Leadership Primary Elections in Parliamentary Democracies: Definition, Typology, Scope and Consequences

Once a political procedure prevalent almost exclusively in the United States, primary elections have become a common method for selecting party leaders, legislative candidates and mayoral candidates in many parliamentary democracies. The adoption of primaries should be viewed as part of a wider phenomenon of intra-party democratization. This participatory revolution, providing the rank-and-file members a chance to make a difference, is perceived as a means of reducing the democratic deficit within political parties. A more inclusive procedure was expected to enhance other democratic values, beyond participation, such as competitiveness, representation, responsiveness and transparency. The paper examines the concept of primary elections, focusing on leadership selection procedures. It starts with an effort to provide a useful definition for the term "primaries", presenting possible criteria that may help to decide what procedures will be counted as primaries and what will be left outside of this definition. Next, we offer a typology of the various types of primary systems that are currently used by parties. Surprisingly, we can point to at least six prototypes of primaries, categorized according to the nature of the selectorate. The third section examines the extent to which party primaries have become common in parliamentary democracies. Based on a dataset of more than 40 parties in 16 democracies, the evidence is clear: about half of the parties inspected have opened their leadership selection procedure to wider selectorates since the mid-1960s. Furthermore, we show that this wave of democratization is ongoing, as several parties in recent years have further opened their selection methods by adopting open or semi-open primaries. The final section provides an analysis of the consequences of adopting primaries. It encompasses such questions as: Have races under the format of primary elections indeed become more competitive? Do they attract a higher number of candidates and create more varied fields of candidates? Is the selectorate representative of the party electorate? What are the shortcomings of these inclusive procedures?