Thesis
The more the merrier? an exploration of inclusive party leadership selection reform
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2024
- Thesis identifier
- T17027
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 202090983
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Party leaders in parliamentary democracies not only compete for the top office in the country, but are immensely influential to their parties, the wider system and political attitudes more generally. This thesis analyses the causes and consequences of the trend of recent decades where parties are democratising their leadership selection process, to explore how parties’ internal decisions affect democracy at the system level and vice versa. I first explore the connection between elite polarisation and inclusive leadership selection reform. I analyse 28 cases of parties democratising their leadership selectorates to members across 7 Western parliamentary democracies. I find that elite polarisation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for inclusive leadership selection reform, for parties competing in a bipolar party system specifically. I then explore the relationship between party outcomes and voters’ feelings of representation by the current leader of the party they support to further understand the importance of the party in leaders’ connections with voters. Using a representative survey from the UK, the results of binary logistic regression analysis show that perceptions of the party do matter for fostering feelings of representation by the party leader, but not all elements of party outputs. Moreover, in an evaluation of the importance of this specific representation for satisfaction with democracy, the results demonstrate a positive association between the two variables, the effect of which is stronger for those who support the party of government. Finally, I explore the trade-off between normative perceptions of democracy and the negative party consequences that come with inclusive leadership selection reform. Results of a survey experiment demonstrate that voters’ attitudes towards democracy at the party level do not translate to the system level. Voters hold conflicting attitudes that present specific barriers for parties to overcome in their role as a representative mechanism.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Reher, Stefanie, 1986-
- Greene, Zachary
- Resource Type
- DOI
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PDF of thesis T17027 | 2024-08-05 | Public | Download |