Drawing on evidence from comparative research on intra-party factionalism in established democracies I argue that party organisational changes designed to respond to demands for greater intra-party democracy can have unintended consequences. Striking the right balance of incentives isn’t easy and in the long run procedural changes to redress democratic deficiencies can be counter-productive and damaging for democracy.
Political parties in ‘third wave democracies’ can learn lessons from Italy and Japan where dominant parties ruled continuously for the first 50 years of these countries’ democratisation. The proportional rules and procedures adopted by Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Italy’s Christian Democratic Party (DC) to give intra-party factions organisational stakes produced negative trade-offs not conducive to good governance: party fragmentation, high leadership turnover, government churn and gridlock and accountability losses.
As faction leaders rather than the party leadership ended up controlling office-seekers’ campaign benefits and office-holders’ career benefits, individual politicians switched their loyalty from the party and towards factions, thus weakening partisanship and cohesion. To maximise their organisational clout, DC power-brokers were incentivised to split from existing factions and set up new ones. As factions became veto players, collective action dilemmas and decisional stalemate emerged inside the DC. Faction leaders used their veto power in the national organisation to block much-needed party reforms. In Japan LDP politicians were similarly incentivised although the old electoral system of single non-transferable vote (SNTV) and the LDP’s career incentives kept fragmentation in check.
In both parties, leadership selection resulted from factional bargaining in fragile ad-hoc factional alliances generated by the DC’s congressional motion-lists system and the LDP’s presidential primaries. Apart from pushing factions to decentralise their operations and become embedded in the party grassroots, these factionalised contests produced party leaders without clear mandates and revolving-door prime ministers.
