, reading newspapers, and discussing politics with friends and family. The analysis is based on public opinion survey data during seven election cycles from the Israel National Election Survey and candidate selection data on Israeli parties. The results of the hierarchical models show that democratic candidate selection processes are associated with higher engagement levels, while simultaneously bearing no effect on electoral and partisan participation. This implies the existence of a structural disconnection between citizens’ political engagement and participation levels in response to intra-party democracy.

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Section: How Intra-party Democracy Mobilizes Citizens Voters and Part...mentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Are Citizens More Politically Engaged when Candidate Selection is Democratic? Analysis of Seven Parliamentary Election Cycles in Israel (1996–2015)

Put¹,

Shomer

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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“…Inclusive intra-party elections have advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, they can enhance citizens' trust in political parties (Shomer et al, 2018) and the attractiveness of parties, both among voters (Pedersen and Schumacher, 2015) and potential party members (Rahat and Hazan, 2007). Moreover, intra-party elections represent a reliable channel for participation and can even increase members' and voters' participation in (other) partisan activities (Heidar and Saglie, 2003).…”

Section: Intra-party Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost but not blown away: How do losers of party leadership contests react?

2022

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Many Western parties have opened up the process of leadership selection in order to increase the party’s attractiveness, but negative reactions of losers in such contests might undermine these efforts. It has extensively been documented that losers of elections or referendums become less supportive for the political system, but the question is whether such a winner-loser gap also occurs in the context of intra-party elections. We examine unique panel data collected before and after the leadership elections of the Flemish Christian-Democratic Party and Liberal-Democratic Party and investigate the difference in change in attitudes and behavior of party members who voted for the losing candidates and those who voted for the winner. Contrary to earlier research on candidate selection, we find that only decision acceptance differs between winners and losers, while there is no gap in support for the electoral process, party membership satisfaction, and members’ activity within the party.

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“…Poguntke 2000; Allern 2010, Allern & Bale 2012. Recent studies of the impact of member/supporter ballots for leadership selection have suggested that their use has at least a shortterm and positive effect on public attitudes towards the party that uses them (Shomer et al 2018), but that more inclusive party decision processes for candidate or leadership selection do not necessarily produce longer-term attitudinal effects, and may actually have dampening effects in areas such as levels of partisan campaign engagement (Kernell 2015) or voter-party congruence (Spies & Kaiser 2014). Thus, while party theory provides strong reasons to think that memberbased party decision-making might strengthen bottom-up linkage, and therefore might lead to more democratic satisfaction, the empirical evidence provides little basis to think that this is the case.…”

Section: Linking Party Organization With Democratic Satisfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Party organization and satisfaction with democracy: inside the blackbox of linkage

Webb

Scarrow

Poguntke

2019

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

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This article investigates the way in which party organizational resources and processes may affect perceptions of democracy, looking at the impact of parties' top-down communication mechanisms and bottom-up internal processes. Our examination breaks new ground by pairing party organizational data from the Political Party Database (PPDB) with individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), and shows clear evidence of the link between parties' organizational resource capacity and their ability to inspire satisfaction with democracy (the 'top-down' path from party organization to democratic evaluations). However, it does not appear that the degree of intra-party democracy practised (the 'bottom-up' path) has a similar impact. Overall, these results provide substantial evidence for the importance of party organization and agency in fostering the popular legitimacy of democratic political systems. Party Organization and Satisfaction with Democracy: IntroductionPolitical parties (in aggregate) are often given some or even much of the blame for today's democratic malaise. Some researchers portray the policies and behavior of "established" parties as the source of their own unpopularity, either because their policy collusion deprives voters of electoral choices (cf. Ignazi 2017; Katz and Mair 1995), or because changes in their financing and internal organization make parties much less reliant on support from party members and other partisans (Scarrow, Webb & Poguntke 2017). These and other changes in party priorities are said to result in "linkage failure", with rising distrust of parties and declining satisfaction with democracy seen as evidence that parties are getting worse at providing the linkage that once was fundamental to their democratic contribution (Lawson and Merkl 2014). While such diagnoses are plausible, for the most part they remain at a fairly general level: specific parties and their activities are largely absent from both theoretical and empirical research on satisfaction with democracy. Even those who have questioned the "linkage failure" narrative have most often done so in terms of country-level factors rather than by disaggregating the impact of various party practices (cf. Dalton, Farrell & McAllister 2011); this is true even though contemporary parties

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Does intra-party democracy affect levels of trust in parties? The cases of Belgium and Israel

Cited by 8 publications

References 46 publications

Are Citizens More Politically Engaged when Candidate Selection is Democratic? Analysis of Seven Parliamentary Election Cycles in Israel (1996–2015)

Are Citizens More Politically Engaged when Candidate Selection is Democratic? Analysis of Seven Parliamentary Election Cycles in Israel (1996–2015)

Lost but not blown away: How do losers of party leadership contests react?

Party organization and satisfaction with democracy: inside the blackbox of linkage

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