An Intra-Party Democracy Index: Theory, Design and A Demonstration

2016/01/23 by Gideon Rahat, Assaf Shapira · 57 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Mathematics · Social Sciences · #Competition (biology) #Computer science #Democracy #Dimension (graph theory) #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Index (typography) #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Law #Mathematics #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Positive economics #Pure mathematics #Representation (politics) #Sociology #Transparency (behavior)

paper · doi:10.1093/pa/gsv068

published in Parliamentary Affairs 70(1), 84-110 (Oxford University Press)

openalex publication_date 2016/01/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This article presents a new index for a comprehensive and systematic measurement of the level of intra-party democracy (IPD). The proposed index is designed on the basis of a comparison with state-level democracy and previous attempts to measure IPD. It examines five dimensions: participation, representation, competition, responsiveness and transparency. The way each dimension is measured is explained and justified on the basis of the procedure of its design and democratic theory. Its application and potential contribution to the analysis of democracy and party politics is demonstrated through its use to comparatively evaluate the level of internal democracy in political parties in Israel; and through examining several hypotheses concerning the relationship between party characteristics and their level of IPD and the relationship between the various dimensions of IPD.

Citations

• Which Candidate Selection Method is the Most Democratic?
• Going, going, . . . gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe

Cited by

• Digital Intra-Party Democracy: An Exploratory Analysis of Podemos and the Labour Party
• Democracy or discord? how citizens judge contested party leadership races
• Measuring intra-party democracy on a global scale
• Hacking the representative system through deliberation? The organization of the Agora party in Brussels. [europepmc]
• The internal democracy of the crisis parties in Western Europe: a quantitative analysis of the role of digitalization, ideology and populism. [europepmc]
• Less is more. Exploring opportunities and challenges of digital crowdsourcing for political parties. [europepmc]

Related

• Measuring intra-party democracy on a global scale
• Party Systems, Democratic Positions, and Regime Changes: Introducing the Party-System Democracy Index
• Dimensions of Political Representation: Ideological and Policy Congruence between the Representative and the Represented in Seven Countries
• How (not) to measure democracy
• Where Are the People? A Call for People-Centred Concepts and Measurements of Democracy