The ‘Open Garden of Politics’: The impact of open primaries for candidate selection in the British Conservative Party
| Author | Agnès Alexandre-Collier |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148116636518 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2016, Vol. 18(3) 706 –723
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148116636518
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The ‘Open Garden of Politics’:
The impact of open primaries
for candidate selection in the
British Conservative Party
Agnès Alexandre-Collier
Abstract
Since 2003, hundreds of open primaries for the selection of parliamentary candidates have
been held by the British Conservative Party as a means of democratising party organisation and
enhancing representativeness. In the run-up to the 2015 general election, only 26 primaries
could be identified. This article will apply the analytical framework provided by Hazan and Rahat
to demonstrate that the relative failure of the experiment in terms of intra-party competition,
participation, representation and responsiveness is counterbalanced by the benefits brought
by this procedure, both as a tool of party branding at the national level and as a strategy for
raising the profiles of candidates at the local level. Therefore, if mainstream parties conceded
that the advantages of open primaries need not necessarily be understood in terms of internal
democratisation but of party self-promotion, they would realise that open primaries could also
serve as a means of preempting populism.
Keywords
candidate selection, Conservative Party, general election, open primaries
Candidate selection is a crucial process, which determines the future composition of
parliamentary parties. In European countries, such as France or Italy, party primaries—
whether open (to voters) or closed (i.e. restricted to party members)—have increased as
innovative methods for parties to select their parliamentary candidates. In order to bypass
continuous decline, party dealignment (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2002) and collapse in
party memberships (Van Biezen et al., 2012), parties have devised strategies to democra-
tise (Kittilson and Scarrow, 2003) and enhance representativeness, hoping to reach out to
a wider electorate. In opening up to civil society, parties respond to what Lefebvre and
Roger call a growing ‘injunction to deliberation’ (Lefebvre and Roger, 2009). Indeed,
primaries appear as a democratising process, whose aim is to open up the party to the
wider community, mobilise citizens (Gauja, 2012: 642) and offer them a platform for
Université de Bourgogne, France
Corresponding author:
Agnès Alexandre-Collier, UFR Langues et Communication, Centre Interlangues, Texte Image, Langage (EA
4182), Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 4 Boulevard Gabriel, F-21000 Dijon, France.
Email: Agnes.Collier@u-bourgogne.fr
636518BPI0010.1177/1369148116636518The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsAlexandre-Collier
research-article2016
Article
Alexandre-Collier 707
decision-making, based on the underlying assumption that the ideal type of democracy is
to be found in increased citizen engagement (Gauja, 2012: 655) and deliberation.
Although inspired by the United States, this device has been progressively extended to
Western European countries, either for candidate selection or for leadership elections and
subjected to increasing scrutiny (Bille, 2001; Corbetta and Vignati, 2013; Hopkin, 2001;
Lefebvre, 2011; Sandri and Seddone, 2015). But whereas in US primaries, the process is
both regulated and often required by the State, West European parties regulate their own
process, in order to keep it under control (Pennings and Hazan, 2001: 269). In Europe,
primaries are generally studied as a top-down process driven by party leadership while
being perceived as a means of reinvigorating the grassroots and empowering the bases or,
as Katz put it, a leadership strategy to ‘democratise candidate selection in form, while
centralising control in practice’ (Katz, 2001). In the UK, it was on the grounds of citizen
empowerment, but also the need for better representativeness that the Conservative Party
introduced open primaries for the selection of parliamentary candidates, thus pioneering
a process, which is still being considered by other British parties. However, the spirit of
open primaries runs counter to the traditional structure and organisational ethos of the
party, which makes the case of the Conservative Party all the more interesting to study. At
least until the 1997 electoral defeat, which encouraged the party to re-examine their
organisation, the Conservative Party had long been described as the archetype of the oli-
garchic party structure in line with Michels’ ‘iron law’ (Kelly, 2004; Low, 2011: 3–5;
McKenzie, 1955; Michels, 1962 [1915]). Kelly (2003) acknowledged the lack of internal
democracy, arguing that ‘the party’s structure was still based upon an arrangement
mapped out under Disraeli: one where the extra-parliamentary party would always be
subservient to the parliamentary party’ (Kelly, 2003: 83). In the wake of organisational
reforms introduced in 1998 (Hague, 1997), open primaries were envisaged as one of the
radical organisational changes, which the party leadership was ready to consider with a
view to democratising party organisation.
The very notion of open primaries requires conceptual clarification. Although the
expression is used by scholars and journalists in relation to the case of the British
Conservative Party, the method used by the party actually involves a procedure of candi-
date selection, which is open to both party members and registered voters in the constitu-
encies concerned. Although this article will continue to use this label for practical reasons,
the method should in fact be more accurately identified as one of ‘mixed primaries’
(Kenig et al., 2015). Since 2003, two kinds of open primaries have been introduced: all-
postal primaries, organised throughout the constituencies concerned, with voting bulle-
tins and pre-paid envelopes sent to all registered voters and primary meetings advertised
in the local press, in which all registered voters are invited to participate. Only three
postal primaries have been held, while hundreds of primary meetings have been organ-
ised throughout the country. Three sequences can thus be observed, each one being indic-
ative of a specific strategy, in terms of party agenda. The process was first accelerated
between 2006 and 2009 with the organisation of 116 primaries as part of David Cameron’s
modernisation agenda (Criddle, 2010: 315). It then peaked in 2009 with the two all-postal
primaries held in response to allegations of corruption in the party and with a view to
detoxifying the ‘Conservative brand’. In the third sequence leading up to the May 2015
general election, the process has been significantly slowed down. In the meantime, the
party has returned to power and its priority has no longer been to detoxify the party brand,
but to raise the government’s profile, with party organisational issues taking a back seat.
All three strategies reveal a common emphasis on party branding, although the final
sequence shows how party branding and government branding have fused as a result of
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