"Implementing Democratic Equality in Political Parties. Organizational Consequences in the Swedish and the German Pirate Party"

Abstract

This paper theorizes and empirically assesses some important intra-organizational implications of maximizing democratic equality in political partiesboth between followers and members and between members and elites.They include weak member commitment, passivity of the rank-and-file membership and – depending on party structure – high levels of internal conflict. To substantiate our arguments, we examine two parties that implement principles of democratic equality in their organizations: the Swedish and German Pirate parties. These cases show, first, that while organizational structures implementing norms of equality allowed them to rapidly mobilize a considerable following, the same structures systematically reduced their capacity to consolidate support in the longer term, a weakness that might eventually put these parties’ survival at risk.Second, they show that differences in the extent to which subnational units provide a foundation for member mobilization helps to explain variation in the level of internal conflict experienced by these parties.