Intra-Party Deliberation, Under-Represented Groups, and Candidate Selection: The Case of Demos in Romania
| Author | Victoria Stoiciu,Sergiu Gherghina |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920939818 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium: Democratic Deliberation and Under-Represented Groups |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920939818
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(2) 179 –185
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920939818
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Intra-Party Deliberation,
Under-Represented Groups,
and Candidate Selection: The
Case of Demos in Romania
Victoria Stoiciu1 and Sergiu Gherghina2
Abstract
Intra-party deliberation has the potential to involve groups that are traditionally under-
represented in politics. This article aims to identify the conditions that favor and inhibit the
inclusion of four under-represented categories in intra-party deliberation. It analyzes how a
newly formed Romanian political party engages women, lower social strata, ethnic minorities,
and sexual minorities. Deliberation was used to select the candidates for the 2019 European
elections. The empirical evidence comes from ethnographic research, and the results indicate that
the progressive stance of the party and a stepwise structure of deliberation favor the inclusion of
under-represented groups.
Keywords
intra-party deliberation, candidate selection, under-represented groups
Accepted: 16 June 2020
Introduction
Traditional political parties are not favorable settings for deliberation. This happens for
two reasons. First, political parties aim to articulate, represent, and aggregate citizens’
preferences and interests (Sartori, 1976). They are aggregative institutions that do not
often match the principles of deliberation, which involves the formation of preferences
and opinions (Cohen, 1989; Gutmann and Thompson, 2004). Second, the organization of
political parties relies—at least to some extent—on hierarchical structures. Parties have
several units, decisions are taken at several levels, and the intra-party dynamic is competi-
tive (Close and Gherghina, 2019). All these require division of tasks, coordination, and
various degrees of members’ inclusiveness in the decision-making process.
Some of the newly emerged parties in Europe bring nuances to these views. In practice,
the aggregative–deliberative divide is not as sharp as described and the two mechanisms
1Department of European Studies, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2Department of Politics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Corresponding author:
Sergiu Gherghina, Department of Politics, Room 1206 Adam Smith Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
G12 8RT, Glasgow, UK.
Email: sergiulor@yahoo.com
939818PSW0010.1177/1478929920939818Political Studies ReviewStoiciu and Gherghina
research-article2020
Symposia and New Ideas
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