Introduction
Political parties shape politics, and the most important person in a party is usually the leader. Party leaders make the political weather.
Take a recent example from Britain. In 2015 the Labour Party, somewhat unexpectedly, lost a national election. Its leader resigned and a new one was needed. âJeremy Corbyn is not going to win the Labour leadership electionâ, insisted one of the countryâs shrewdest political commentators (Rentoul 2015). But Corbyn did win, and by a comfortable margin. Labour thus took a big stride to the left. Among much else, a long-forgotten strain of left-wing Euroscepticism was reintroduced into the top of the party. It probably contributed to the sensational result in 2016 of Britainâs referendum on European Union membership; another Labour parliamentarian declared that Corbynâs lukewarm engagement in the pro-membership campaign had fatally weakened it (Wilson 2016). The referendum outcome led, in turn, to a colossally tense period in the countryâs politics. The economy, the party system, the constitution, even the territorial composition of the state were questioned amid Brexit-related uncertainty.
How did it happen? How did Corbyn, previously seen as an eccentric, marginal figure within his party, possibly win its leadership? A short answer, which is all we need for now, is that a new selection method, which Labour tried for the first time, contributed greatlyâalbeit in conjunction with several other factorsâto Corbynâs astounding victory. It is fair to say that an apparently modest institutional reform turned out to have profound consequences.
So while there is a long-running debate in political science about the normative value of âintra-party democracyâ (Cross and Katz 2014; Teorell 1999), there are also strong substantive reasons for studying leader selection. It involves perhaps the most important decision that a party takes, and only rarely does the party lack any degree of realistic choice. The individuals who aspire to the job are, needless to say, almost always political figures, who have each established a reputation in regard to ideology and strategyâa brand, to use more economic language. Thus, in selecting its leader, the party also chooses the direction in which, at that moment, it prefers to travelâand that choice can change the political landscape. Corbynâs success is one good example. Another can be taken from Estonia. As we will see in the following chapter in this volume, the decision in 2016 of the Centre Party to change its leader transformedâwithin daysâthe composition of the government and the shape of the entire party system.
Most European countries are parliamentary democracies, which means that power is centred in their national parliaments. Decision-making in a collective body like a parliament requires parties in order for things to get done (Thies 2000). The logic of election to these bodies, in which aspiring politicians try to attract electoral support through coordinating their promises, also militates strongly towards politics based on parties (StrĂžm 2003: 67â70). âEuropean democraciesâ, therefore, âare not only parliamentary democracies but also party democraciesâ (MĂŒller 2000: 309). Yet, despite the prevalence of parliamentarism, we know that partiesâ methods of choosing their leaders differ strikingly. For a start, the âselectorateââthe section or organ within a party that has the ultimate right to select the leaderâmight be the partyâs members of parliament (MPs), its congress, the entire party membership, or some combination of these. It could even comprise any self-professed sympathiser who is prepared to pay a small feeâsuch as in the British Labour Party in 2015.1
We can assume that there is some regularity in the preference orders held by different parts of a partyâmembers, activists, leaders, politicians (May 1973; Sjöblom 1968). If so, then the relative weight of those different parts in how the party selects its leader will affect the partyâs behaviour. It could influence, for instance, whether the party tends to prioritise ideological purity, policy influence, government office or maximising its vote (StrĂžm and MĂŒller 1999). In regard to the ways in which parties and party systems mediate the relationship between democratic elections and public policy, we see party leader selection as a crucial node. Our goal in this book is to establish a procedure for comparing leader selection systematically across cases.
How Do Parties Really Choose?
Corbynâs victory in 2015 was clear, but the process was keenly contested. Between them, three other candidates won nearly 40 per cent of the selectorateâs first-preference votes. Five years before, the same partyâalbeit with a rather different selectorateâhad five candidates to choose between. That selection, too, was highly competitive, and was won by an extremely fine margin (Quinn 2012: 70).
Contrast that with the case of Martin Schulz, who was elected leader of the German Social Democrats in 2017. The 605 members of the party congress were unanimous in voting for him (Guardian 19 March 2017). Meanwhile, Swedish party congresses are almost always unanimous when they choose a new leader. How come? Because these selectorates, in fact, have little choice. Kenig, Rahat et al. (2015) show that in some European countries, including Austria, Germany, Hungary and Norway, a big majority of new leader selections involve such âcoronationsâ, in which the decision-making body has, in effect, just one candidate to rubber stampâa âceremonial ratificationâ (Kenig, Rahat et al. 2015: 51).
What produces coronations, when other contests are so closely fought? Of course, it could be that there is only one eligible individual who wants the leaderâs job. Yet that is surely rare, even in small parties. Politicians are not often associated with a reluctance to lead. Less far-fetched, perhaps, is that there is only one eligible individual who wants the job and thinks that she has a decent chance of landing it. In other words, some individuals who might have liked to be party leader nevertheless decline to take part in the selection process, because they would not win. Consider the case of the Swedish Liberal Party in 2019. A week before its congress was due to decide on a new leader, and after a rather heated campaign, three candidates still declared their interest in being chosen. By the time the congress convened, two had dropped out, and the favorite was duly elected unanimously (Svenska Dagbladet 29 June 2019).
Yet that raises all sorts of further questions. What is so bad about not winning? As any observer of American politics would attest, plenty of politicians with no realistic chance of success still run for their respective partiesâ presidential nominations. They do this in order to raise certain political issues, elevate their personal profiles, attract some solid supporters, signal the existence of those supporters (especially to the eventual winner) and thus promote the candidatesâ long-term political careers. Why does the same thing happen more rarely in European parties? Is there some mechanism by which some in a field of aspiring leaders infer that their continued candidacies are unwelcome? If so, what is that mechanism? To whom, exactly, within the party would a continued candidacy be unwelcome? Why does an aspiring candidate accept the signal? What sanction might she face if she did not?
Part of the answer is surely âcultureâ. It is probably not controversial to assert that a different âlogic of appropriatenessâ (March and Olsen 1996) applies in one party compared to another. Some parties, for instance, have a stronger cus...