A Rationale for Intra-Party Democracy

Abstract

This paper provides a rationale for intra-party democracy within a political agency model with moral hazard. The focus is on the party's internal procedures for policy de- termination. I show that democratizing those procedures benefits the party leadership, which seeks to maximize joint reelection chances of the party's incumbents. The reason is that under intra-party democracy, the voters adopt less demanding reappointment rules and reelect the party's incumbents more often than under leaders-dominated party structure. My results therefore indicate that democratizing policy determination processes within the party is in the interests of both the leadership and the ordinary members. The voters in turn are equally well off regardless of the party's internal procedure for policy determination.

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