Questions of intra-party democracy are in the UK news: so interesting to read this German perspective from @Verfassungsblog. verfassungsblog.de/after-the-unio…
In Germany, parties are required by law to have “bottom-up”, democratic structures, and to choose candidates accordingly.
A couple of reflections on that.
First, Germany is I think right expressly to recognise that, in a representative democracy, questions of intra-party democracy, at least for parties with a prospect of winning power, is not just an internal matter for those parties: it’s a question of constitutional importance.
(A point recognised also in the US, where you find extensive law regulating the way in which at least the 2 main parties have to choose their candidates.)
That isn’t necessarily a call for legislation: but it is a reminder that all of us, whether party members or not, are impacted by, and have a legitimate interest in, how our main parties choose their candidates for PM and to be MPs.
(Not least, in the case of MPs, because in our hapless voting system the majority of UK seats are so safe for one party or another that the choice of candidate by the dominant party is in effect the choice of MP.)
Second, the @Verfassungsblog article raises a problem that bedevils this area: declining memberships and participation.
There are two different risks here. One is that membership becomes dominated by careerists, unwilling to challenge the leadership (which the blog suggests is happening to the CDU).
The other is that it becomes dominated by those whose willingness to take the initiative to join and to pay money makes them unrepresentative of the broad coalition that any winning party in a representative democracy must represent to win power.
This fascinating survey by @UKandEU suggests that this is an issue for both main UK parties. ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/upl…
So what do you do about it? One member one vote solves the problem of decisions being taken by probably even more unrepresentative cliques (party officials; activists who are prepared to devote evenings to tedious meetings). But it doesn’t solve the problem of small memberships.
The parties can try to widen membership: but to widen it on their own efforts to the extent that they become broadly representative of their voters seems a lost cause.
But to return to my starting point: the internal operation of our major parties is a matter of constitutional concern for all of us. If our parties cannot solve these issues unaided there is therefore, potentially, a role for law.
In particular, one area worth thinking about is how the law could encourage joining political parties: and a law that encouraged people to that might also go some way to dealing with the vexed issue of political funding.
PS there is a (to my mind) separate issue about what you do in a parliamentary system if the membership chooses a leader whom the parliamentary party find unacceptable.
Both our main political parties have had that problem in the last 20 years (IDS; Corbyn): as usual, being unencumbered by principle, the Tories dealt with the issue more ruthlessly than Labour did.
In a parliamentary system, there is no getting around the fact that that is a serious problem: leaders in parliament can’t in the end operate effectively (and the day-to-day operation of our democracy suffers) if their own MPs don’t have confidence in them.
But FWIW I don’t think that getting rid of one member one vote can be the answer: as recent events have shown, that ship has sailed.
Moreover, the right to vote for the leader is now such an obvious benefit of joining a party that limiting it is likely to cut against the need to vastly increase membership.
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