Explain measures to be adopted to strengthen internal democracy in political parties.
Answers
Internal democracy in political parties, also known as intra-party democracy, refers to the level and methods of including party members in the decision making and deliberation within the party structure. Intra-party democracy is usually known to nurture citizens’ political competencies and/or producing more capable representatives which in turn ensures that the party produces better policies and political programmes.
Although the view that “parties should practice what they preach” is commonly shared, there are also skeptics who might argue that too much democratization may hinder parties to keep their electoral promises and also dilute the power of a party’s inner leadership (Scarrow 2005).
Internal functioning of parties is legally regulated in many countries. As described more thoroughly in the ACE Encyclopaedia article on Internal functioning of political parties, legal regulations may include candidate selection rules; internal elections for leadership positions; or women’s and minorities’ representation in the party leadership for example. Despite this legal acknowledgment of need for democratic culture inside political parties, Norris (2004) notes that intra-party democracy has indeed not been in the centre of the international community’s attention:
“One reason for the relative neglect of the internal life of political parties is that these organizations have long been commonly regarded in liberal theory as private associations, which should be entitled to compete freely in the electoral marketplace and govern their own internal structures and processes. Any legal regulation by the state, or any outside intervention by international agencies, was regarded in this view as potentially harmful by either distorting or even suppressing pluralist party competition with a country.” (Norris 2004)
According to Norris (2004), one of the key issues in intra-party democracy is parties' nomination processes, in other words who decides and how which citizens are entitled to run for parliament as a candidate of that specific party. Whether such nomination processes are deemed democratic or not, depends according to Norris on the degree of centralization, that is to say, how much power is given to regional, district or local bodies in the process of selection. Secondly, the scale of participation in the nomination is also considered: The more people that are involved in the selection, the more democratic the procedure is. Finally, also the scope of decision-making - number of candidates vying for nomination - is important. The nomination process is governed by law only in a few countries. In most legal systems parties are entitled to decide themselves upon the most appropriate processes and internal regulations. (Norris 2004.)
The above discussion of nomination of representatives holds also when trying to analyze a party's appointment of its political leader. In a similar way as the principle of fair representation is considered crucial in the relation between voters and the parliament, the representation of and mediation between a party’s different wings and subsections in the leadership positions can be seen as a prerequisite to intra-party democracy.
Finally, in order to enhance parties’ internal democracy, a number of countries have adopted positive action strategies in their legislation in the form of statutory quotas. This means that a certain percentage of nominated candidates and/or elected representatives in each party have to come from a certain gender, ethnic minority or other group. The most common quotas are legal gender quotas which define the minimum percentage of women candidates or representatives a party need to put forth for leadership and/or candidature.