Conceptualizing Intra-Party Democracy

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Wiley in Scandinavian Political Studies on 21 January 2015, available online:

Full citation: Bolleyer, N., Little, C. & Von Nostitz, Felix F. 2015. ‘Implementing democratic equality in political parties. Organizational consequences in the Swedish and German Pirate parties.’ Scandinavian Political Studies 38 (2): 158-178.

Implementing Democratic Equality in Political Parties.

Organizational Consequencesin the Swedish and the German Pirate Party.

Nicole Bolleyer, University of Exeter, Conor Little, University of Copenhagen &

Felix Christopher von Nostitz, University of Exeter

Abstract:

This paper theorizes and empirically assesses some important intra-organizational implications of maximizing democratic equality in political partiesboth between followers and members and between members and elites.They include weak member commitment, passivity of the rank-and-file membership and – depending on party structure – high levels of internal conflict. To substantiate our arguments, we examine two parties that implement principles of democratic equality in their organizations: the Swedish and German Pirate parties. These casesshow, first, that while organizational structures implementing norms of equality allowed them to rapidly mobilize a considerable following, the same structures systematically reduced their capacity to consolidate support in the longer term, a weakness that might eventually put these parties’ survival at risk.Second, they show that differences in the extent to which subnational units provide a foundation for member mobilization helps to explain variation in the level of internal conflict experienced by these parties.

Keywords: Democratic equality, organizational inclusiveness, intra-party democracy, Pirate parties, membership, intra-party conflict

1. Introduction: Intra-party Democracy and Intra-organizational Trade-offs

Many proponentsof intra-party democracy (IPD) seem to at least implicitly assume that democracy as implemented within a voluntary organization functions in similar ways as democracy implemented in a nation state. Critics of IPD, in contrast, do not tend to look at this question very closelysince they consider the internal democratization of parties asnormatively unnecessary and, if anything, damaging for parties’ ability to beresponsive to voters, to assure internal discipline and thus to engage effectively in electoral competition (for an early critique, see Schattschneider 1942; on core issues around IPD, for instance, see Scarrow 2005; Hazan and Rahat 2010; Gauja 2012; Cross and Katz 2013). Building on a perspective on IPD introduced by Rahat et al (2008), this paper examines the implications of transposingdemocratic procedures from the state level to parties as voluntary organizations. In particular, it focuses on the intra-organizational effectsof structures intended to implement democratic equality both amongmembers (rejecting the development of a party elite among those who take party and public office) and between members and followers (breaking down organizational boundaries) in political parties that, as voluntary organizations, need to generate voluntary support to assure their survival (e.g. Wilson 1973; Hartleb 2013).

Taking this perspective, the following section developstwo arguments. First, equality between members and followers (high organizational inclusiveness)risks undermining individual members’ commitment, i.e. their emotional affiliation to the party as a collective. Second, a highly inclusive selectorate (i.e. members with decision-making power) can generate high levels of internal conflict that, in turn, may threaten the unity and thus the functioning of a party as an organization, as a number of Green parties – most notably the German Greens – experienced decades earlier (Poguntke 1993; Frankland 2008; Frankland et al 2008). However, this depends on the capacity of members to mobilize, which in turn is influenced by the structural strength of subnational units. To substantiate these arguments empirically, wepresent a comparative assessment of two parties that aim at implementing norms of democratic equality: the Swedish and German Pirate parties. While these parties are ‘most similar’ in that both are participatory and democratic, the extent to which their subnational units provide a basis for member identification and mobilization differs significantly due to variation in their structural strength. The empirical analysis shows that both parties have experienced negative consequences including weak member commitment as a result of their attempts to be open and inclusive. Differences in their subnational units, meanwhile, have mediated the extent to which a diverse and formally powerful membership leads to high levels of internal conflict. We conclude with a discussion of the broader implications of our findings and we identify areas for future research.

From Democratic to Intra-organizational Rights – The Consequences of Implementing Democratic Equality in Political Parties

Following Rahat et al (2008), ‘state democracy’ and ‘intra-organizational democracy’ are two complementaryspheres in which democratic values are implemented. However, while some democratic valuessuch as inclusive decision-making reflect the equality between citizens and are thus crucial at state level, they still might generate problematic consequences when implemented within a voluntary organization (Rahat et al 2008: 674-6; see also Hazan and Rahat 2010). The following sections will elaborate in detail on two tensions that emerge from attempts to implement democratic values in political parties. The first tension is between organizational inclusiveness – an expression of the equality of all citizens who are free to come and go without the organization imposing any constraints on them – and member commitmentto the same organization. The second tension is between levels of intra-organizational diversity or pluralism – reflecting the equality between members as individuals who are entitled to articulate and fend for their preferences within the organization– and party unity.

2.1 The Tension between Organizational Inclusiveness and Member Commitment

In his seminal study of US parties, Eldersveld highlighted an important dilemma:

‘The political party is constantly plagued by the need to reconcile two divergent goals: group solidarity (conscious selection of members) and social representation (unrestricted entry in the organization).’

(Eldersveld 1964: 47).

Parties need to balance inclusiveness and selectivity, maximizing electoral support while still giving members reasons to stay committed and provide ongoing support. An unhappy party member can become inactive and voluntary organizations such as parties face the constant possibility of member exit (Hirschman 1970; Wilson 1973). Entry restrictions and membership duties (i.e. selectivity) are important since the willingness to meet such requirements implies that attaining membership is valuable to those who join. Such restrictions function as an ‘organizational filter’ and thereby have the effect of selecting individuals who value membership and are therefore more likely to be committed to the party. While the problem of membership decisions unrepresentative of the party’s electoral base is minimized if a party maximizes inclusiveness and minimizes selectivity, it is replaced by the problem of cultivating a cohesive support base. In contrast, defined by legal boundaries, democracy on the state level is self-contained to a much greater extent than democracy in a party. Equivalent access to citizenship elsewhere is not easily available and, thus, competition for ‘members’ is low.The implications of high inclusiveness in political parties were highlighted by Schattschneider:

(…) no one is forced to join a party and, if anyone does join, he assumes no obligations. In what sense is a partisan injured if he is deprived of the right to control an organization towards which he has no duties? (Schattschneider1942: 59)

In other words, if the party is unwilling (or, as is the case in the US, unable) to privilege members over mere supporters due to strongly held notions of citizen equality, the allocation of membership rights cannot be used as a selective incentive to strengthen member commitment, and membership is devaluedfrom followers’ perspectives. Drawing on Olson’s classic work (1965),supporters who are neither committed to the party nor have ever done any work for it can free-ride by enjoying exactly the same decision-making rights as long-term activists. Moreover, building a party’s membership requires winning new followers without losing the existing ones. These are two distinct goals that require different structural mechanisms (Conway and Feigert 1968). Achieving the latter goal – keeping members – is contingent on existing members’ commitment. By eroding ‘internalized exit barriers’ in established members without strengthening them in new members (Hirschman 1970), democratizing reforms may result in the very membership decline that they are designed to remedy.

2.2 The (Possible) Tension between Intra-organizational Equality and Party Unity and the Role of Subnational Party Units

Open organizational boundaries are not unique to democratic parties. Indeed, they are not unusual in authoritarian parties. However, when maximizing the inclusiveness of the selectoratealongside the inclusiveness of membership, democratic parties give up control over who will feed into intra-party decisions, which can have severe repercussions for party unity (Schattschneider1942: 59-61). There are two ways in which such equality among members (i.e. between rank-and-file and office-holders) can be implemented.

The first is empowering members by allocating decision-making rights equally and thereby avoiding the development of a party elite controlling internal decisions. This may lead to a diverse and formally powerful membership and the conditions for considerable internal conflict. The second way in which equality among members can be implemented is by protecting the rights of members from interference and sanctions by the party elite, even if members use these rights to the detriment of the organization. Some parties give elites wide-ranging authority to sanction the behavior of members and organizational units in order to prevent such behavior. The absence of such sanctions prevents elites from exercising top-down control (Rosenblum 2010). This means not only that conflict is more likely, as without the threat of sanctions damaging behavior is less costly for members, but also that party elites will have fewer tools available to respond to it when it occurs.

Equality among members in the form of a formally empowered and hard-to-sanction membership may increase the potential for high levels of internal conflict. However, anumber of classic works suggest that whether the formal allocation of decision-making rights in a voluntary organization leads to these rights’ active usage depends how members relate to one another. Lipset et al (1956: 12-15), for instance, argued that if union members have very little in common and the membership is atomized, then the likelihood that groups of members act collectively decreases. Sartori (1973: 20)has stressed that democratization denotes the ‘massification’ of politics, which is distinct from the meaningful participation of the same masses. If this is so, in the context of highly inclusive party organizations, atomization should be most pronounced when democratic decision-making is vested in a single national body embracing the membership as a whole rather than in regional or local units. This is because if we find that subnational units have considerable decision-making autonomy, they provide a foundation for territorially defined identities and smaller-scale coordination between members, connecting subsets of members sharing certain interests within the organization as a whole. While this should facilitate collective mobilization and thereby reduce atomization, it may make conflict more likely (Wilson 1973: 114).[1] Thus, depending on the structural position of the subnational layers in a party, we expect that the implementation of democratic equality is more or less likely to lead to member mobilization and thus to internal conflict.

3. Case Selection, Sources and Methods

To examine whether and under which conditions the structural realization of democratic equality indeed has negative intra-organizational consequences such as membership fluctuations, passivity of rank-and-file members and high levels of internal conflict, we compare two recently-emerged Pirate parties in Sweden and Germany. These parties are similar in some important respects. Both the Swedish Pirate Party (Piratpartiet, founded in January 2006as the first Pirate party) and the German Pirates (Die Piratenpartei, founded in September 2006) seek to maximize organizational inclusiveness and equality between members (i.e. inclusive selectorates), reflecting their emphasis on the value of an open and transparent society as well as democratic equality (Uszkai and Vicā 2012: 49; Demker 2013: 7-12). Compared to established parties that are much less permissive in allowing access to their organization or decision-making processes, they represent extreme cases in respect of the main causal conditions of interest (see Table 1 below) and are thus ideally suited to exploring whether and how the organizational consequences of implementing democratic equality in political parties play out (Seawright and Gerring 2008: 301-302).They have quickly attracted significant support and have gained access to parliament[2], which has brought in valuable resources and has attracted media attention. While this can be advantageous, it also leaves them particularly exposed to organizational pressures that put strain on these still-young and inexperienced parties (Bolleyer 2013).

Examining the consequences of implementing democratic equality in two different national political systems allow usintroduce a degree of diversity in the settings in which this relationshipis examined (see also Jahn 1993), enhancing the potential generalizability of our findings.[3]If organizational inclusiveness linked to inclusive intra-party decision-making indeed has negative intra-organizational consequences, as theorized earlier, we should the hypothesized tendencies (membership fluctuations and passivity of rank-and-file) in both cases, despite the two parties operating in different institutional settings.At the same time, this particular pair allows us to simultaneously vary the position of subnational units and thereby to examine its impact, in line with a ‘most similar systems’ approach, as the parties are similar in so many other respects (Przeworski and Teune 1970: 32-24). If the relative strength of subnational party units as a basis for member identification accompanied by the presence/absence of top-down sanctions to punish destructive behaviour contributes to the mobilization of conflict, patterns of conflict should differ, since regional branches in the German Pirates are structurally much stronger than the corresponding local units in Sweden. Table 1 summarizes how our pair-wise comparison (i.e. the configuration of similarities and differences displayed in these two cases) allows us to examine our theoretical explanations.

Table 1: Structural Similarities and Differences of the Swedish and German Pirate Party

Our comparative analysis of these cases proceeds in two main steps. The mapping of organizational rules is based on party constitutions and other party documents. Having compared their formal infrastructures, we then assess whether these parties experienced weak member commitment and high levels of internal conflict by drawing on newspaper reports, party communications and existing secondary literature, which are complemented by email correspondence and in-depth telephone interviews with party activists. All information provided in our case studies is triangulated by relying on different types of sources or, if information was provided by individuals, by confirming the information from a different perspective (e.g. that of a party member and an external expert; a party office holder and non-office holding party activist).[4]

4. Organizational Rules and Structures in the Swedish and German Pirate Parties

4.1 Organizational Inclusiveness

Ideal-typically, parties that maximize inclusiveness have minimal membership requirements: membership is free; it is not restricted to specific categories of people; its regulation is decentralized and there may not even be any national membership register; there is no probationary period before full membership can be attained; and the distinction between followers and members may be blurred by the institutionalization of a supporter or guest status and by allowing non-members to be candidates for both party and public offices.[5] While established parties increasingly experiment with elements such as guest memberships and move towards more inclusive structures, they nonetheless remain relatively selective (Gauja forthcoming).

The Swedish Pirate Party, in contrast,is extremely inclusive. In January 2006 its founder, Rick Falkvinge, launched a website through which members were recruited (Erlingsson and Persson 2010: 122). The party initially expected members to pay a nominal fee (5SEK or approximately €0.60 per annum), but membership has been free since 2008. Members have few obligations other than agreeing with “the party's program of principles and statutes” (§ 2.1.1in Piratpartiet 2013a)[6]; signing up does not require Swedish citizenship or residency; the party does not forbid members from being members of other parties; and members who have been expelled can be readmitted, albeit by a decision of the party executive (§ 2.2.6; correspondence with party activist, 13 August 2013). The Swedish Pirates assign central control over membership in two respects: they provide for a probationary period of two months before members acquire voting rights (§ 3.1.1) and new members need to join at the national level before joining a local association (Appendix 2, § 2.1).

The regulation of membership in the German Pirate Partyis more decentralized. Decisions on member access are made at the lowest organizational level and the regional branch has the power to reject membership applications. While it too is highly inclusive in relative terms (membership in other parties is allowed, for example (Sec A § 2.3)), membership requirements are more demanding in the German Pirates than in its Swedish sister party. Tellingly, the concept of membership in their national constitution explicitly refers to the obligation to work for the party as well as the rights of membership. The party charges €48 a year for membership (Sec B § 5) and members must be Germans who live in Germany, and must be over 16 (Sec A § 2.1).[7] If our theoretical expectations hold, member commitment will be lower in the Swedish party and, thus, exits from the organization and passivity among rank-and-file members should be more pronounced than in the German case.

4.2 Implementing Member Equality: Allocation and Protection of Member Rights