The internal democracy of the crisis parties in Western Europe: a quantitative analysis of the role of digitalization, ideology and populism

TL;DR

This study examines how digitalization, ideology, and populism affect internal democracy in new political parties in Western Europe.

Contribution

The paper provides an empirical analysis of internal democracy in 'crisis parties' using a large dataset across 13 countries.

Findings

Crisis parties do not exhibit more plebiscitary democracy despite being digitalized.

Digitalization is the most consistent predictor of intra-party democracy.

Populism in crisis parties reduces internal democracy compared to older parties.

Abstract

Previous studies on the internal democracy of new digital parties in Western Europe suggest a plebiscitary tendency, but most focus on a limited number of cases. This paper aims to empirically analyze the intra-party democracy of electorally successful new parties in Western Europe and identify the main factors that may influence it.

Drawing on data from the second round of the Political Parties Database (PPDB) and the first wave of the Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA), this study covers more than 100 parties across 13 countries. Adopting a generational approach, we define a cohort of “crisis parties”—founded between the economic crisis and the pandemic—and examine their internal democracy in comparison to older parties, using Von dem Berge and Poguntke’s IPD model and
Böhmelt
et al.,’s (2022) framework, with ideology, digitalization, and populism treated as explanatory variables.

Our findings show that being a crisis party—even a highly digitalized one on the left—does not entail more plebiscitary forms of intra-party democracy.

Digitalization emerges as the most consistent predictor shaping intra-party democracy, while the cohort effect matters only insofar as crisis parties are more populist than older parties, which ultimately reduces their internal democracy.

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