Opening up candidate selection to (party) voters: The opinion of local politicians

Political parties in Western Europe are in decline over the past few decades. Particularly the ‘party on the ground’ erodes, which refers to the party’s linkage to members, voters and local sections, who form the basis of the party. Parties have responded to this crisis by introducing, amongst others, organisational reforms by giving their members a larger say in the selection of electoral candidates and party leaders. Recently, some parties have taken further steps by also involving other kinds of party affiliates, such as party supporters and social media followers in these intra-party decisions. This phenomenon has been labelled ‘multispeed’ membership by Scarrow (2014) and some parties in Europe (such as the French PS) are experimenting with giving all (party) voters the right to determine the party’s candidates at general elections. These different forms of affiliation raise questions whether and to what extent other people than party members can have a say in the party’s internal affairs. The question arises whether all (established) layers of the party are content with these changes in intra-party power structures. It is the intention of this paper to study which local politicians are in favour of opening the candidate selection process to voters. More in particular, we aim to investigate whether their attitude towards opening up candidate selection is steered by ideological factors or by factors related to their current formal position. Therefore, we use data from a large-scale survey (N=1,128) among local politicians in Flanders (Belgium). The preliminary results show that local executive politicians are significantly less positive about opening the process compared to local councillors.