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While the literature highlights the relevance of informal rules for candidate selection, empirical research has mainly focused on formal rules and procedures. This article contributes to our understanding by investigating how the informal rules employed by political parties impact on intra-party competition. Using the example of district nominations in Germany, and based on a longitudinal mixed methods design, the inductive analysis reveals five central informal rules: the Incumbency Rule, the Information Rule, the House Power Rule, Fairness Rules and Power-sharing Rules. These rules shape the expectations and behavior of those involved in candidate selection and have a significant impact on various aspects of intra-party competition. They decrease the number of aspirants, reduce intra-party conflict and emphasize the role of local party leaders in organizing and controlling intra-party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how populism is linked to party organization and, specifically, intra‐party democracy. Populism can be defined as an ideology (ideational perspective), which is characterized by anti‐elitism, people‐centrism and a discourse emphasizing a moral struggle between 'good people' and 'the elite'. On the other hand, there are leadership‐focused definitions which see populism as a form of organization with personalistic control (a leadership perspective). With respect to party organization, focusing on the ideational perspective leads to the expectation that populist parties will be internally democratic, and the leadership approach will lead to the opposite expectation. Using the recently published Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) that develops party‐specific populism scores, we examine more than 200 parties in 26 countries. The results highlight that populist parties gravitate toward personalized leaders and thus develop less democratic intra‐party structures. This finding contributes to our understanding of populist parties and their organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A functioning democracy relies on social interactions between people who disagree—including listening to others' viewpoints, having political discussions, and finding political compromise. Yet social life in the contemporary United States is characterized by a relative lack of interaction between Democrats and Republicans (or, social polarization). We argue that political anger contributes to social polarization by causing Americans to cut off ties with opposing partisans. We first draw on data from the American National Election Studies and the Wesleyan Media Project to show that the mass public is increasingly angry and that politicians often seek to elicit anger. We then present results from a survey experiment on nearly 3,500 Americans, finding that the exogenous introduction of anger leads partisans to socially polarize across a range of settings. Our findings suggest that increasing levels of political anger paralyze politics and harm democracy by influencing Americans' social interactions and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do parties' internal dynamics change when they adopt party-wide ballots for important policy and personnel decisions? Parties in parliamentary democracies are increasingly using such procedures, but researchers still disagree about their impact on partisan politics. This article argues that in order to pin down such effects, researchers should more systematically account for how such ballots are conducted. The argument is developed with respect to party unity. Intra-party ballots are described as multi-stage procedures with key rules at each stage whose attributes can exacerbate or mitigate the tensions unleashed by contestation over party decisions. It demonstrates the feasibility of such an approach by proposing measures taken from the Political Party Database (PPDB). It then uses examples from PPDB data to show that these procedures do vary in practice. Having demonstrated how rule differences can be measured using existing or easily gathered data, the paper concludes by calling on future research on intra-party democracy to accept the challenge of studying party ballots in their full procedural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a critical reading of the idea of 'the reasonable' in contemporary politics, as reflected in the work of John Rawls. I argue that this concept is best understood as a practice of political identification, which provides the template for mutual accommodation without concurrent agreement on any substantive commitments. However, by constructing a teleological story in which the reasonable leads naturally back to the liberal principles of justice, Rawls reveals the limits of the concept. Rather than ending political disagreement by establishing a shared foundation, prioritizing reasonableness only repurposes conflicts by transforming disagreement into a series of debates over the meaning of reasonableness itself, battles which are every bit as partisan and vicious as those Rawls sought to exclude. Revitalizing the idea of the reasonable requires abandoning the effort to deploy it as a technique of exclusion. Instead, reasonable politics should be oriented toward engagement with unreasonable critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep disagreements are disagreements wherein the dialectical conditions for fruitful argumentative exchange do not obtain. One view from within these disagreements is that the other side has been duped or is so deeply ignorant of and complacent with some illusion, there is no hope for exchange. The Dark Enlightenment's critique of liberal democracy and progressive politics (which gave rise to the alt‐right movement) proceeds on this premise, calling their critical philosophy 'the red pill' and terming the opposition's program 'the Cathedral'. Despite the depth of their disagreement with progressives, there is evidence for an optimistic program of critical dialogue in this instance of deep disagreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research often suggests that a greater degree of internal democracy within parties could weaken party unity. This article tests this assumption and analyses the relationship between degrees of intra-party democracy (IPD) and legislators' attitudes towards party unity. The article uses data collected in the framework of the PartiRep Comparative MP Survey; and of the Political Party Database (PPDB). The study includes 796 parliamentarians in 45 parties, elected in 14 European national assemblies. The findings indicate that the legislators from more democratic party organizations tend to report more frequent disagreement and to assert their own opinions against the one of their parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue salience and ideological disagreement often predict coalition government behavior. However, research on portfolio allocation has yet to fully specify the complex relationship between issue salience, disagreement, and coalition negotiations. Scholars treat issue salience and disagreement as distinct and disconnected, despite evidence that they work together and with conditional effects in a range of settings. Following a logic of portfolio trades or “logrolls,” we propose that the relative salience of issues and disagreements at the issue level within the coalition both moderate the effect of issue salience on portfolio allocation. Using data drawn from the Parliamentary Democracy Data Archive, we find compelling evidence for our theory that links party manifestos to portfolio allocation. Consistent with a story on the conditional effect of salience and disagreement, we find evidence that the effect of salience is mitigated by the extent of disagreement between coalition parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforms of intra-party decision-making processes often rest on the idea that citizens want more direct say in these processes, but empirical data to support this claim are scarce. Using original data from the 2014 PartiRep voter survey in Belgium, this article explores the extent to which citizens support alternative intra-party processes. It shows that voters have heterogeneous preferences in terms of candidate selection procedures and that these are not random. 'Disaffected' citizens tend to support open procedures, whereas critical citizens tend to prefer closed selectorates, that is, intra-party actors. It also finds that voters' preferences for intra-party models of democracy match their preferences for models of democracy at the system level. Our findings confirm that citizens do have clear preferences for how parties should organise and that these match their general views on how democracy should work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political party leaders are among the most influential actors in parliamentary democracies, and a change in party leadership is an important event for a party organization. Yet, we do not know how these leadership changes affect voter perceptions about party policy positions. On the one hand, we may expect party leadership changes to renew attention to the party, educate voters about its policy positions, and hence reduce disagreement among voters about party positions. On the other hand, rival parties may use a leadership change as an opportunity to defame the party, its leadership, and policies, and hence, increase voter confusion about the party's policies. Using data from seven Western European democracies, I show that leadership changes help parties reduce voter disagreement about party policy positions. This effect is stronger if the new leader shifts the party's policy positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether parties respond to their supporters or to the median voter position. Party leaders require the support of the ‘selectorate’, which is defined as the group that has influence in party leadership selection. Inclusive parties, which rely on rank-and-file membership to select their leaders, will respond to their members. Exclusive parties, which rely on office-seeking members for leadership selection, will respond to the median voter position. Thus, intra-party institutions that (dis)enfranchise party members are crucial for understanding whether a party responds to their supporters (or to the median voter position). Using data from 1975–2003 for six West European countries, this article reports findings that inclusive parties respond to the mean party supporter position. While there is evidence that exclusive parties respond to the median voter position in two-party systems, this finding does not extend to multiparty systems. This study has implications for the understanding of intra-party institutions and political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper argues for a closer inspection of how tolerance and politics interact. Within geography and beyond there is rising concern about post-political situations, whereby potential disagreements are foreclosed and situated beyond the remit of political debate. This is conceptualised as a process of de-politicisation that operates ‘much more effectively’ than alternative ways in which politics can be and has been disavowed (Žižek, 1999: 198). While Žižek associates liberal tolerance with the post-political condition, however, theories of tolerance are at odds over whether it represents an everyday enactment of the political. Although some authors have indeed associated tolerance with a depoliticising tendency (Brown, 2006), others insist that certain types of tolerance are capable of nurturing simultaneous recognition and disagreement, which directly contradicts the conditions of post-politics (Forst, 2003). We therefore ask, contra Žižek, whether certain forms of tolerance can be an antidote to the post-political practice of foreclosing politics, and offer a set of considerations pertinent to the geographical analysis of this issue. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As Egypt's largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood is uniquely situated to play a leading role in this era of political transition. Although some welcome the Brotherhood's involvement, others view its growing influence with apprehension and dismay. Such differing reactions reflect serious disagreements about the credibility of the Brotherhood's commitments to pluralism and democracy, as well as on whether its rising power poses a threat to regional peace and stability. At the core of such disagreements are fundamental differences of opinion on a number of key issues. First, what is the Brotherhood and what does it want? Second, how much support does it enjoy among members of the wider Egyptian public, and how well-positioned is it to convert that support into political power? Third, and perhaps most consequentially, to what extent, and in what ways, has the Brotherhood moved away from its radical anti-system past? Such questions raise the larger issue of whether 'fundamentalist' religious groups are capable of self-transformation through their involvement in the give-and-take of democratic politics, a subject with broader relevance to our understanding of social movement change writ large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This survey aims to analyze the state of intra-party democracy (IPD) in Thailand. IPD is defined as a characteristic of the distribution of decision-making power among members and leaders within a political party along the two principal dimensions of inclusiveness and decentralization. The amount of organizational details that could be used to describe parties' procedures with regard to all aspects of their internal life is placed into three generalizable categories: candidate selection, setting party policies, and coalition formation procedures. In addition, this survey provides some background on the territorial spread, membership developments and funding practices of political parties. The overall finding is that the degree of internal democracy of political parties in Thailand is quite limited. Thai political parties tend to be 'electoral parties' with weak organizations, low policy capacity and vague ideologies. The development of political parties since 1997 (and before the 2006 coup) can best be described as a process of party centralization without institutionalization. This has produced significant consequences for the realization of internal democracy within political parties: weak internal organization decision-making remains largely informal and is controlled by a limited number of party elites. This general result has important implications regarding the prospects of party politics in Thailand and democratic consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on intra-party factionalism in Thailand. It is stated that the management of factionalism has become a major objective for political parties in Thailand's emerging parliamentary democracy, because it enhances a party's internal cohesion and ability to work within cabinets and parliament, thus providing democratic stability. Factionalism has resulted in intra-party conflict in Thailand, where factions compete with each other for seats in the cabinet.