Giulia Vicentini - Università di Siena (CIRCaP) IPSA – XXII Word Congress of Political Science, 8-12 July 2012, Madrid Panel: Political Elite in Comparative Prospective

Democratization and Intra-party Conflicts A comparative analysis of leadership races in

five European countries 1. Introduction

Since the beginning of the 1990s many European parties have progressively adopted new forms of selection – most of the times generically defined “primary elections” - that allow their members or even voters to directly choose the party leaders or the candidates for the different public offices (Caul Kittilson and Scarrow 2006; Massari 2004; Hazan 2006).1 Until that time the European literature on political parties devoted little attention to the topic of candidate and leader selection. There were attempts to produce a deeper analytical framework, but these researches are sporadic and far-between (Duverger 1951; Czudnowski 1975; Epstein 1980; Ranney 1981; Gallagher and Marsh 1988; Ware 1996; Pennings and Hazan 2001). This scarce regard was due in the first place to the objective difficulties of conducting researches related to one of the most obscure functions of parties, defined by Gallagher and Marsh (1988) as “the secret garden of politics”.

The recent development of European party primaries and similar procedures stimulated academic attention and produced diatribes between advocates and opponents, between those underlining the importance of grassroots’ participation in the selection process (Valbruzzi 2005, Pasquino 2006, Fusaro 2006, Floridia 2008) and those stressing the risk of a populist drift that could destroy the internal balance of the parties pushing for an “Americanization of politics” (Hopkin 2001; Melchionda 2005; Rahat and Hazan 2007).

On the one side “primaries’ enthusiasts” state the democratization could represent an advantage also to the goal of party cohesion. This is because the legitimation deriving from a more inclusive process of selection guarantees to the candidate or chosen leader such a power to allow him/her a wider control on the party organization. Accordingly the development of inclusive mechanisms of selection could even contribute to strengthen the parties, making intra-party conflict more transparent and more easily governing. On the other side “primaries’ sceptics” highlight that in case of open procedures party conflicts are quite likely since the candidates are more inclined to satisfy the interests of their potential primaries’ voters rather than to act according to party guidelines.

However we also have some scholars that doubt about the effective impact of intra-party democratization. For instance Katz (2001) claims that the idea to devolve the power of selection to ordinary members (or even voters) is a precise strategy used by the leaders in order to get autonomy from the central area of the party dominated by the militants more ideological and less inclined to the compromises. In this sense the “democratization” provides the grassroots with the illusion to intervene in the choice, but actually they restrict themselves to support decisions already taken by party oligarchy. Therefore, according to 1 Formally the term primary election only refers to selection of candidates for public offices. Anyway just for convenience throughout the paper I will use the word “primaries” also in case of membership or voter ballot to select the party chairman.

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this vision, rather than moving towards a higher level of internal democracy primary election tend to consolidate the control exercised by dominant coalitions over party structures and do not affect party cohesion.

This is a point that deserves to be deepened and that I want to assess recurring to a truly comparative prospective that is still lacking in the survey of contemporary literature in the field. Accordingly my research question is: to what extent the democratization in the processes of selection is likely to drive intra-party conflicts?

In order to overcome the problems due to the difficulties of comparing cases where primary elections or similar systems are used for different levels and aims I decided to focus my attention specifically to party leadership selection (LS) - considering the procedures to select both the chief executive candidate (CEC) and the party chairman (PC) at the national level - focusing on a limited number of Western European countries easily comparable as Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Spain (most similar system design). Particularly I will recur to a comparative qualitative analysis of thirteen leadership races (LRs) promoted during the last twenty years by the main centre-left party in each country (SPD, Labour, PS, PD, PSOE). My strategy consists first of all in the analysis of party Statutes and other internal documents, but the most important sources for the empirical work will be press analysis and expert surveys.2

2. Theory and Hypotheses

1) I guess that a divisive process of selection break the internal balances of the parties, encouraging struggles among the different party factions. Actually I have to remind that not necessarily these conflicts will protract also after the ballot, since it is likely (and desirable) that the fractures will be healed afterwards. In this sense I do not intend to focus on the relationship between democratization and party cohesion in the long-run, since it would probably goes beyond the aim of this research.3 However is possible to suspect that the eventual conflicts developed during (and because of) the process of selection per se are likely to have negative effects on the general party unity, feeding factionalism and internal struggles for power. Accordingly I hypothesise that:

H1: the more the process of LS is inclusive the more it is likely to be divisive.

When many people are allow to participating to the LS process, both with regard to those who vote and those who have the right to stand as a candidate, there is the risk that the party organization lose the control on the choice of its own leader. Indeed Hazan (2006) claims that “to open the competition for the leadership to a more inclusive selectorate makes the party more permeable”. In turn Massari (2004) underlines that enlarge too much the access to the nomination risks to encourage the participation of

2 My press analysis is based on a period of about one month before the ballot focusing on the two main quality newspapers for each country: “The Times” and “The Guardian” for UK; “Le Figaro” and “Le Monde” for France; “Il Corriere della Sera” and “La Repubblica” for Italy, “Die Süddeutsche Zeitung” and “Frankfurter Allgemeine” for Germany, “El Paìs” and “El Mundo” for Spain. The expert surveys consist of 23 semi-structured questionnaires fulfilled by party experts (scholars and/or party executives) for each country: Newell, Fella, Gilbert, Quinn (UK), Lefebvre, Bruère, Bué, Dolez (France), Massari, Floridia, Vassallo, Bachelet (Italy), Niedermeier, Wiesendahl, Mielke, Fuch, Brusis, Wetting-Danielmeier (Germany), Jerez-Mir, Robles-Egea, Delgado, Real, Vietti (Spain). 3 The concept of party cohesion is strictly related with the analysis of parliamentary behaviour, which has not much to do with the mechanisms of selection of party leaders. Rather the way an MP is selected is likely to be very important to forecast his voting behaviour, and indeed Rahat and Hazan (2010)’s studies on primary election for legislative offices suggest a negative relationship between inclusiveness of the procedure of selection and party discipline within the Parliament.

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“disturbance candidates” that exploit the internal contest only to carry out personal issues or to acquire visibility. Moreover he claims that a LR open to many candidates is more likely to become an arena of conflicts among internal factions.

Anyway it is not rare that the main party executives or delegates in a Congress are not able to agree on a single candidate for the leadership and in this case is impossible to deny that also the internal bargaining among party elite can be heated and divisive. Indeed Pasquino (2006) reminds that primary elections are useful also in order to deter conflict on candidacies inside the parties (and among the parties in case of coalition primaries), since party summits unable to reach a definitive decision accept to entrust voters or members to solve the problem.

2) The most direct way to see whether the participation of members/voters has became really decisive in the selection of the leader is to assess whether their intervention reverses or partly contradicts the preferences of the party oligarchy. Moreover I guess that primary election or similar procedures that elect a leader who is unwelcome by the party elite are likely to exacerbate internal conflicts. Of course it is not unlikely that party members/voters and party elite share common preferences with regard to the leadership, but is possible to suspect that when the grassroots always restrict themselves to support decisions already taken from the summits party unity is preserved but we are facing just an illusory form of democratization. I hypothesise that:

H2: the more the process of LS is inclusive the more it is likely to select a leader who doesn’t coincide with the one who would be selected by the party elite.

As long as LS is left to the decision of MPs or executive internal organs the choice

was likely to reflect the prevailing orientation of the party in a particular period. On the contrary the enlargement of the selectorate is able to single out a leader who doesn’t represent the interests and preferences of the party core (Massari 2004, Pasquino 2006). In any case Hazan (2006) explains that “different selectorates, particularly the most inclusive, will choose different types of leaders”.

According to Valbruzzi (2005: 227) party primaries are likely to change into a kind of protest vote (voice) against the party oligarchy. In this sense the democratization in the process of selection could favour the renewal and could be used to impose a “new deal” characterized by young and modern leaders even against the elite’s will. That’s why some observers claim that PE are linked to a populist conception of the party that stresses the contrast between the so-called “apparatus” and the leader, who supports procedures of direct election just because they allow him/her to bypass and weaken the middle-level elite (Floridia 2011). Indeed, according to this vision, it is just the “resistance” of the apparatus that prevents the party leadership to freely and efficiently develop its strategy.

However it is also possible that a large selectorate composed by party members and sympathizers prefer a leader loyal to party traditional identity rather than a person in line with the dominant coalition of the moment (Massari 2004). Anyway even if the leader chosen through open procedures such as primary election seems to coincide with the one who would be selected by the party elite, is possible to suspect that the outcome depends more on the lacks of (real) candidates rather than by a convergence of interests between party elite and party members/voters.

In the following sections I will present the way I operationalized the different variables and the respective findings.

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3. The Independent Variable: Operationalization and Findings

Operationalize my independent variable (i.e. the inclusiveness of the selection’s process) means to focus on two main indicators: selectorate and candidacy. These two sub-dimensions must be explored according to a continuum related to the level of inclusiveness/exclusiveness, so that in this context LS democratization simply coincides with the idea of increase in inclusiveness (Massari 2004; Hazan 2006).

1) The selectorate identifies the body that selects the PC or the CEC. It can be composed of only one person, several or many selectors, up to the entire electorate (LeDuc 1999; Massari 2004; Hazan 2006; Castaldo 2009) This is the dimension that faced the major changes during the last years in European countries. Indeed when we talk about primary elections’ development and in general democratization in the procedures of selection we almost always refer just to this aspect, meaning we assisted to an increase of the set of people who are entitled to participate to leaders and candidates’ choice. At the extreme of the inclusiveness a leader can be selected in a ballot by all the voters (open primaries), at the other extreme we have a closed-door selection by an informal group of party notables involving negotiations among faction bosses or unilateral selection by the founding leader (McElwain 2006). The intermediate categories are described by Caul-Kittilson and Scarrow (2006): we have an oligarchical mechanism of selection when the decision is devolved upon the national committee or the parliamentary party, in case of party congress or member nomination through constituency organization we have a representative system, and finally we can talk about democratic selectorate when members can vote (closed primaries).

Anyway the empirical analysis do not limit at assessing who are the persons entitled to participate, but also requires to focus on the percentage and absolute number of members or voters who actually go to the pools to elect the party leader. Clearly the more people participate in the ballot the more the process is inclusive, assuming that the more are those entitled to vote according to the rules the more will be those who will actually vote. Party National Parliamentary Selected Party Electorate Notables Committee Party Group Party Agency Members Exclusiveness Inclusiveness

2) The second dimension (candidacy) refers to the set of people who has the right to run for the party leadership. Also this aspect is particularly important for my analysis, just because the impact of an inclusive selectorate risks to be partly limited if members/voters can only choose among a very short list of candidates, up until the extreme of a nomination (or “coronation”) of a single contender.4 Therefore the fact that a large set of people has the right to participate to leader’s choice does not guarantee by

4 Anyway my analysis only focuses on contested LRs, which means at least two candidates (otherwise we can’t talk about a real race). From this point of view Kenig (2008: 246) is right when he explains that the enlargement of the selectorate positively affects the number of candidates running for the leadership. This is simply because coronations are much more likely when only the party top organs have to decide, while in case of open procedures a larger participation of candidates is quite common. That’s why, even being aware of the scarce variability in my IV, I couldn’t include in the analysis LRs with selectorates more restricted than Congress delegates’, since it is quite hard to find a real and formalised LR with more than one candidate in case of less inclusive selectorate. On the contrary it is just the presence of more than one candidate that makes mechanisms generally quite exclusive such as party Congress as sufficiently “democratic” to be introduced in my sample.

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itself a truly democratic selection. In this sense a high level of inclusiveness in one dimension correlated with a high level of exclusiveness on the other would suggest that the party oligarchy maintains the control on the process of selection (Hazan 2006: 177-178).

An extreme inclusive process of selection with regard to candidacy means that every person can stand as candidate, while an exclusive process implies that the candidacy is permitted only possessing specific qualifications besides party membership. In their analysis of leadership selection in Spain Barberà et al. (2010) present this dimension - that they define “certification process” - as ranging from an extreme of maximum inclusiveness wherein all members without special requirements can stand as candidates, to two intermediate levels in which membership seniority (i.e. having an uninterrupted period of membership before the nomination) or support from other party members is necessary, to an opposite extreme for which candidacy is permitted only to members of the board of the party (but we can also add party MPs).

Moreover we can have some “candidacy qualifications” as contest fee or signature requirements (both popular or intra-party) which may deter or even prevent potential candidates from stepping forward or they could exclude some subjects from the chance to stand as candidate (for instance the candidacy could be prevented to those who officiated an active role in the opposite party/coalition) (Castaldo 2009). Members of the MPs Members supported Senior All Members Non-members Party Board by internal organs Members Exclusiveness Inclusiveness

However beyond these structural/formal factors Castaldo (2009) reminds to focus also on the informal practices that determine the real nature of the selective procedure. From this point of view we have to look to the interactions that occur within the arena-elite, defined by the scholar as political factors. Here we are basically dealing with the classical force relationships and struggles for power that characterised the internal life of a party. Moreover also the electability/viability factor is likely to affect the definition of the offer through the so called “spin effect” (Dolez and Laurent 2007: 134-135), according to which a candidate could be driven to renounce to run just because his/her chances to win the primaries and/or the successive elections appear too scarce.

All these things considered Castaldo suggests to distinguishing among “fizzy offer”, “open offer” and “sterilized offer” that varies according to a continuum of maximum or minimum permeability that indicates the level of autonomy the party elite enjoys in the construction of the offer. In the first case the elite doesn’t control the phase of constitution of the candidate list, so we have more than three “real” candidates (i.e. candidates with realistic probabilities to obtain the nomination). At the other extreme (sterilized offer) the party elite autonomously defines the list of potential candidates and therefore we just have one real candidate. In the middle between these two extremes we have the “open offer” wherein the elite exercise only a limited control and the number of real candidates is reduced (2-3).

Therefore in order to assess the actual inclusiveness of the candidacy dimension it is not sufficient to claim that the more official candidates there are, the more the process is inclusive. Of course a process with five candidates is assumed to be more inclusive than a contest wherein only two persons run for the leadership, because the selectorate entitled to vote has greater opportunities of choice. However it is also necessary to see who are the “real” candidates, so that I have to assess the influence the different factors (structural, political, electability/viability) had in determining - and constraining - the candidate offer.

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The table below shows the findings in terms of candidacy regarding the 13 LRs analysed. The more the X the more constrained is the candidacy dimension beyond the number of official candidates (NC). Tab.1 Factors influencing the construction of the candidate offer

Party LR year

System of election

Office Formal factors

Political factors

Electability viability

NC Offer

SPD 1993 Closed primary PC x xx x 3 Open SPD 1995 Party Congress PC x xx x 2 Open Lab 1994 Electoral college PC/CEC xxx xxx xxx 3 Sterilized Lab 2010 Electoral college PC/CEC xxx x x 5 Op.-Fizzy PS 1995 Closed primary CEC x xx x 2 Open PS 2006 Closed primary CEC xx xx xx 3 Open PS 2008 Closed primary PC x xxx x 3 Open PS 2011 Open primary CEC x x x 6 Fizzy PD 2007 Open primary PC xx xxx xxx 5 Sterilized PD 2009 Open primary PC xx x x 3 Open PSOE 1998 Closed primary CEC xx x xx 2 Open PSOE 2000 Party Congress PC xx x x 4 Op.-Fizzy PSOE 2012 Party Congress PC xx x x 2 Open

1994 Labour leadership election and 2007 open primaries to select PD Secretary

are the only two cases of sterilized offer, with just one real candidate running (respectively Tony Blair and Walter Veltroni). In both cases the role of political factors was fundamental to constrain the candidates’ offer, with the only possible competitive challengers (Gordon Brown and Pierluigi Bersani) forced to leave the race in order not to threat the success of the intended winner. Similarly very important was the impact of electability/viability, since both Brown and Bersani accepted to step back also because the polls suggested Blair and Veltroni enjoyed a wider liking in the public opinion. However in the case of the Labour the elite control on the process of selection is further on stressed by the strict candidacy requirements (formal factors: only MPs allow to run) that in 1994 prevented a potentially competitive candidate as Ken Livingston (and perhaps others) to participate.

On the contrary the most inclusive LR in terms of candidacy is 2011 PS primaires citoyennes, representing a clear example of fizzy offer. Obviously not all the six contenders were “real” candidates, because from the beginning the struggle appeared limited to Hollande and Aubry. But the candidates’ offer developed in such an open manner that is difficult to claim some aspirants were prevented to run. First of all differently from previous (closed) PS primaries formal factors didn’t seem to play any significant role: notwithstanding the double ballot system six candidates rather than two or three as usual decided to participate5, and among them there was also a contender extraneous to PS (the radical Baylet). The same could be said about political factors. Actually just the man who appeared as the favourite candidate and the probable winner of the presidential election in 2012 until few months before the ballot, i.e. the IMF Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was forced to renounce to run following the arrest in New York. But what happened is hardly ascrivable to a strategy of PS elite, so that is impossible to claim DSK couldn’t participate because of internal pressures. Rather Strauss-Kahn’s failed

5 According to Castaldo (2009), beyond the 30 signatures from members of the National Council that should be collected by the aspirants, also the nature of the electoral system contributed to limit the number of candidates. In fact according to Sartori (1995) and Cox (1997) the double ballot majoritarian system does not accept more than three real candidates.

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participation encouraged the candidacy of other contenders, such as Aubry and Valls, who were previously deterred by his electability/viability.

We also have two LRs that range between open and fizzy offer: 2010 Labour leadership race and PSOE Congress in 2000. In both cases the incidence of political factors and electability/viability is questionable, while formal factors remained relevant in the case of Labour. Therefore even though the struggle appeared limited to only two candidates (the front-runners David Miliband and José Bono vs. the candidates for “change” Ed Miliband and Luis Zapatero) is difficult to say the elite strongly affected the phase of pre-selection, so that the high number of official candidates (5 and 4) suggest a quite/very inclusive process.

All the other cases fall into the category of open offer, with differences mainly due to the number of official candidates (2 or 3), to the eventual presence of a clear front-runner and to the strictness of candidacy requirements. Only in the case of PS Congress in 2008 also the role of political factors was very important, since the so-called “party elephants” pushed a potential winner such as Delanoë to withdraw and support Aubry in order to prevent the success of Ségolène Royal.

What clearly emerges is that, beyond candidacy requirements – very strict only in the case of the Labour party but always sufficient to exclude outsiders or “disturbance candidates” – the party elite is still able to indirectly intervene in the phase of pre-selection in order to prevent some aspirants to run. It means the greater inclusiveness of the procedures actually reduced the likelihood of coronations but did not produce a loss of control on the process of selection by the party organization. Fig.1: LS inclusiveness in thirteen LRs Fizzy Inclusiveness offer PS (2011) C A N PSOE(2000) D Lab(2010)--------------------X-----------------Lab(2010) I PS(2008) D Open PS(2006) PD(2009) A offer PSOE(2012) SPD(1993) C SPD(1995) PS(1995) Y PSOE (1998) PD(2007) Lab(1994)------------------------X---------------------Lab(1994) Sterilized offer Exclusiveness PPG Party Closed Open Congress Primary Primary

SELECTORATE

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Fig.2: LS inclusiveness in thirteen LRs (candidacy + selectorate) 6

SPD 1995

PSOE 2012

Lab 1

994

PSOE 2000

PS 1995

PSOE 1998

Lab 2

010

PS 2008

PD 2007

PS 2006

SPD 1993

PD 2009

PS 2011

candidacyselectorateLS inclusiveness

Very inclusive

Quite inclusive

Not very inclusive

Not at all inclusive

The two figures above provide a visual representation of the findings (this time

considering both candidacy and selectorate) in order to facilitate the comparison. The first graph (fig.1) is inspired to that realized by Hazan (2006: 177): on the vertical axes is represented the candidacy dimension (that empirically means the number of real candidates), on the horizontal one the selectorate (also considering the turnout and the absolute number of voters). The following histogram (fig.2) combines selectorate and candidacy in order to sort my LRs according to their degree of LS inclusiveness. What emerges from this latter figure is that the differences among the LRs tend to fade because the two dimensions balance each other. Anyway even if most of my cases seem to fall into the category of “quite inclusive” LR, the “ranking” that emerges offers some interesting cues.

The least inclusive races are 1995 SDP Congress and 2012 PSOE Congress, especially because of the low selectorate (party delegates), while in both cases we have an open offer with only two candidates running. Particularly the case of German Social Democrats appears quite exclusive in terms of selectorate because of the very low proportion between party delegates (only 513 in 1995 Congress) and party members (almost 900,000 in the 1990s), while in Spain 976 delegates participated to PSOE Congresses in 2012, though the party membership is less than the half of that of SPD.

Then we find 1994 Labour leadership election (mainly due to the very constrained candidacy), followed by PSOE Congress in 2000, when the low degree of selectorate inclusiveness (party delegates) is only partly balanced by the quite/very inclusive candidacy (open-fizzy offer). The other case of Labour leadership election (2010) is in the middle of the raking, since the open-fizzy offer guarantees an inclusiveness significantly

6 The histogram just serves as graphical representation in order to simplify the comprehension. For each LR I established a value for candidacy and selectorate’s inclusiveness within a 0-10 scale. The reasoning for codification limits to considerations of lower or greater inclusiveness, while the distance between the values is arbitrarily decided. Accordingly statistical/mathematical operations are not reliable and even though LS inclusiveness is calculated as the mean value of selectorate and candidacy, the ranking just go along with what emerged from the qualitative analysis.

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higher than in 1994, although the actual selectorate was lower (just 340,000 persons between union and party members compared to almost 900,000 in 1994). 7

With regard to PD open primaries in 2007 the very inclusive selectorate (3 millions and half voters) is only partially tempered by the sterilized offer. Indeed, beyond the other two cases of open primaries, only SPD and PS closed primary in 1993 and 2006 are better placed in the ranking, thanks to the presence of 2 and 3 real candidates and a sizeable members’ participation. In fact in German primaries we had almost half million voters, due to the fact that SPD is one of the parties with highest total membership in Europe, while between 2005 and 2006 the French PS acquired about 70,000 new members just because of the chance to vote in the primaries.

Finally, as the most inclusive races, we find the Italian and French open primaries in 2009 and 2011 (more than 3 millions voters for the former, 2.7 millions in the first ballot and almost 3 millions in the second for French primaires citoyennes). Differently from PD contest in 2007, here also the candidacy dimension is really inclusive, particularly in the French case.

Just with regard to PS is important to notice that, differently from the other parties, in each of the four LRs analysed the degree of inclusiveness of the selectorate is always very close to that of candidacy (see fig.2). Accordingly, since I already explained it is not sufficient to be very inclusive only in one dimension, I think the French primaries are until now the better example of LS democratization.

4. The Dependent Variables: Operationalization and Findings 4.1. LR divisiveness

With regard to US primary elections Hacker (1965) talks about “divisiveness” as a synonym of “competitiveness”, meaning that the more they are competitive the more they are divisive. However this indicator is not sufficient to talk about a divisive process of selection, since we also have to look to the “negativity” of the primaries. If the competitiveness concerns the results of primary elections, the “negativity” refers to the style of the electoral campaign. In this sense a negative campaign is based principally on reciprocal critics to the personal qualifications, issue positions, past experiences or character of the challengers. In any case not necessarily a competitive primary is also negative or vice-versa (Venturino 2009: 23). Therefore I assume that only when both competitiveness and negativity are present at the same time we can actually define the process of selection as “divisive”.

In order to assess the “negativity” of the process of selection I analysed both direct (TV debates, meeting with militants etc.) and indirect confrontations among the candidates (interviews on the media, rumours etc.) and their main supporters through the reading of daily political news in the thirty days before the ballot. Anyway I also asked party experts about their own interpretation of the campaign.

7 According to the system of the electoral college one third each of the votes is entrusted to MPs and MEPs, party members and union members. The involvement of these multiple or weighted selectorates creates quite a contradictory situation in terms of selectorate. On the one side the inclusion of trade union members made the process much more inclusive than in the traditional model of European closed primary, on the other the fact that the vote of few hundreds MPs and MEPs count for one third as well as the votes of hundred of thousends party members and union members prevents to talk about a very inclusive selectorate. That’s why, following Kenig (2009: 437) suggestion, I assumed an intermediate placement in correspondence to the X (fig.1), meaning slightly less inclusiveveness than in a normal closed primary but much more than in a party congress.

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With regard to the other indicator the academic hints do not lack. In the American literature the degree of competitiveness of primary election was alternatively estimated through dichotomous (Hacker 1975; Bernstein 1977) or metrical variables (Piereson and Smith 1975; Grau 1981); or using only the results of the winner, of the two most voted candidates, or of all competitors (Atkeson 1998).

I follow the suggestions by Kenig (2008: 245-246) in order to construct an index of dispersion, ranging from 0 to 1, that compute the share of votes obtained by all the candidates: ENC/N where the denominator N is the absolute number of candidates, while ENC is the effective number of candidates (ENC = 1/∑Vi², Vi representing the share of votes of the candidate i), based on the effective number of parties by Laasko and Taagepera (1979). However this index is partly misleading because for definition it is very sensitive to the number of candidates running, so that in a race with two candidates the distribution of the votes is obviously less dispersed (i.e. the index suggests a higher competitiveness) than a race with four or five candidates. But not always competitiveness means lower dispersion.

That’s why together with this index I will also look to primaries’ competitiveness as the distance in percentage votes between the first and the second (DFS). Indeed Venturino (2009: 24) explains that in the eye of the public the competition is often limited to the most important candidates that usually are the first two, while the third candidates have a lower visibility. Moreover the competitiveness measured through this indicator has an intuitive meaning that the index of dispersion lacks, and also has a consolidated tradition in the field of electoral studies (Downs 1988). Precisely I will adopt the measure proposed by Piereson and Smith (1975) that subtract to 100 the percentage difference between first and second. In order to make the outcome more intuitively comparable with the other index, I will also divide the values for 100, so that again the theoretical values range from 0 to 1 and the higher the value of the variable the higher the level of competitiveness. Tab.2: Leadership races’ competitiveness

NC: Number of official candidates. In case of multi-phases selection I reported the percentage obtained by the winner in the first ballot and the percentage in the final ballot.

Party/LR System of election NC Winner Winner % ENC/N DFS IoC PSOE 2012 Party Congress 2 Alfredo Rubalcaba 51.2 0,999 0,977 0,988PS 2008 Closed primary 3 Martine Aubry 34.7 - 50.1 0.98 0.974 0.977SPD 1993 Closed primary 3 Rudolf Scharping 40.3 0.973 0.929 0.951PSOE 1998 Closed primary 2 José Borrell 55.4 0.99 0.892 0.941PSOE 2000 Party Congress 4 Luis Zapatero 41.2 0.69 0.991 0.841SPD 1995 Party Congress 2 Oskar Lafontaine 62.6 0.934 0.748 0.841PS 2011 Open primary 6 Francois Hollande 39.2 - 56.6 0.786 0.890 0.838PD 2009 Open primary 3 Pierluigi Bersani 53.0 0.80 0.811 0.805Lab 2010 Electoral college 5 Ed Miliband 34.3 - 50.6 0.613 0.981 0.797PS 1995 Closed primary 2 Lionel Jospin 65.8 0.91 0.683 0.796Lab 1994 Electoral college 3 Tony Blair 57.0 0.80 0.671 0.735PS 2006 Closed primary 3 Ségolène Royal 60.6 0.75 0.602 0.676PD 2007 Open primary 5 Walter Veltroni 75.8 0.33 0.371 0.351

The table below summarizes the finding in terms of LRs’ competitiveness. IoC

(index of competitiveness) is given by the mean value of ECN/N and DFS. Since it is quite difficult to obtain a value of the index approaching 0 when we have at least two (official) candidates, I (arbitrary) assume a “not at all competitive” race for values lower than 0.5. On the contrary we have “very competitive” contests with values ranging from 0.9 to 1.

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Finally an index between 0.5 and 0.75 refers to a “not very competitive” race, while with values between 0.75 and 0.9 I assume a “quite competitive” contest.

However the ranking that emerges from the table is not completely satisfactory. Indeed I think also the election of Zapatero in 2000 PSOE Congress and of Ed Miliband as new Labour leader in 2010 should be considered examples of “very competitive” contest. Indeed even if IoC does not approach 0.9, this is mainly due to the high number of candidates (respectively four and five) that inevitably pushes ENC/N towards the low, while DFS approaches the maximum limit of 1. In fact Ed Miliband was able to get the best of his elder brother David only in the fourth round with one percentage point of advantage. Similarly Zapatero overcame Bono for only nine delegates’ votes.

Conversely I would define the election on Lafontaine an new party chairman in SPD Congress of 1995 and the huge success of Jospin in the French first primary election in 1995 (both with percentages over 60%) as “not very competitive” contests, rather than “quite competitive” as suggested by the value of IoC. Indeed in these two cases the value of ENC/C is quite high because we only have two candidates running (i.e. there is no dispersion) but the distance between the two competitors is very high so is difficult to talk about really competitive races.

Fig.3: Divisiveness in thirteen LRs (negativity + competitiveness)8

PD2007

Lab1994

PD2009

SPD1993

PSOE2000

PS2011

PS1995

SPD1995

PS2006

PSOE2012

Lab2010

PSOE1998

PS2008

negativitycompetitivenessdivisiveness

Very divisive

Quite

divisive

Not very divisive

Not at all

divisive

Fig.3 above combines negativity and competitiveness and provides a ranking of

LRs divisiveness. Showing large differences between the two for most of the LRs, it confirms there is not a linear relationship between these variables. It means that not necessarily heated electoral campaigns automatically lead to more competitive race, nor a fair campaign perforce implies the huge success of a front-runner.

In this sense 2007 PD primaries is the least divisive case, due to the quite low degree of negativity in the style of the electoral campaign but most of all to the fact that the race was not at all competitive. It is followed by 1994 Labour leadership election, when a

8 As in fig.2 for each LR I established a value for campaign’s negativity and LR competitiveness within a 0-10 scale on the basis of the qualitative analysis. The reasoning for codification limits to considerations of lower or greater negativity and competitiveness (in this latter case the reference is the ranking that emerges from table 2 with the corrections that I explained), while the distance between the values is arbitrarily decided. Accordingly statistical/mathematical operations are not reliable and even though LR divisiveness is calculated as the mean value of negativity and competitiveness, the ranking just go along with what emerged from the qualitative analysis.

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fair campaign ended with the large success of Tony Blair, who obtained the absolute majority in the three sectors of the electoral college in the first turn. In 2009 PD open primaries both negativity in the campaign and competitiveness increased a bit but remained at a low level.

Later on we have six races that basically present the same (medium) level of divisiveness but for quite different reasons: in 1993 SPD closed primary and 2000 PSOE Congress a moderate campaign goes with very closed final results. On the contrary French primaries citoyennes of 2011 are characterised by a medium level of negativity and competitiveness. Then we find French closed primaries in 1995 and 2006 and SPD Congress in 1995, when the high level of negativity in the electoral campaign is compensated by low competitiveness.

Between quite and very divisive we find PSOE Congress in 2012 and the Labour leadership race in 2010: the former is more competitive, the latter more negative. Finally the most divisive races appear PSOE primaries in 1998 and 2008 PS Congress, both presenting quite/very negative campaigns and a high level of competitiveness. 4.2. Coincidence between winner and elite’s favourite (CWEF)

Operationalize this second DV means to assess whether the LR winner was or not the one who would be selected by the party elite in case of more exclusive procedures. Accordingly I recurred to expert surveys and I singled out the formal and informal endorsements of the different party elite components (national and local party executives, former or incumbent government’s members, MPs and local representatives) for the candidates of each LR as reported by the press (see footnote 3).

The table below summarises the findings. Beside the name of the winner I reported the name of the candidate that the analysis suggests being the elite’s favourite, recurring to a question mark for those cases in which the endorsements seem to award a specific candidate but then the eventual emergence of other aspects (i.e. electability/viability, necessity to renew the party image, leadership or party crisis) does not assure he/she would be the chosen person in the end. Finally the last column refers to the extent the LR winner coincide with the candidate who would be selected by the party elite, ranging from a maximum of four X (perfect congruence) to a minimum of one (no congruence).

Tab.3 Congruence between actual winner and party elite’s favourite (CWEF)

Party/LR System of election Offer Winner Elite’s favourite CWEF Lab 1994 Electoral college Sterilized Blair Blair xxxx Lab 2010 Electoral college Open-Fizzy Ed Miliband David Miliband x PS 1995 Closed Primary Open Jospin Emmanuelli (?) xx PS 2006 Closed primary Open Royal Royal (?) xx PS 2008 Closed primary Open Aubry Aubry xxx PS 2011 Open primary Fizzy Hollande Aubry (?) xx PD 2007 Open primary Sterilized Veltroni Veltroni xxxx PD 2009 Open primary Open Bersani Bersani xxx PSOE 1998 Closed primary Open Borrell Almunia x PSOE 2000 Party Congress Open-fizzy Zapatero Bono xx PSOE 2012 Party Congress Open Rubalcaba Rubalcaba (?) xxx SPD 1993 Closed primary Open Scharping Scharping xxx SPD 1995 Party Congress Open Lafontaine Scharping (?) xx

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As shown by the table we only have two LRs wherein the winner perfectly coincide with the elite’s favourite (Lab 1994, PD 2007) and two others of total inconsistency (PSOE 1998, Lab 2010). Anyway there are also some ambiguous cases. For instance talking about SPD Congress in 1995, when Lafontaine surprisingly decided to challenge the incumbent PC Scharping at the very last day, the experts agree it was highly improbable that the executive organs would have raised opposition against Scharping, but his defeat was welcome as a relief even by his followers. Indeed is possible to suspect the party delegates did what the elite would like but couldn’t do, i.e. remove a leader who was becoming a serious problem.

Similarly in PS primaries in 1995 and 2011 apparently Emmanuelli and Aubry (both incumbent PC) had some more endorsements within party top organs than their main challengers, but everybody were aware of the greater “présidentiabilité” of Jospin and Hollande, so that in the end is possible they would be the winners even in case only the party elite had to decide.

On the contrary in the case of PS closed primary in 2006 it was just because of her growing popularity in the polls that a relative majority of the Socialist top and middle level elite decided to endorse Ségolène Royal, but what happened later demonstrated she actually didn’t have a real support within the party organization.

5. Assessing the hypotheses 5.1. H1 - the more the LS process is inclusive the more is divisive

Is there a positive relationship between inclusiveness (IV) and divisiveness (DV)? Do they tend to grow together? Whether my hypothesis is correct I should have very inclusive process of selection (i.e. open primaries and open-fizzy offer) coinciding with very divisive LRs (i.e. both competitiveness and negativity in the electoral campaign). Specularly when the inclusiveness in both dimensions (candidacy and selectorate) is low I expect not to find a divisive contest. Finally, if we have a medium level of inclusiveness (that could even derive from a wide selectorate associated with a sterilised offer or vice versa), we should also have a medium level of divisiveness (eventually low competitiveness and high negativity or vice versa). Figure 4 below clearly shows this is not the case.9

9 I suggest that in order to confirm the hypothesis most of the cases should be included in (or at least be very close to) the dotted arrow. However since the number of cases under consideration is limited and the values are arbitrarily decided (being the same used for fig.2 and 3), the figure does not have any meaning per se but it is just a graphical device in oder to illustrate the findings that previously emerged from the qualitative analysis.

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Fig.4: Inclusiveness and divisiveness in twelve LRs Very

divisive

Quite divisive

Not very divisive

PS 2008

PSOE 2012

PSOE 1998

Lab 2010

PSOE 2000 SPD 1993SPD 1995 PS 1995PS 2006

Lab 1994

PS 2011

PD 2009

PD 2007

Not very Quite Very inclusive inclusive inclusive

Only one (Labour 1994) among the three less inclusive LRs “behaves” as expected (fair campaign and large success for Tony Blair), while both SPD and especially PSOE Congresses in 1995 and 2012 turn out as quite/very divisive contests.

Actually, in line with the hypothesis, we have few cases of medium inclusiveness (closed primary with open offer: PS 1995, PS 2006, SPD 1993) that lead to quite divisive races (negative campaigns and low competitiveness or vice-versa), but in general the increasing in divisiveness compared to inclusiveness does not occur in the expected proportion. For instance PS Congress in 2008 and 1998 PSOE primaries are just quite inclusive but lead to the most divisive races (both negative campaigns and competitiveness).

But most of all we have the three open primaries that set up as completely “deviant” cases. Indeed in the occasion of the second Italian primary and the French primaires citoyennes the inclusiveness was very high but we didn’t assist to very “divisive” races, especially because of the lack of negativity in the electoral campaigns. Then with regard to Veltroni’s election in 2007 the inclusiveness was lower but quite high in any case, while the divisiveness was practically not-existent especially because of the lack of competitiveness.

Just because of this quite contradictory findings I think is useful to analyse the relationship between IV and DV breaking down the two dimension that characterise LS inclusiveness, in order to see whether selectorate and candidacy taken separately provide us with different hints.

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Fig.5: Candidacy inclusiveness and LR divisiveness Very

divisive

Quite divisive

Not very divisive

Lab 1994

PD 2007

PSOE 1998

PS 2008

Lab 2010

PS 1995SPD 1995

SPD 1993

PD 2009

PS 2011PSOE 2000

PS 2006

PSOE 2012

Sterilized Open Fizzy Offer offer offer

As shown by figure above the relationship between candidacy’s inclusiveness and LR divisiveness is still unclear but apparently more in line with my initial hypothesis10, although there are at least half of the cases that do not behave as expected. For instance in 1998 PSOE primaries a not extremely inclusive candidate offer (open offer with only two candidates) translated in a very divisive contest. On the contrary PS open primaries in 2011 set up as a good example of fizzy offer, but then the electoral campaign was moderate, although the contest turned out to be quite competitive. Similarly PSOE Congress in 2000 ranges between open and fizzy offer, but the contest was not particularly divisive because of the fair play among the candidates during the electoral campaign. In PS Congress in 2008 an open offer brought to the most divisive among the LRs that I considered, whereas in 2009 PD primaries we had two real candidates running but the campaign was moderate and the competitiveness was not so high.

In sum I guess that more than the candidacy dimension in general, what really matters is the distinction between sterilized and open/fizzy offer. Indeed once the set of formal, political and electability/viability factors allows the participation of more than one real candidate the inclusiveness of the dimension lose its weight. Actually this is not a big surprise, indeed we know that most of the LRs are usually based on the struggle between two main candidates (i.e. “real candidates”). In sum, provided we are not facing a perfect

10 It is not surprisingly that the more “real” candidates there are, the more the LR is divisive. In this sense I have to face a problem of overlapping between IV and DV (particularly intended in terms of LR competitiveness). Indeed, as expected, there is a clear positive relationship between the number of real candidates and LR competitiveness. However the two variables are qualitatively different because they are measured in different moments. Indeed I assessed whether a candidate has actual possibilities to obtain the nomination on the basis of the analysis of the pre-ballot period, while the competitiveness of a candidate is measured simply looking to the LR results. Obviously it is undeniable that particularly the aspect of the viability is strictly related with the final result of the candidates, but the fact the polls suggest a candidate is not likely to win the LR doesn’t necessarily mean he is running just for “attestation”. In this sense he still can be a “real” candidate. Accordingly the empirical analysis demonstrated that a race opposing two or three “real” candidates is not necessarily a “competitive” race. This is the case for most of the French primaries (Emmanuelli in 1995, Fabius and DSK in 2006, Royal in 2011) but also for SPD Congress in 1995 (Scharping) or for the second example of PD national primaries in 2009 (Franceschini).

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example of sterilized offer, it is not relevant whether the “real” candidates are two or more in order to forecast the level of divisiveness of the leadership contest. Fig.6: Selectorate inclusiveness and LR divisiveness Very

divisive

Quite divisive

Not very divisive

PS 2008

PSOE 1998

2007

PSOE 2012

PSOE 2000

SPD 1995

Lab 2010

SPD 1993

PS 1995 PS 2006

Lab 1994

PS 2011

PD 2009

PD

Party Closed Open Congress Primary Primary

With regard to the relationship between selectorate inclusiveness and LR divisiveness the findings go exactly in the opposite direction of my first hypothesis, as we can see from the figure above.

Actually Kenig (2008: 246) had already demonstrated that “in oppose to expectations, the opening of the selection process to broader populations did not bring with it more competitive contests”. Indeed the two Spanish Congresses in 2000 and 2012 were both very competitive, while competitiveness decreased a lot in the three open primaries (being basically absent in 2007 PD primary). The same seems true for what regards the negativity of the electoral campaigns, i.e. the larger the selectorate, the more moderate is the style of the campaign. In fact all the three cases of open primaries are characterised by a fair competition among the candidates, while the most negative campaigns occurred in French and Spanish closed primaries.

The “deviant” behaviour of open primaries deserves a further argument. Is there an explanation why at the maximum level of selectorate’s inclusiveness we basically have low divisiveness? I guess that when all people are allowed to vote for the party leader the risk of internal conflicts is better perceived, since the party organization fear to completely lose the control of the LS process. In fact, even if modern parties are more and more focused on voters rather than on members, the former are not at all involved in the party organization, differently from the membership that still represents the so-called party on the ground. That could push the party elite and the candidates themselves in adopting a more cautious approach in case of open primaries, especially during the electoral campaign (lower negativity). Moreover according to some observers a heated campaign discourages popular participation, and since in case of open primaries the level of turnout is important almost as much as the result itself, the candidates could prefer to adopt a kind of collaborative attitude in order to push most people as possible to vote. This is also because in general party voters are less familiar and accordingly less tolerant towards internal conflicts and factionalism than simple party members (or even worst party

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delegates). Therefore a party member is not damped in voting by a negative campaign, rather the overheated climate could be a further reason to participate in order to support the candidate representative of the faction to which he/she feels closer. On the contrary a normal voter, who is obviously much less motivated, could simply decide that it is not worth wasting energies to go to the polls whether the candidates just offered such a “sad show” during the campaign.

Furthermore is possible to suspect that party voters could prefer to direct their votes on the front-runner, just in order to guarantee to the selected leader a greater legitimation and not exacerbate the tensions (lower competitiveness). In fact Kenig (2008: 242) reminds that voters in inclusive selectorates are more exposed to the influence of the opinion polls, and if such polls indicate a front-runner, undecided voters are pushed to transfer their support to the likely winner. Similarly, polls that establish a clear front-runner may also persuade the supporters of the challengers to abstain. Indeed in my three open primaries the front-runner coincides with the actual winner (Veltroni, Bersani, Hollande), while in some occasions with only party (and trade union) members (or even Congress delegates) allowed to vote the expectations were reversed (PSOE 1998; PSOE 2000; Labour 2010). Of course it doesn’t mean that necessarily the outcome deriving from very open procedures of LS is more predictable than a membership ballot or a Congress vote, but I think this is a very important point that should be taken into consideration for further research. 5.2. H2 - the more the LS process is inclusive the more it is likely to select a leader who wouldn’t be selected by the party elite

Hypothesise that the more the LS process is inclusive the more it is likely to select a leader who doesn’t coincide with the one who would be selected by the party elite means to anticipate a negative relationship between IV (LS inclusiveness) and DV (CWEF). Again the figure below shows this is not the case, indeed the vast majority of my empirical cases do not fit with the hypothesis. Fig.7: LS inclusiveness and CWEF in thirteen LRs Perfectly coincident

Quite coincident

Not very coincident

Not at all

PD 2007

Lab 1994

PS 2008

PS 2006SPD 1993

PSOE 2012

SPD 1995

PSOE 2000

PS 1995

PD 2009

PS 2011

Lab 2010

PSOE 1998

coincident Not very Quite Very inclusive inclusive inclusive

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There are examples of perfect congruence both in not very (Labour 1994) and quite/very (PD 2007) inclusive LRs. At the same time we find no congruence at all in two cases of medium inclusiveness (Lab 2010 and PSOE 1998). Moreover, contrary to the expectations, my least inclusive race (i.e. the surprise election of Lafontaine in 1995 SPD Congress) represents a clear case in which the (formal) will of the party elite has been reversed by the delegates’ vote. At the same time the three most inclusive LRs (PS 2011, PD 2009, SPD 1993) do not set up as cases of clear inconsistency between the candidate supported by the party elite and the actual winner.

Again the analysis of LS inclusiveness in its wholeness does not provide any

interesting conclusions, so that is necessary to slip the IV into its two sub-dimensions. What emerged is that candidacy and selectorate taken separately give us indications very similar to those stated in the previous section devoted to the relation between inclusiveness and LR divisiveness. This is because as I expected there is a quite strong positive relationship between LR divisiveness and CWEF, as shown by fig.8 below.

Fig.8: Divisiveness and CWEF in twelve LRs

Perfectly

coincident

Quite coincident

Not very coincident

Not at all coincident

PD 2007 Lab 1994

PS 2006PD 2009SPD 1993

PSOE 2012

PS 2008

PS 2011PS 1995PSOE 2000

SPD 1995

Lab 2010

PSOE 1998

Not very Quite Very divisive divisive divisive

As in the previous section regarding the relationship between candidacy’s inclusiveness and LR divisiveness the findings would suggest that a less contrained offer translates in a minor likelihood of congruence between winner and elite’s favourite (negative relationship between candidacy’s inclusiveness and CWEF: see fig.9), in line with my initial hypothesis. Anyway also in this case is impossible to single out a clear tendency. Rather it is immediately clear that in case of sterilized offer (Labour 1994; PD 2007) we are likely to find a perfect congruence. This is not at all surprisingly, since it is obvious that when the party elite is successful in manipulating the candidates’ offer (pushing all other competitive challengers to withdraw, as in the case of Brown and Bersani) in order to have only one real candidate running, that candidate (who is clearly the elite’s favourite) will win. In this sense is possible to suspect the outcome depends much more on the lacks of real candidates rather than by a convergence of interests between the oligarchy and the grassroots (respectively party/union Labour members and

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Italian citizens). Since the contests that elected Blair and Veltroni also coincide with the least divisive races we could hazard that in case the party elite is able to intervene in the phase of pre-selection in order to prevent more than one real candidate to run, the LR shouldn’t have negative-side effects in terms of intra-party conflict. Indeed on the one side a sterilized offer usually guarantees a fair campaign and a clear winner (no divisiveness), on the other the winner is inevitably the one preferred by the party core, so that the LR is quite unlikely to drive internal struggles.

In sum what really matters is again the distinction between sterilized and open/fizzy offer. Actually many times the presence of third candidates, rather than providing a higher grade of uncertainty to the outcome, guarantees to the elite’s favourite more chances of success (SPD 1993, PS 2006-2008, PD 2009). This is because a frontal struggle between only two candidates guarantees greater visibility to the challenger of the “apparatus’ candidate”, so that the former is sometimes able to defeat his opponent (PSOE 1998, SPD 1995, PS 1995). Fig.9: Candidacy inclusiveness and CWEF in thirteen LRs

Perfectly coincident

Quite coincident

Not very coincident

Not at all coincident

Lab 1994PD 2007

PD 2009SPD 1993

PS 2008

PS 2006PSOE 2012

PS 1995

PSOE 2000

PS 2011

Lab 2010

SPD 1995

PSOE 1998

Sterilized Open Fizzy offer offer offer

Moreover the findings show factions’ conflicts do not depend on the number of candidates running as suggested by Massari (2004). Most of the scholars now agree that LS mechanisms as primary elections are strictly linked to the phenomenon of “personalization”, i.e. they tend to be more and more based on a clash of personalities rather than on struggles among different factions, and I think my analysis tend to confirm this hint. In fact is rare to find LRs wherein the candidates really had different programmatic positions, rather we could have persons coming from the same faction who strongly clashed each other (Royal and DSK in 2006). Actually at least in a couple of occasions the LR also became a kind of arena of conflict between (macro) factions: reformers vs. mitterandists (PS 1995), veltroniani supporting the “majoritarian vocation” vs. d’alemiani looking for alliances with other parties (PD 2009), New Labour vs. Old Labour (Lab 2010). However these three cases present different kind of candidate’s offer, while for

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instance in the occasion of 2011 PS open primaries (i.e. my most inclusive race in terms of candidacy) the clash among factions remained in the background. Fig.10: Selectorate inclusiveness and CWEF in thirteen LRs

Perfectly coincident

Quite coincident

Not very coincident

Not at all

PD 2007Lab 1994

PSOE 1998

SPD 1995

PSOE 2012

PSOE 2000

Lab 2010

PS 1995

PS 2008PS 2006

SPD 1993

PS 2011

PD 2009

coincident Party Closed Open Congress primary primary

Still according to what emerged in the previous section the findings would suggest a positive relationship (i.e. the opposite of what expected) between selectorate’s inclusiveness and CWEF (see fig.10 above). Beyond other things it highlights a relevant and quite unexpected point: the outcome deriving from very open procedures of LS is not more “dangerous” for party oligarchy than a delegates’ vote, although party delegates are to a certain extent part of the (middle level) elite. In fact Zapatero in 2000 and Lafontaine in 1995 were surely less supported by party top elite than Veltroni, Bersani or Hollande in 2007, 2009 and 2011 open primaries.

On the one side it demonstrates that the party elite is not a monolith presenting homogeneous preferences, on the other it seems to suggest a strong congruence between elite’s favourite/front-runner/winner in case of open primaries. In fact I already underlined that in case of very open procedures most of the popular votes are likely to gather on the front-runner (who accordingly is more likely to win). However not only voters are sensitive to polls’ influence, but also elite members, so that an open procedure could push most of them to endorse the front-runner, which means we are likely to have coincidence between elite’s favourite and LR winner.

Anyway someone could claim that the success of Borrell wouldn’t be possible through a normal congressional vote, while it is likely Ed Miliband would not become the Labour leader if trade unions’ members were not included in the selectorate. In fact both 2010 Labour leadership election and the success of Borrell in 1998 PSOE primaries represent an example of voice, wherein a large part of the selectorate decided to support the intended loser in order to sent a message of protest and unsatisfaction towards the party elite (Valbruzzi 2005). It is not surprising that just these two LRs are also the most divisive ones, together with PS 2008 Congress that clearly appears as an outlier in the relationship between divisiveness and CWEF (see figure 8 above). Indeed the latter is the

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most divisive race among those that I analyzed, but in the end the winner coincides with the candidate supported by the party elite. Anyway Aubry’s success was quite questionable11, and in any case even though in the end Royal wasn’t able to defeat her contender in the second ballot it is pretty clear her good and unexpected performance (her motion polled first in the preparatory vote and Royal was the most voted in the first membership ballot) could be interpreted as an attempt of party members to “rebel” against the oligarchy’s diktat to vote for Aubry.

Accordingly I would say that just because of their high level of divisiveness and the struggle between grassroots and party oligarchy that emerged, PSOE 1998 primaries, 2008 PS Congress and 2010 Labour leadership election represent the LRs with more negative-side effects. Interestingly these three cases present a medium level of inclusiveness (in terms of both candidacy and selectorate). It would suggest that membership ballots with open offer are more likely to drive intra-party conflicts than both party Congress or open primary, but of course is impossible to drawn some conclusions just observing so few cases. In any case this is another point that should be deepened in future studies.

6. Concluding remarks

It is pretty clear my qualitative approach and the restricted number of empirical cases I considered does not provide me with hard evidences and even less allows me to try to generalize the findings. In fact I had very different results not just from country to country but also from LR to LR even in the same party.

Anyway I think that at least my work demonstrates the importance of empirical analysis for the study of the effects of primary elections and similar mechanisms. In this sense particularly the phase of pre-selection turned out to be fundamental. Accordingly the dimension of candidacy, considered not only in terms of party rules but mainly through the concept of constrained candidate offer, reveals a basic element for assessing the actual inclusiveness of a LR, because if we don’t control for the number of real candidates we have completely distorted results.

That’s why I think the findings suggest that in general mechanism such as primary elections - at least for what concerns very important role at the national level - are not likely to remove the control exercised by dominant coalitions over party structures as suggested by some scholars (regardless of whether they consider this as positive or negative). The reason is that quite often the oligarchy succeed in preventing unwanted candidates to run (not very inclusive candidacy) or is able to impose its own candidate to the membership/electorate in the final ballot (although sometimes it is the same party elite that goes along with the preferences of the grassroots, as happens with Royal in 2006).

In sum the “democratization” (mainly intended as increasing in selectorate’s inclusiveness) is still quite far from representing a revolution in the process of candidate and leader selection, since most of the times the choices of the grassroots seem to adjust on the elite’s will.

For this reason I agree with Kenig (2008: 246) when he states that “from the point of view of a party the democratization had succeeded well. There are more candidates

11 Aubry succeeded with only 42 votes of advantage (on a total of almost 140,000) over Ségolène Royal in the second ballot. The latter refused to recognize the result denouncing polls-rigging and asked for a new ballot but the outgoing PC Hollande just conceded a recounting. Differently from Royal expectations, Aubry’s victory was confirmed with a wider margin (102 votes), but for a certain period Royal’s followers didn’t concede the defeat, rather threating to drag the party through the courts.

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(intended as official candidates, not necessarily as “real” candidates) and more attention of the media for the party’s affairs. On the other hand, the likelihood of a distinct front-runner (who usually coincides with the elite’s favourite) diminishes the chances for a hard-fought race that might risk the party’s cohesiveness and public image”.

In fact rather than represent a “revenge” of the grassroots against party machines (as was the case in the US at the beginning of the last century) primary election in Europe appear as a conscious choice of the political class in order to guarantee a greater legitimation to the leaders/candidates and to drive a new image of opening and transparency to win back voters and members. Of course some “accidents” could occur (Borrell was forced to resign by internal pressures only one year after his unexpected success in the primaries) but if there are internal conflicts linked to the selection of the party leader it is hard to say they depends on the system of selection per se. Actually neither it is true that the democratization could help in reunifying divided parties, but at least I think my analysis demonstrated that generally it is not detrimental.

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