Participation as Representation: A Constructivist Perspective on New Modes of Intra-party Democracy

The decline of political parties as the main institutional vehicles of a certain type of representative government (Manin, 1997) has been a common theme of political science scholarship in the past decades. The diagnosis has not been lost on party officials, who have sought to introduce new mechanisms of participation into the functioning of political parties. This article looks at new modes of intra-party democracy not from the perspective of empirical results or participatory ideals, but through the lens of a constructivist understanding of ‘political representation’ that has recently gained ground in democratic theory (Disch, 2011). Party representation understood as a performative and thus constantly redefined practice may take different forms (e.g. parties as representatives of society or the state; representation ‘from below’ or ‘from above’), and go hand in hand with intra-party democracy. Participatory mechanisms are conceived as arenas in which representation may be performed in a complex process, depending on variables such as party type (e.g. mainstream or niche party), level of government (e.g. national or Euro-parties), and the type of participation itself (e.g. primaries, membership vote). The argument is developed by way of discussion of two recent cases in which participatory mechanisms were used by parties: The 2013 SPD membership vote on the German coalition agreement (mainstream party, national party, membership vote) and the Green online primaries for the European Elections 2014 (niche party, Euro-party, primaries).