How do parties choose leaders, and (when) does it matter?

This paper explores parties’ changing leadership selection procedures, focusing on two decades of change in the norms and rules governing parties’ leadership selection in established and newer parliamentary democracies. Recent scholarship has paid a great deal of attention to procedures that introduce elements of grassroots democracy into these critical decisions, sometime described as "intra-party democracy" or IPD. However, it is by no means universal for parties in parliamentary democracies to give members (or other supporters) a direct say in this choice. With or without IPD, such procedures vary greatly in terms of timing, access, and the relative influence of different party faces. Thus, this paper looks beyond simple classifications based on the role or party members to examine what party leadership selection procedures (and shifts therein) reveal about the balance of power within parties. We also examine the outcome of party decisions, asking when (and if so, how) the rules matter for which leaders are chosen.