Business as usual? How gamification transforms internal party democracy

The aim of this paper is to examine whether gamification represents a substantial innovation in internal party democracy, by contributing to change the dynamics of power within parties. To answer this question, we examine the only known case of gamification in the field of candidate selection, launched by the Italian Movimento 5 stelle. We expect that gamified primaries would promote party activists and reduce the incumbent advantage. Our data, however, suggest that these candidate-selection procedures follow the same logic as the traditional ones. We thus conclude that digital innovations often end up working as “business as usual”.