Who Wants to be in the Driver’s Seat? Members’ Support for Intra-Party Democratic Innovations

In the last decade an increasing number of political parties started using intra-party democratic innovations in the form of either direct or deliberative practices. Earlier studies investigate why these innovations are used, how they work and with what consequences. However, we know little about what party members think about these innovations. Understanding their support such intra-party practices would provide the users’ perspective, which is currently missing, and would also complement the literature on citizens’ support for direct and deliberative democracy. This paper seeks to address these gaps in the literature and has a twofold goal: to map party members’ support for intra-party democratic innovations and to explain the variation in support. It draws on semi-structured interviews with the party members of five parliamentary political parties in Romania. The interviews will be conducted in January-February 2024 and their analysis will be done with the help of deductive thematic analysis. The main explanatory factors for the variation are related to party organization, internal communication, electoral strategy, and the belief that democratic innovations can make a change.