Types of political parties and the models of democracy that they adhere

Against the backdrop of the steadily increasing personalization of politics, a new classification of political parties (Rahat, forthcoming) suggests categorizing parties according to the degree to which they adhere to collegialism or depart from it. Specifically, it distinguishes five ideal types: two personal-decentralized types, referring to collections of separated autonomous activists or separated autonomous individual politicians; a collegial type, which is about the centrality of the team and is based mainly on collective authorities and collective decision making; and two personal-centralized types, referring to the centrality of an individual politician in her capacity as the party leader or that of a specific individual who “owns” the party. In this paper, we examine the relationship between these ideal types and different models of democracy: How does the personalist / collegial division relate to how parties practice democracy internally and externally? Specifically, we interrogate the theoretical affinities between the party ideal types and representative (both majoritarian and consensus variants), direct, deliberative, and technocratic models of democracy. Which internal democratic models do personal-centralized, collegial, and personal-decentralized parties tend to practice? What kind of changes do they envision to make to democracy as practiced in the broader political system. We expect to find that collegial parties – given their institutional nature – adhere to the consensus model of representative democracy; centralized-personalized parties (leader and personal parties) and the decentralized-personal network party – given their leader/candidate-centered approach – to majoritarian and direct democracy; and decentralized personal parties of the movement type – given their grassroots orientation – to deliberative democracy. We do not expect any party to adhere internally to the technocratic model, as this model is by its nature non-partisan, if not non-political. However, collegial party organization might be compatible with technocratic governance in the broader political system. In particular, it is the strength of our approach that it allows us to see if different kinds of parties practice democracy consistently internally and externally or whether there are divergences between both arenas and why. Rahat, Gideon. Forthcoming. “Party Types in the Age of Personalized Politics.” Perspectives on Politics.