Micro-Level Drivers of Intra-Party Participation in the Czech Pirate Party

This paper examines the individual-level determinants of intra-party participation in a digital party environment, focusing on voting turnout in internal online consultations and primary elections of the Czech Pirate Party. Existing research on intra-party democracy and digital parties has predominantly focused on organisational rules, institutional design, or aggregate participation patterns, often analysing turnout at the meso level. This paper shifts the analytical focus towards micro-level behavioural factors that shape members’ decisions to participate in, or abstain from, internal voting. The analysis draws on an original dataset covering 185 internal consultations and primary elections. It combines procedural characteristics of each vote, including the type of decision, overall turnout, voting duration, and the length of preceding deliberation, with individual-level behavioural data derived from party digital platforms. Beyond voting behaviour, the paper employs quantitative analysis of textual contributions on the party forum, linking patterns of digital deliberation and interaction to individual-level participation in internal decision-making. Methodologically, the paper employs a quantitative research design to examine the relationship between various forms of digital engagement and participatory outcomes. Substantively, the findings challenge conventional explanations of political turnout that emphasise socio-demographic or attitudinal factors. Instead, they demonstrate that platform-specific activity and the degree of deliberative embeddedness are central to understanding participation within digital parties. By unpacking the micro-level foundations of intra-party turnout, the paper contributes to broader debates on partisan participation in digital platforms and advances discussions on the democratic implications of platform-mediated political engagement.