New Linkage-New Costs? The Funding and Regulation of Primaries in European Parties

Over the past decades multiple parties across Europe adopted open or closed primaries to select their candidates and/or leader with the hope to strengthen their linkage with voters and with new and existing party members. While there is a growing literature focusing on the causes, consequences and various organisational aspects of primaries, there are very few studies exploring the financial side of primaries outside the US (Scarrow, 2013; von Nostitz and Sandri, forthcoming). However, this organizational dimension is vital as the costs of primaries might undermine their benefits. Moreover, without detailed regulation in place to safeguard this intra-party democracy instrument and shield it from corruption, the integrity of the whole primary process could be weakened. Therefore, the central questions explored in this paper are: how expensive are primaries? how are they funded? how do they fit in with the party and electoral funding regimes of their respective countries? to what extent do open and closed primaries differ in terms of financial regulation? Building on the US literature (Brox and Shaw, 2006) and the few existing case studies (for example, see Cross et al, 2016 on Canada and Israel) the paper first explores the costs and possible funding possibilities for party primaries and how they might differ between close and open primaries. In a second step the paper outlines how states might facilitate or hinder the use of primaries through either direct or indirect funding regulations. In addition, it addresses the issue of under which conditions primaries are regulated and if so, whether they are included in party or electoral finance regulations. Together, these two aspects allow us to draw a landscape of the financial side of primaries. The second part of the paper explores four cases studies: Germany, UK, France and Italy. The study focuses on primaries to select the party executive leader. The cases differ mainly in the type of primaries they used. While parties in the UK and Germany so far only used closed primaries, parties in France and Italy often use open primaries. This allows the paper to study how different exiting finance regimes react (or not) to the adoption of primaries. On the basis of an original database compiling party and finance laws as well as party spending and resources, the paper shows that the costs and the degree of regulation of primaries not only vary from country to county but between open or closed primaries. The paper shows that the assessment of the costs of this new tool of intra-party democracy is crucial for evaluating its effectiveness in linking state and society. The regulations in place to safeguard primaries and shield them from corruption that might undermine the integrity of the whole primary process also constitute a key factor in appraising the functioning of primary elections.