PRIMARIES AND POLITICAL PARTIES A proposal of analytical framework

Authors: Giulia Sandri (Université libre de Bruxelles) Antonella Seddone (University of Cagliari) Candidate selection is a core function of parties. Recently in many contemporary democracies there has been a process of reformulation in the practice of candidates’ (and leadership’s) selection by political parties. Recurrent themes refer to the evolution of the party’s organization that in someway had produce a short circuit in the relationship between parties and their members and voters. Primaries became an answer to the crucial need to recreate organizational partisan relationship with members and belonging and nevertheless loyal electoral support by sympathizer. Primaries seem to be a tool able to promote new modalities of political participation: more intermittent and less militant. But beyond internal reasons there are many other relevant dimensions ranging from personalization of politics to antiparty feelings. Primaries elections appear to be a good recipe for responding to different challenges. The paper tries to identify the theoretical and methodological tools that could help in interpreting the spread of primaries in Western Europe. On the basis of the main research tools applied for US primaries authors will explores those contributions that could be adapted and usefully used on the European context. The aim is to figure out, on one hand, which are the strategic and systemic reasons that induce parties to use these elections to select their candidates or their leaders and, on a second hand, which are the consequences policies arising from this inclusive procedures. The article aims to bring order into the debate about the causes that induce parties to use primaries with the final goal to develop a more detailed reflection on the implications that this election may have on the political parties. With this purpose the papers has been articulated into two different sections. The first section is focused on political determinants that could affect political parties strategies in adopting inclusive procedure in leaders’ selection. The idea is that political parties use primaries in order to answer to internal and external challenges. In this section authors consider two level of analysis: the political party’s nature - taking into consideration dimensions such as a) bureaucratic and organizational structure, b) nature of the leadership; c) membership structure; d) public image of the party, e) nature of the electoral party’s support; and the nature of the political system – taking into account dimensions such as a) political culture of the country; b) political Institutions, c) party system. The second section authors develop the analytical framework setting out the relevant dimensions recognized as helpful in clarify the impact of primaries on political parties. The framework is articulated on four different dimensions: membership level, leadership quality, electoral impact, public image of the party. For each dimension of analysis authors suggest a set of empirical indicators that could help scholars in evaluating the impact on political parties of inclusive procedures in leader selections.