Intra-party democracy and ideological change of populist parties

Non-mainstream parties are often portrayed in the literature as loosely organised and ideologically extreme. Among them, populist parties in particular are expected to emphasise the role of the leader, either by weakening intermediate party structures and centralising the powers of the secretary or by relying on (quasi-)plebiscitary decision-making. However, such organisational features (or the lack thereof) are often assumed, rather than measured directly. Indeed, the existing evidence on the internal structures of non-mainstream and populist parties is contradictory. Moreover, populist parties’ organisational change over time is hardly ever addressed by the literature, particularly in a comparative and cross-national perspective. Party organisation is relevant also because it has implications for the ideological evolution of non-mainstream actors. In general, previous contributions have hypothesised that those parties are less likely to shift position following the preferences of the median voter compared to mainstream actors, which enjoy more resources for campaigns and fear less potential vote losses. However, non-mainstream parties might also face incentives towards ideological moderation – for instance, to present themselves as viable partners for a coalition government. In the proposed paper, I jointly examine ideological and organisational change among non-mainstream and in particular populist parties, arguing that these actors might indeed shift their ideological position over time, and that the extent that they do so depends on their internal structure. My analysis will estimate the effect of intra-party democracy on party ideological change using multi-level regression models applied to 10 European countries. I will use alternative measures of the relevant variables, to assess the consistency of measurements based on official party documents and on expert surveys. Accordingly, I will rely on the PPDB and DALP datasets to measure the independent variable (intra-party democracy) and on CMP/MARPOR and CHES for the dependent variables (issue position and issue salience). This allows me to study the effect of more inclusive and democratic decision-making procedures on parties’ ideological flexibility, showing that populist parties could indeed follow different patterns of ideological change, depending on their internal organisation. By doing so, consequently, this paper also aims to show: (i) whether populist parties take up some features of mainstream parties (either in terms of organisation or ideology) over time and (ii) whether these changes are encouraged by external (e.g. government participation or vote loss) and/or internal factors (intra-party democracy). Overall, this research sheds light on party organisation as a pivotal, although often neglected, driver of ideological change. This is particularly crucial to study for populist parties, which are deemed to be new and still unstructured components of the party system, yet are increasingly recognized as powerful determinants of its characteristics. Moreover, the extent to which parties can shift position has additional implications for the responsiveness and representativeness of the whole party system. In fact, by taking up issues that were previously not salient or accommodating the prevalent position of public opinion, parties might increase their responsiveness to citizens’ priorities and improve the overall representation of voters’ preferences.