Party primaries in Europe. Consequences and challenges.

We propose a workshop on the impact of primary elections on political parties, both in terms of internal party functioning and of inter-party competition. The main aim of this workshop is to clarify the consequences of primaries on the internal and external functioning of political parties. We are interested in developing the empirical and theoretical exploration of the consequences of the adoption of party primaries. The scope of the workshop will be focused on two level of analysis, i.e. on the internal level of party organization and on the external level of interparty competition. We are interested in establishing whether primaries can strengthen the link between party elites and members, or, instead, they produce a deterioration of the degree of loyalty and sense of belonging to the party organization. The second aspect concerns the distribution of power within the organizational structures of the party. The third one concerns the evolution of leadership-party relations, assessing whether there are changes in the role played by leaders and in the features of their legitimacy towards party voters and supporters. Looking at the external aspects of the consequences produced by primaries, we are interested in interparty competition and the reactions of the competitors in the electoral arena. The second question that arises here concerns the electoral gain in promoting primaries. The third question is whether primaries with their promises of internal democracy and their transparent and inclusive procedures can compensate the lack of legitimacy perceived by the electorate and described by recent literature on party decline and disengagement. Empirical papers may be focused on case studies or on one specific aspect of the two abovementioned different dimensions of analysis suggested for examining the consequences caused by primaries on political parties. We will welcome papers from a comparative perspective or conceptually based that consider the implications of primaries on parties and party competition on the internal and/or the external side.