Does It Pay Off? The Effects of Party Leadership Elections on Parties’ Trustworthiness and Appeal to Voters
| Author | Bram Wauters,Anna Kern |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720932064 |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720932064
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(4) 881 –899
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720932064
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Does It Pay Off? The Effects
of Party Leadership Elections
on Parties’ Trustworthiness
and Appeal to Voters
Bram Wauters and Anna Kern
Abstract
In the last few decades, political parties in several Western countries have opened up the process
of leadership selection to all party members. So far, research has mainly focused on the drivers of
this development, taking into account both internal factors (reducing power of middle-level party
elites) and external factors (increasing the party’s attractiveness). Only few studies have tested the
effects of these external arguments. In this study, we investigate whether parties that select their
leader inclusively (1) exhibit higher levels of trustworthiness, and are more appealing to (2) voters
and (3) potential members. Based on the procedural fairness argument, we expect a positive
effect of inclusive procedures. We conduct a vignette experiment with fictional parties and find
that inclusive selection procedures do not strengthen citizens’ perceptions of trustworthiness.
Moreover, citizens are not more willing to vote or join parties with inclusive selection procedures.
Keywords
parties, intra-party democracy, leadership selection, procedural fairness, experimental research
Accepted: 15 May 2020
Introduction
In many established democracies, party leaders are among the most important actors in
political decision-making. Evidently, their selection is a crucial decision with large impli-
cations. In the last few decades, numerous political parties have opened up the selection
procedure of their leaders to all party members. While in countries such as Spain,
Denmark, Norway, Austria and Romania, none or only a handful of parties use inclusive
selectorates, in the UK, Israel, Belgium, Canada and Portugal, it has become common
practice among almost all parties (Pilet and Cross, 2014). Although this democratization
in leadership selection cannot be found in all countries, it nevertheless constitutes a trend
(Cross and Katz, 2013; Pilet and Cross, 2014; Quinn, 2010; Sandri et al., 2015).
Department of Political Science, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
Corresponding author:
Bram Wauters, Department of Political Science, Research group GASPAR, Ghent University, Universiteitstraat
8, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Email: bram.wauters@ugent.be
932064PSX0010.1177/0032321720932064Political StudiesWauters and Kern
research-article2020
Article
882 Political Studies 69(4)
But why did these parties introduce such direct member votes? Apart from internal
reasons (strengthening the position of the party leader in the party), external reasons were
cited as motivation to introduce such direct member votes (Gauja, 2017; Lisi, 2010;
Scarrow, 1999; Wauters, 2014). These external reasons mainly consist in the assumption
that leadership elections would raise the party’s appeal to voters and (potential) members.
However, surprisingly, apart from research on the effect of inclusive leadership selection
procedures on the electoral performance of particular parties (Pedersen and Schumacher,
2015) and on voters’ levels of trust in parties in general (Shomer et al., 2016), the external
arguments leading to the introduction of leadership elections have not been evaluated
empirically. By setting up an experimental design, we are able to disentangle the effect of
the principle of internal democracy from indirect, associated effects such as more media
attention and more appealing leadership profiles. In this way, we can determine whether
inclusive selection procedures in itself are beneficial for political parties. Rather than
focussing on only one success indicator, we adopt a broad approach by including three
indicators in this study. We investigate whether parties that allow party members to select
their party leader (1) exhibit higher levels of trustworthiness, and are (2) more attractive
to future voters and (3) potential party members. Based on the procedural fairness theory
(Grimes, 2006) and on the support for more inclusive selection procedures among citi-
zens (Close et al., 2017), we expect that inclusive leadership selection procedures raise a
party’s appeal and trustworthiness. Indeed, apart from decision outcomes (and the satis-
faction about them), also the nature of decision-making procedures could impact percep-
tions of parties’ trustworthiness and attractiveness (Carman, 2010). Rather than focussing
on trust in parties in general (Shomer et al., 2016), we investigate whether individual
parties benefit from organizing inclusive leadership contests. The central research ques-
tion of this article is therefore threefold: Do inclusive leadership selection methods (1)
lead to higher levels of trust in parties that use them? And do they make these parties more
attractive to (2) voters and (3) potential members? To answer these questions, we designed
a vignette experiment with fictional parties that allows us to control for several interven-
ing variables. We conducted this survey experiment among Flemish citizens in January
and February 2019.
Our study shows that citizens who were exposed to fictional parties with an inclusive
selection procedure are not more likely to trust or vote for these parties than citizens who
were presented with an exclusive selection procedure. Also with respect to joining a
political party, no difference was found between citizens who were exposed to a party
with an inclusive selectorate and citizens who evaluated the party profile with the exclu-
sive selectorate. This finding holds both for parties with a rightist ideological profile and
for parties with leftist characteristics (which were both separately tested). We hence find
that opening up the selection procedure does not seem to pay off directly for parties:
neither in terms of perceived trustworthiness or higher vote share nor in terms of raising
party membership.
This article is structured as follows. First, we review the literature on the concept
and causes of party leadership elections. Next, we highlight the few studies that inves-
tigated whether democratizing leadership elections has produced any external effects.
Based on the procedural fairness theory, we then argue that it is likely that more inclu-
sive selectorates result in higher levels of trust in political parties and in an increased
propensity to vote for or to join these parties. After setting out the methodology, we
present the results of our vignette experiment, and we end with a discussion of the
implications of our findings.
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