Comparing Party Organization in Parliamentary and Presidential Democracies: Structures, Resources and Rules

How similar or different are patterns of party resourcing, organizational structures and internal democracy across the multiplicity of democratic regimes around the globe? And are there regularities in how parties tend to organize under specific regime types, or in specific regions? Until recently, many of these questions could not be systematically answered due to the lack of cross-nationally comparable data. This has changed, in part thanks to the Political Party Database (PPDB). Round 1a of this project, published in 2017, provided a basis for multiple publications comparing party practices and resources in 19 parliamentary democracies. The proposed paper will use PPDB Round 2 data to re-visit questions about what explains observed similarities and differences in party rules, party resources, and party decision-making practices. Taking advantage of the expanded universe of PPDB Round 2 (now covering over 40 countries and over 250 parties, and encompassing both presidential and parliamentary democracies) it will investigate the extent to which regime types and age of democracy seem to shape parties’ organizational choices.