Popular attitudes to the implementation of party primaries: Do organizational reforms reflect what citizens want?

This paper will analyze the relationship between citizens’ attitudes to the democratic performance and role of political parties as participatory institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK), and organizational changes (focusing on the adoption of party primaries for candidate selection) that have taken place within the main parties in these two democracies over the last 10 years. By investigating differences in perceptions and expectations of parties amongst different groups in the citizenry (the public, party members, political elites, party leaders), the research project will evaluate whether reforms aimed at ‘democratizing’ parties, such as establishing open primaries, are actually reflective of citizens’ expectations, or whether they might be motivated by another agenda. To the extent that party and public assessments are complementary, reforms built upon these perceptions may be successful. However, to the extent that they are built upon different understandings of the nature and function of parties, they may serve to exacerbate discontent and disaffection. By incorporating current social attitudes into the analysis, this assessment of the impact of primaries moves beyond outdated presumptions of citizens’ expectations regarding their participation in political parties, and improves upon existing accounts that focus on institutional pressures as the main catalysts for change. It will investigate if and how public expectations have changed over time, the diversity of these expectations amongst different social groups and actors (including how political parties perceive themselves), and in doing so provides a new way in which to analyze the consequences and challenges posed by the implementation of party primaries. The framework is innovative in that it conceptualizes the adoption of primaries as a contested process, involving a variety of political actors with different sets of goals, motivations and expectations, rather than as a movement towards a pre-defined theoretical idea or evolutionary model of party democracy. The research design accommodates the potential for democratic norms and expectations to shape the design and motivation for party reforms, and their success, rather than these being structured almost exclusively through a series of institutional pressures. The paper will compare citizens’ attitudes to the implementation of primaries and organization reform in two democracies: Australia and the UK. Organizational change and the ‘push’ for primaries will be analysed in the main political parties with parliamentary representation in both these countries, totaling six parties: the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Nationals (Australia) and the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (UK) over the last 10 years (2003-2013). Public attitudes towards primaries, the participatory role of political parties in society, and how citizens prefer to engage with parties today will be drawn from a variety of sources: analyses of the coverage, opinion and editorial comment on the implementation of party primaries in the news media, and from existing social survey data (for example, the AuSSA, ISSP, Eurobarometer) and available party membership surveys (Whiteley et al. 2006; Seyd and Whiteley 2002). Finally, the paper will report the results of a new survey on public attitudes to party organizational reforms (focusing on the adoption of open primaries) in Australia, conducted by the author with financial support from the University of Sydney and the British Academy. The paper will provide findings on the consequences of implementing primaries and their relationship to, and affect on citizens’ attitudes towards (and propensity to participate in) these selection contexts. These findings will reflect the circumstances in the democracies being directly considered, but will also have wider application to political parties throughout Europe.