Participation in internal party referenda: the Spanish case

The democratization of party leaders and candidates has gained popularity and prominence during the last decades in many countries. The research has clarified the main dimensions involved in the process and explored some its main political and organizational consequences, particularly beyond the US case (LeDuc, 2001; Pennings and Hazan, 2001; Hazan and Rahat, 2010; Sandri, Seddone and Venturino, 2015; Cross et al., 2016; Sandri and Seddone, 2021). The comparative literature has devoted less attention to other internal party democratic innovations such as more inclusive ways of policy development (Gauja 2013 and 2015) or the adoption of large- and small-scale intra-party deliberative procedures (Gherghina, Soare and Jacquet, 2020). And yet, other phenomena such as party internal referenda or consultations have been even less explored (but see Wuttke, Junhgerr and Schoen 2017). That is why the aims of this paper are to describe the main features of internal party referenda in Spain and to explore the main features shaping their turnout at the meso (organizational) level. In order to do that, the paper will briefly present the main comparative literature discussing the determinants of turnout in two main streams of literature: the one on referenda and the one on party primaries to select party leaders and candidates. In addition, the paper also will take into account the relevance of digital voting as one of the drivers facilitating the implementation of internal ballots and consultations. Despite security and privacy concerns, digitalisation has substantially reduced the organizational burdens traditionally linked to such internal procedures. However, it is not clear yet to what extent digital voting has been a relevant factor shaping turnout in party democratic innovations such internal consultations. The empirical section of the paper will briefly describe the evolution over time of internal party referenda in Spain and some of its main features. The paper will also use cluster analysis to understand the similarities between different groups of procedures. Then some statistical models will be conducted in order to understand the relevance of different factors shaping turnout at the meso level. To that extent, the paper relies on an original dataset with information on all internal consultations implemented by Spanish political parties at the national and regional level between 2004 and 2023 (n=133).