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Changing democracy? Why inertia is winning over innovation.

Lidia Núñez

Post-doctoral researcher, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Caroline Close

FNRS Post-doctoral researcher, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR General Conference

Montréal, 26-29 August 2015

Section ‘Reflections on Electoral Democracy: Evaluations and Innovations’

Panel ‘Strategies of Political Parties and Political Elites’

ABSTRACT

Representative democracy seems to be in crisis in Western political systems. Of-cited

symptoms of this crisis include citizens’ distrust towards political institutions and decreasing

participation in conventional politics. In order to cure that democratic malaise and increase

citizens’ involvement in decision-making processes, democratic innovations are often cited as

a remedy. In spite of the trend towards more inclusive institutions, changes remain rare. Why

are innovations not implemented? In this paper, we provide some explanation of why inertia

seems to win over change through an analysis of party elites’ willingness to change

democracy across 15 European democracies, by using the PARTIREP Comparative MP

Survey. The paper concentrates on party-level factors, and observes that party elites’

preferred innovations vary along several elements: party’s position in power, party ideology,

and party age. Party ideology and party age seem to be the main determinants of opposition

to or support for innovation.

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Introduction

In 2000 Robert Dahl claimed that “in a disturbing number of the advanced democratic

countries citizens’ confidence in several major democratic institutions has undergone a

significant decline since the 1980s or earlier” (Dahl 2000, p.36). Numerous scholars have

pointed out such trend (Dalton 2004; Norris 1999; Nye et al. 1997; Putnam & Pharr 2000).

Citizens appear to be increasingly discontent about the way democracy works and they tend

to regard political parties and politicians with a growing scepticism and mistrust. Not in vein,

citizens’ level of identification with political parties is at record low and party membership is

declining in most countries (Delwit 2011; Van Biezen et al. 2012). Voters participate less at

elections and they switch their votes across parties more easily than ever before (Crewe &

Denver 1985; Drummond 2006; Dalton et al. 2000). As a result, predicting the outcome of

elections is becoming a daunting adventure.

In this context, the topic of institutional reforms often emerges onto the political agenda as a

solution to citizens’ lack of trust in the political system (Newton & Geissel 2012).

Propositions for reforming democratic institutions emanate from all kinds of political actors –

from associations of the civil society to elected political elites. Yet, in spite of this apparent

favourable trend towards opening up the political system, institutional reforms remain to be

rare events. Why are democratic innovations so rare? If recent studies have set forth the

extent to which citizens support several types of democratic innovations –from instruments of

direct democracy to instruments of ‘stealth democracy’ (Bengtsson & Mattila 2009; Bowler

et al. 2007; Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002; Neblo et al. 2010)–, the barriers to the

implementation of democratic reforms have received less attention.

In this paper, we analyse the reasons for the inertia of political institutions from the

perspective of the main actors in the process: political parties, and specifically, their

parliamentarians (party in public office) who are arguably the central actors of the policy-

making process. Drawing on studies examining political parties’ preferences for potential

electoral reforms (Bol 2013; Boix 1999; Bowler et al. 2006; Benoit 2004; Pilet & Bol 2011),

the paper puts forward party-level factors that can partly account for the reluctance of

political parties to reform the democratic system. By focusing on their opinion on the

desirability to introduce democratic innovations and the party-level factors driving these

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opinions, we offer a solid insight into why democratic institutions seem to be so resistant to

change.

In the first part of this paper, we discuss the general topic of democratic innovations, often

presented as remedies to the “democratic malaise”(Newton & Geissel 2012). In the second

section we hypothesize how a series of party-level factors might impact parties’ positions on

democratic innovations. We focus on the different dynamics between office-holders and

opposition parties, the role of ideology and party age. We then present the PartiRep

Comparative MP Survey data on which the analysis is based, and we measure parties’

support for several types of democratic innovations. The fourth section examines the effect of

the independent factors from a bivariate and multivariate perspective. The final section

concludes.

1. Democratic innovations: curing the democratic malaise?

Nowadays, representative democracy seems to be in crisis in Western political systems.

Symptoms of this crisis include decreasing turnout levels (Blais et al. 2004; Franklin 2004)

and growing electoral volatility (Crewe & Denver 1985; Dalton & Wattenberg 2000;

Drummond 2006). These phenomena have arisen along with the issues of declining party

membership figures (Van Biezen et al. 2012) and partisan dealignment (Dalton et al. 1984;

Dalton et al. 2000). These phenomena have eroded the bonds between voters and the elected

politicians, putting into question the traditional representative system. Several factors have

been pointed out as explanations of these trends. Low turnout and electoral volatility would

result from citizens’ growing political apathy, dissatisfaction with democracy and distrust

regarding the political class, but would also result from low levels of external political

efficacy (Dalton & Weldon 2005; Dassonneville 2012). In order to respond to citizens’

dissatisfaction and disengagement from politics, various political actors are pledging for the

implementation of democratic innovations, defined as “institutions that have been specifically

designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making

process” (Smith 2009, p.1). These innovations would allegedly help to “recast the

relationship between political elites and citizens” (Ryan & Smith 2011, p.2).

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There is an increasing scholarly debate on the different types of democratic innovations and

their suitability to compensate for the flaws of nowadays democracies. Scholars have recently

examined the ‘demand side’ of the process of reforms, and have tried to grasp across

representative systems what citizens want for their democracy. They have provided evidence

that citizens, despite their low levels of satisfaction with and confidence in their

representative political institutions, still highly value democracy (Dahl 2000). Survey data

across American and European democracies show that citizens vastly support reforms aiming

at increasing direct participation, such as a more frequent use of referenda (Anderson &

Goodyear-Grant 2010; Bengtsson & Mattila 2009; Bowler et al. 2007) or of deliberative

processes (Jacobs et al. 2009; Neblo et al. 2010). More controversial studies show that some

citizens are on the opposite favourable to some form of ‘stealth democracy’, in which

decisions are taken by impartial and efficient experts independently from both voters and

party elites’ preferences (Coffé & Michels 2014; Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002).

If a general demand for reforming the democratic process emanates from civil society,

citizens do not have homogeneous preferences on the type of reforms that should be adopted.

Different kinds of citizens (i.e. depending on education, political interest, ideological

orientation etc.) support distinct processes of decision-making (Bengtsson & Mattila 2009;

Coffé & Michels 2014; Webb 2013). Besides, citizens’ process preferences are in fact very

complex and “multidimensional” (Font et al. 2015). Indeed, positive attitudes towards

opposite models of democracy can be correlated (Font et al. 2015; Webb 2013). From these

results, it appears quite difficult to draw the kind of changes that should be implemented to

bring back citizens’ confidence and increase their participation in the political process. What

is also of considerable importance is the lack of evidence there exists regarding the

implication that citizens’ conceptions of democracy have on the extent to which and the way

in which they truly engage in politics (Bengtsson & Christensen 2014). Given the complexity

and diversity of demands emanating from civil society and the uncertainty that citizens will

truly participate if they are given the opportunity to do so, it remains questionable whether

these reforms, and what type of reforms, will succeed in regaining citizens’ satisfaction with

and trust in their political system and institutions.

Although examining citizens’ opinions on alternative democratic processes is crucial, the

decision to implement reforms still remains in the hand of the political elites. From the

‘supply side’ perspective of reforms, politicians seem to be willing to discuss the

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implementation of democratic innovations at the national and supranational levels (i.e.

European Union) (Schmitter & Trechsel 2004; Smith 2005). There are indeed increasing

pressures for and attempts of opening up decision-making procedures through direct

democratic mechanisms and through an enhanced participation of civil society groups

(Bedock et al. 2012). But in spite of these pressures for changes, accounts of change in

advanced democracies show that democratic changes remain rare. A good example of this

lack of changes is shown in Bedock et al. (2012) who found out that among European

democracies the use of classic direct democracy tools (referendums or citizens initiatives) is

declining. Even in those cases where national legislations allow for the use of popular

petitions (e.g. Spain, or Italy) political elites tend to ignore them (Cuesta López 2008).

Deliberative democracy at the regional or national level remains limited to the cases of the

Irish Constitutional Convention, the British Columbia and Ontario’ s Citizens’ Assemblies or

other devices such as the Belgian G-1000 or the Dutch Burgerforum.

In addition, there is also an opposite tendency towards isolating policy making processes to

non- partisan or non-representative institutions or organizations in which the democratic and

representative components have a minor role. Bedock et al. acknowledge that, in fact, “key

political decision-makers are increasingly ‘sealed-off’ from their wider constituencies and,

indeed from the rank-and-file elected politicians” (Bedock et al. 2012, p.2). They argue that

this trend partly results from changes affecting party organizations, such as the ascendancy of

the party in public office (Katz & Mair 2002) or from the growing role of non-partisan

agencies1 in policy making processes (Thatcher & Stone Sweet 2002; Vibert 2007).

Does the lack of effective reforms towards democratic innovations mean that political elites

have negative opinions on democratic innovations? This paper examines political elites’

opinion on the desirability of democratic innovations. This is crucial to assess the degree of

congruence between citizens’ preferences and their representatives’ opinions. The paper then

explores potential party-level factors that might account for the inertia of political elites. The

following section presents the expectations we have regarding these effects.

1 Examples of this would be independent central banks, economic regulators, risk managers and auditors. Vibert

(2007) sees this type of non-partisan agencies as a new branch of government with a new form of separation of

power in which citizens are more informed and would tend to trust more both the policy decisions and their

outcomes. However, Thatcher and Stone Sweet (2002) claim that such new forms of government entail new

types of power delegation and principal-agents relationship that require more in-depth research to see the

consequences of the use of such institutions in terms of democratic legitimacy.

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2. Explaining inertia versus innovation: hypotheses

Why are democratic innovations so rare? Scholars have for long considered institutions as

stable features of the polity, and this inherent stability has constituted a kind of self-

explanation of why institutional reforms were so rare. Recently, researches on electoral

system change, regime change and policy change have brought new perspectives on the issue

of why reforms do rarely occur (Bedock 2014; Rahat & Hazan 2011). Scholars have mainly

focused on systemic variables, and have relied to a great extent on the concepts of

institutional barriers and veto players to explain the inertia of most countries to reform their

institutions (Blau 2008; Hooghe & Deschouwer 2011; Tsebelis 2002). In addition, more

sociological approaches have suggested the role of political tradition and social structure in

hindering or incentivizing institutional reforms (Rahat & Hazan 2011, p.481‑482). Recently,

in the field of electoral reform, scholars have investigated party elites’ opinion on the need to

change the electoral system, and their preferences for specific types or direction of reform

(Bol 2013; Boix 1999; Bowler et al. 2006; Benoit 2004; Pilet & Bol 2011; Rahat 2008).

Instrumental motivations and self-interest seem to be the main determinant of parties’

reluctance or support for electoral reforms (Benoit 2004; Boix 1999; Pilet & Bol 2011) ,

although values and ideology are also crucial (Bol 2013; Bowler et al. 2006).

In this paper, we explore three party-related variables: a first one pertaining to the party’s

power in the political system –the party’s position in government or opposition–, a second

one pertaining to the degree of institutionalization of the party organization –party age–, and

a third one pertaining to the party’s values and principles –party ideology. Hence we grasp

both contextual and constitutive elements of political parties, and we develop both

instrumental and value-laden explanations.

2.1. The role of power

Democratic innovations can entail large changes in the distribution of power in a polity. One

of the main arguments that have been put forth is that political elites are not expected to

change a system in which they are winning. From an instrumental perspective, “competing

elites press for rules that will benefit them” (Bowler et al. 2002, p.733). In other words, if

democratic innovations entail a transfer of power to citizens to the detriment of established

elites, why would political parties be willing to entertain such changes? This contrasts with

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the frequent claims made by politicians about the need to incorporate citizens and their views

on policy making processes. We argue that the power political parties hold in the system –in

other words, whether they are in opposition or in government– affect their position towards

democratic innovations. Government parties, which seem to win from the status quo (Bowler

et al. 2002), face a high risk of losing their power if democratic innovations are to be

implemented and should therefore show less support for reforms than opposition parties2. To

the contrary, opposition parties may be more favourable to change the status quo.

H1: Parties in government are less favourable to the introduction of democratic innovations

than parties in opposition.

2.3. The role of party age

From an instrumental perspective, a party’s age might also be determinant for the party’s

willingness to implement democratic innovations. Demands for the introduction of more

participatory modes of democracy are often aggregated by younger parties in reaction to the

old established political elites. Besides, older parties are those that have survived along the

years within the existing system; thus they should be more supportive of the status quo. It is

also true that their survival might in fact result from their capacity to change the rule of the

game in their own interest. This idea merges with the literature on party organizational

development, and specifically with the ‘cartel party’ thesis (Katz & Mair 1995; Katz & Mair

2009). Older parties which have attained this ‘cartelization’ stage of development have

succeeded in monopolizing state resources, and might therefore be less willing to support

changes to the detriment of their own power and grip on the political process and institutions.

H2: Older parties are less favourable to the introduction of democratic innovations than

younger parties.

2 A similar point was shown in the field of electoral reforms by Pilet and Bol when they claimed that “Support

for changing the system is affected by presence in government. There is a psychological inclination to evaluate

the existing electoral law positively once in power” (2011, p. 579).

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2.2. The role of party ideology

Party ideology might be crucial to understand parties’ preferences for democratic

innovations. In order to better understand the impact of party ideology on party elites’

willingness to implement democratic innovations, it is crucial to assess the effect of both the

party’s placement in the left-right spectrum and the party’s ideological values and principles,

grasped through the party’s affiliation to an ideological family. After all ideologies reflect a

certain interpretation and values on how democracy should work and how power should be

distributed, especially in European democracies.

Propositions for reforming democratic institutions often emanate from anti-establishment

parties in the extreme left and right of the political spectrum which have emerged and grown

across Europe in the last decades. The solutions proposed by these parties often stress the

need to give citizens a larger role in the political process to the detriment of established

political elites that are blamed of the failures of the political system. We hypothesize that

radical right and radical left parties will show a greater support for democratic innovations

than more traditional centrist parties.

H3a: Radical left and radical right parties are more favourable to the introduction of

democratic innovations than centrist parties.

Institutional change is not only defended by these new emerging parties. Established

mainstream parties are also adopting a favourable position towards a greater role of citizens

in politics and in policy making, although most of them remain quite skittish to take the lead

of any reform process. Among the traditional families, we argue that right-wing ideologies –

i.e. conservatives, Christian democrats and liberals, by opposition to social-democrats– tend

to put more emphasis on the maintenance of order and on strong and stable governments (Bol

2013). From the perspective of electoral systems, parties within these ideological families

tend to prefer higher barriers to smallest parties in parliament (Iversen & Soskice 2006; Katz

1997; Schumpeter 1942). We can accordingly expect that right-wing traditional parties might

be more reluctant to open policy-making processes to citizens.

H3b: Right-wing traditional parties are less favourable than left-wing traditional parties to the

introduction of democratic innovations.

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We might go beyond this hypothesis by looking into a specific ideology: conservatism.

Huntington (1957) defined this ideology as a

“system of ideas employed to justify any established social order, no matter where or

when it exists, against any fundamental challenge to its nature or being, no matter

from what quarter. The essence of conservatism is the passionate affirmation of the

value of existing institutions” (Huntington 1957, p.455)

Since reluctance to change is key for the conservative party family3, we might therefore

expect an even greater opposition to introduce democratic innovations in these parties.

H3c: Among the traditional right-wing wing parties, conservative parties are the least

favourable to the introduction of democratic innovations.

3. Data and measurement

3.2. The PartiRep Comparative MP Survey

If the literature has extensively discussed and examined citizens’ preferences towards

different kinds of decision-making process, survey data on parliamentarians’ opinion are

scarcer (see for instance Bowler et al. 2002). This paper relies on data collected through the

PartiRep Comparative MP Survey, which is part of the PartiRep international project4. The

Comparative MP Survey database comprises an attitudinal survey carried out among national

and regional legislators in 15 European democracies and other macro-level and meso-level

variables (mostly linked to the state structure, electoral system, legislative organization and

activity, party organization, ideology, etc.). In this paper, only those MPs from national

parliaments are included5. MPs were invited to respond either through an online web-survey

(46.8%), print questionnaires (33.7%), face-to-face interviews (18.7%) or by telephone

(0.8%). Data was collected between spring 2009 and winter 2012, with an average response

rate of 19.5%, although this rate varies quite a lot from one parliament to another –below

3 For a recent review of studies dealing with conservatism as an ideology, see Alexander (2013).

4 The PartiRep (Participation and Representation) research project (http://www.partirep.eu/) is funded by the

Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo). 5 We have opted not to take into account the positions of regional MPs on democratic innovations due to the

differences in levels of competences on these issues across regions. This could jeopardize the comparability, the

robustness and the conclusions that can be drawn.

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15% in Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Poland; above 40% in the Netherlands and in

Belgium. Despite these varying response rates, the sample remains representative of the

population (Deschouwer et al. 2014).

This paper considers the political parties as the units of analysis (see the list of parties in the

Appendix). Only parties which include more than 5 respondents are considered, in order to

allow for enough intra-party variation in the responses provided by each party’s MPs6. The

respondents who sit as ‘independent’ in the parliament were dropped. The final dataset thus

includes 50 parties across 15 national assemblies.

3.2. Measuring parties’ positions on democratic innovations

In order to measure party’s opinion on the desirability of democratic innovations, we use a

question asking MPs “In recent years, different views on voters’ distrust of politicians and

political parties have inspired widely diverging suggestions for reform. Of each of the

following directions that reform could take, could you indicate how desirable you consider

them?”. Six items were proposed (see Table 1). For each of these items, MPs had to position

themselves on a Likert type scale ranging from 1 (‘not at all desirable’) to 4 (‘very

desirable’). The party’s position for each item is calculated as the average position of the

party’s MPs.

These items appeal to different kinds of decision-making processes based on alternative

models of democracy. Items 1, 2, 5 and 6 suggest some reforms that would give citizens more

a say in the types and the direction of policies that are introduced, and rather pertain to

participatory and deliberative models of democracy. The reform proposed by item 4 pertains

to a model that has been designated as ‘expert-based governance’ (Font et al. 2015),

‘technocratic’ or ‘stealth democracy’ (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002). Such reform rather

aims at curing the low efficiency of the heavily bureaucratic system. These items are quite

similar to those used in citizens and voters’ surveys (Bengtsson 2012; Font et al. 2015). A

noticeable difference here is that no item grasps MPs’ opinion on the desirability that

decision should be taken by elected representatives –in other words, by themselves.

6 Fewer than 5 respondents per party entailed the risk of not being able to differentiate between individual level

positions and party positions, hence the choice of using averages only for the larger parties.

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Representative democracy is here considered as the status quo, and MPs have to express their

opinion on the desirability to implement or reinforce other types of decision-making

processes. Another difference in this survey is the inclusion of an item regarding the

implementation of more direct participation within parties (item 3).

Indeed, we think that democratic innovations can be distinguished along the ‘level’ at which

they occur: the systemic level and the party level. Systemic-level innovations have in

common the enhancement of the role of citizens beyond elections in general policy-making

processes. Party-level innovations usually entail processes of intra-party democratization,

such as the implementation of (open or closed) party primaries to select party candidates and

leaders (Cross & Katz 2013; Sandri et al. 2015). Innovations impacting these two levels

actually aim at curing two ‘levels’ of the democratic malaise: on the one hand, the general

decline of satisfaction with and confidence in the day-to-day decision-making process, and on

the other hand, the decline of political parties.

Table 1. List of statements on democratic innovations - Descriptive stats at the aggregate level (N=50)

Statements Mean Standard

deviation

1. to increase the number of referendums 2.21 .69

2. to create more opportunities for citizens to set the political agenda 2.85 .51

3. to have the selection of candidates decided on the basis of primaries in which all

party members can take part 2.66 .42

4. to delegate more decision-making to experts and independent agencies 1.70 .37

5. to involve interest groups in society more often in decision-making 2.62 .37

6. to increase the number of deliberative events, where groups of ordinary citizens

debate and decide on a particular issue 2.78 .43

As Table 1 shows, levels of support are quite similar for all the statements and range between

2.2 and 2.9 –except the statement on expert-based governance (item 4), for which support is

lower (1.7). As in the case of citizens’ preferences, party’s positions on these items should be

correlated to some extent. We expect to find logical and coherent patterns: some dimensions

should be related –e.g. participative and deliberative– as opposed to other –e.g. expert-based

governance. We therefore make use of factor analysis in order to investigate the degree to

which positions on the six items correlate and constitute distinct dimensions.

Extraction of the factors is done through principal component analysis and based on

eigenvalues (larger than 1). Hence, no limit on the number of factors is imposed. Principal

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component analysis detects latent factors; that is, factors that cannot be directly measured.

These factors help to find the commonalities across different dependent variables: they reflect

the extent to which variation across some independent factors might be shared because the

units under analysis share some latent characteristic. A varimax (orthogonal) rotation of the

factors is applied because the factors are assumed not to be correlated7. The results show that

the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of sampling adequacy (0.697) is acceptable. Barlett’s test of

sphericity is highly significant (Approx. Chi-Square=82.280, p=0.000), which indicates that

factor analysis is appropriate for these data. Table 2 shows that two factors emerge from the

data. They account for 66.08% of the variance.

Table 2: Component matrix (after Varimax rotation)

Component

1 2

Referendums

.801 -.161

Citizens setting the agenda

.830 .329

Primaries .259 .733

Experts and independent agencies

.125 -.854

Interest groups .657 .040

Deliberative events .838 .124

At first glance, the two factors delineate between support for more direct involvement of

citizens (factor 1) and support for expert-based governance (factor 2), what is in line with the

components found with attitudinal data of citizens (Bengtsson 2012; Font et al. 2015).

Interestingly, including the item on party primaries leads to a new interpretation of the two

dimensions, which can be delineated according to the ‘level’ at which innovation occurs.

7 While it can be argued that support for the diverse democratic innovations considered here might not be

completely independent, this assumption is based on analytical grounds. The absence of correlation between the

factors allows for a clearer differentiation of the impact of the different variables on each factor.

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Factor 1 pertains to citizens’ participation in the political system, with higher scores in this

dimension reflecting a more favourable position towards different kinds of participatory

democracy: an increase in the number of referendums; the creation of more opportunities for

citizens to set the political agenda; a greater involvement of interest groups in decision-

making; and an increase in the number of deliberative events. Factor 2 rather relates to

participation in political organizations. Higher scores in this dimension reflect a more

favourable position towards the use of primaries to select party candidates in which all party

members can take part and a negative opinion on the delegation of decision-making to

experts and independent agencies. In other words, this factor reflects a willingness to

maintain parties as the central actors in the democratic process, though by granting a greater

say to citizens involved in political parties in these parties’ internal decision making

processes.

In the following section, we map the position of parties in this two dimensional space, and we

examine the influence of party characteristics –power, age and ideology– on these positions.

4. Why inertia is winning over innovation: results

4.2. Bivariate analysis: mapping parties’ positions on democratic innovations

Table 3 shows that parties in government tend to be significantly less in favour of those

democratic innovations gathered in factor 1, but Table 4 reflects that the difference is not so

clear cut for factor 2. In order to get a more detailed insight of the impact of this factor on

parties´ positions on democratic innovations, Figure 1 allows comparing the positions of

parties in government (opposition=0) and in opposition (opposition=1) in the two

dimensional space identified above.

On the whole, opposition parties are positioned more to the right of the graph, indicating a

higher support for the introduction of more direct participation of citizens within the political

process (H.1. confirmed). There are of course some exceptions: among the parties in power,

the Sosialistisk Venstreparti (Norwegian radical left) shows a quite important support for

democratic innovations. But this is not surprising given the fact that this party is hardly a

‘party of government’; indeed, it has been in power only during two legislatures (2005-2009

and 2009-2013). Among the parties in opposition, there are several outliers: the Norwegian

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conservatives (Høyre), the Dutch People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the

Hungarian Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and the Belgian Flemish Socialist Party

(Sp.a). All were in the opposition at the time of the survey, but all have been part of at least

half of the governmental coalitions during the last two decades. This result suggests that it is

time in government rather than position in government that would affect the likelihood to

support democratic innovations (Pilet & Bol 2011). Regarding the parties’ position on the

second dimension of innovations, no clear difference emerges between the two groups:

innovations at the organizational level would constitute a lower threat to political elites in

power.

Table 3: T-test for factor 1, Participation in the system

N Mean

Government 26 -0.228*

(.907)

Opposition 24 0.247*

(1.055)

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

Table 4: T-test for factor 2, Participation in the organization

Government 26 -.049

(1.168)

Opposition 24 .0537

(.799)

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

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Figure 1. Party preferences and position in government or opposition

Regarding the next factor, party age, it has to be noted that in order to calculate it, we have

taken into consideration the last ‘re-foundation’ of parties. It involves that some of the parties

existed before that re-foundation, but they did so under a different party label. This is the case

of a number of parties in the sample, such as the British Liberal Democrats, or the Spanish

socialist and conservative parties (PSOE and PP). The age of the Belgian parties has been

calculated from the linguistic divide that occurs in the 1960s-1970s in the three traditional

families (liberals, socialists and Christian-democrats), although they emerged during the

second half of the 19th

century.

Figures 2 and 3 draw the linear relationship between party age and the party’s position on the

first dimension (Figure 2) and the second dimension (Figure 3). According to H2, the older

the party, the lesser it should support democratic innovations. Interestingly, Figures 2 and 3

show different dynamics according to the dimension considered. Figure 2 seems to confirm

H2, although the slope is not steep: party age seems to reduce the level of support for a

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greater involvement of citizens in the political system. However, Figure 3 shows an inverse

relationship: party age increases the level of support for a greater involvement of party

members within party organization while reducing support for expert-based governance. This

is confirmed by the Pearson correlations shown in Table 5 where only factor 2 shows a

significant (0.05 level) and positive correlation. We can explain this result by relying on the

literature on party organizational development: older parties would have reached a more

advanced stage of organizational development, and would therefore be more in favour of

adopting reform transferring power to the party grassroots than younger parties which are still

in early phases of institutionalization. Another explanation appeals to more strategic

considerations: older parties would be more reluctant to delegate power to non-partisan

agencies such as expert-groups; but would be more inclined to increase their level of intra-

party democracy to regain some legitimacy.

Table 5: Pearson Correlations

Factor1

Participation

in the system

Factor 2

Participation

in organization

Party age -.136

(n=50)

.325**

(n=50)

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

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Figure 2. Participation in the system and party age

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Figure 3. Participation in political organizations and party age

Figure 4 maps parties’ positions on the desirability of democratic innovations depending on

their ideological family. The horizontal axis reflects the parties’ scores on factor 1, that is,

innovations affecting the political system, while the vertical axis shows the scores on factor 2.

Regarding H3a, radical left and radical right parties indeed appear more supportive of a

greater involvement of citizens in the political system –they are all situated on the right side

of the graphs. However, these two groups differ substantially as regards the second

dimension of reforms: radical right parties would be more supportive of expert-based

governance, while radical left appears more supportive of a greater involvement of citizens

within parties. Note that green parties seem to adopt similar positions to those of radical left

parties. This is coherent with the idea that party organization often reflects the party’s

ideology and culture (Enyedi & Linek 2008; Gauja 2013). Radical left as well as green

parties’ adherence to the New left and principles of intra-party democracy makes them more

supportive of a greater inclusiveness of party members. On the opposite, radical right parties’

19

leadership style of politics makes them less prone to support the inclusion of citizens in their

organization, but more prone to support ‘efficient’ forms of policy-making. Their support for

expert-based governance is also in line with their underlying rejection of party-based politics.

Regarding H3b, right-wing parties (excluding radical right) appear less supportive of

innovations at the system-level than social-democratic parties, which have a more central

position. This is especially the case for liberal and conservative parties –thus partly

confirming H3c. Regarding support for innovations at the organizational level, social-

democratic parties also appear slightly more in favour of a greater inclusion of party members

in parties’ internal decision-making processes, and less in favour of expert-based governance

than liberal and conservative parties.

Figure 4: Party positions on democratic innovations and ideology

20

4.3. Multivariate analysis

Additional multivariate analyses provide statistical support to our findings. Table 3 presents

the result of linear regression models testing the effect of party-level variables on parties’

positions on the first factor (participation in the system); Table 4 proceeds similarly with

parties’ positions on the second factor (participation in organization). Note that ‘social-

democrats’ are considered as the reference category for party ideology, first because it is the

most frequent category; second, because the group has a relatively central position on both

factors.

Regarding parties’ positions on factor 1, party ideology appears as the most determinant

factor (higher R-squared and statistically significant relationships). Compared to social-

democratic parties, radical left (H3a) and green parties show greater support for such

democratic innovations. Radical right parties also seem to be more in favour of innovations,

but the relationship is not significant (H3a partly confirmed). Traditional right wing party

families appear to be less in favour of these democratic innovations, but it is only significant

for the Christian-democrats. Hence, there is only partial evidence for hypotheses H3b and

H3c. The negative effect of party age is coherent with H2, though not statistically significant.

As regard the parties’ power, once party ideology is controlled for, the effect becomes

negative –contrary to what was expected (H1 not confirmed).

Regarding parties’ positions on factor 2, party age appears as the most determinant factor.

The results confirm the findings of the bivariate analyses: as party age increases, so does the

party’s support for reform increasing party members’ involvement in the party. The positive

effect of being in opposition confirms H1, but the coefficient does not reach the 0.1

significance level. As regard party ideology, this factor appears less influential than for

parties’ position on the systemic level dimension. However, the sign of the coefficients

confirm the bivariate analyses: right-wing parties –including the radical right parties- appear

more favourable to the inclusion of experts in the decision-making process than to an increase

of members’ involvement in the party organization (H3b confirmed). Besides, H3c seems to

be confirmed on this dimension: conservative parties significantly appear as less likely to

implement reforms such as party primaries.

21

Table 6. The effect of party-level factors on parties' positions - Participation in the system (Factor 1)

Model (1) Model (2) Model (3) Model (4)

Opposition .476 -.033

(.306) (.287)

Party age -.003

(.003)

-.001

(.004)

Radical left 1.219*

(.579)

1.161*

(.642)

Green .920**

(.319)

.866*

(.420)

Liberal -.497 -.533

(.457) (.519)

Christ-dem -.800**

(.337)

-.836*

(.397)

Conservatives -.535 -.564

(.365) (.417)

Radical right .985 .960

(.652) (.672)

Constant -.228 .181 .151 .266

(.202) (.267) (.319) (.575)

Observations 50 50 50 50

R-squared .0577 .0184 .3634 .3663

Clustered errors by country. Robust standard errors in parentheses

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

Table 7. The effect of party-level factors on parties' positions - Participation in organization (Factor 2)

Model (1) Model (2) Model (3) Model (4)

Opposition .103 .099

(.255) (.289)

Party age .008**

(.003)

.008**

(.003)

Radical left .271

(.451)

.612

(.580)

Green -.220

(.132)

.128

(.233)

Liberal -.942* -.747

(.445) (.538)

Christ-dem -.577*

(.266)

-.418

(.392)

Conservatives -.736* -.571*

(.388) (.314)

Radical right -1.010 -.822

(.575) (.515)

Constant -.050 -.433* .461 -.153

(.199) (.215) (.131) (.405)

Observations 50 50 50 50

R-squared .0027 .2672 .1769 .2672

Clustered errors by country. Robust standard errors in parentheses

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

22

Conclusion

Decreasing levels of trust and confidence in political institutions have eroded the bonds

between citizens and their representatives. Citizens have increasingly deserted the voting

booth, and are less and less prone to engage in traditional forms of political participation. In

order to bring back citizens in politics and restore their confidence in the political system,

democratic innovations are presented as the solution. However, there is no overall consensus

among citizens about the precise type of reforms that should be implemented; and there is

even less certainty as regard the extent to which citizens will truly participate if they are

given the opportunity to do so. Concrete reforms remain rare, thus assessing their impact on

citizens’ trust in the system and level of political participation is challenging. But why

precisely are democratic innovations so rare?

The scarcity of institutional reforms has for long been attributed to the inertia of political

institutions themselves. Scholars have then dedicated more attention to the preferences and

actions of the main actors involved at the heart of the process of reforms: political elites and

parties. This trend has been particularly visible in the literature on electoral reforms, where

scholars have highlighted the impact of strategic considerations and value-laden motivations

on political parties’ reluctance or willingness to reform the electoral system. This paper has

attempted to test whether party-level characteristics –party power, age and ideology– could

also be responsible for the inertia of political elites to implement democratic innovations.

In order to do so, the paper has measured parliamentarians’ opinion on the desirability of

implementing several types of democratic innovations, across 15 national assemblies. These

opinions have been aggregated at the party level to determine the parties’ positions.

Interestingly, the principal component analysis has detected latent factors that echo those

found in studies of citizens’ attitudes. Hence, attitudes of parliamentarians do not diverge so

much from those of the citizens they are supposed to represent. Roughly, the two independent

dimensions uncovered in this paper have delineated between attitudes towards participative

and deliberative democracy on the one hand, and attitudes towards expert-based governance

on the other hand. By including an item pertaining to a form of innovation within parties –i.e.

the implementation of closed primaries–, we have uncovered that support for delegating more

decision-making to non-partisan agencies was negatively correlated with supporting a greater

delegation of intra-party power to the party’s grassroots. The two dimensional space used to

23

map parties’ positions has thus suggested that support for democratic innovations varies

according to the level at which they occur: the system, or the organization.

The analysis has shown that, if democratic innovations remain rare events, support for

participatory forms of democracy is relatively high among parliamentarians (above the

mean). However, as in the case of citizens, support for democratic innovations varies across

parties, and parties differ in the type of reforms they back.

The bivariate and multivariate analyses have helped to highlight the influence of party-related

factors on the parties’ position on the desirability of reforms. Regarding system-level reforms

increasing the participation of citizens in the policy decision-making, the bivariate analysis

has suggested that the party’s position in government or in opposition, as well as party

ideology, could be determinant. However, the multivariate analysis, controlling for the

marginal effect of each factor, has indicated that party ideology was the most determinant

factor. Compared to social-democratic parties, radical left, green and to a lesser extent radical

right parties were more supportive of system-level innovations. Yet, it has to be discussed

whether their position is truly related to their ideology and values, rather than to the fact that

they have been less frequently associated to power. We are more inclined to support the latter

argument; and further analyses should test the effect of time in government.

Regarding the second dimension of innovations, two factors appear determinant: party age,

and party ideology. Older parties are more reluctant to give away their power of decision-

makers to non-partisan, non-elected agencies; yet they support intra-party reforms that would

give a greater say to party members in the selection of candidates. As regard the effect of

ideology, the bivariate analysis has suggested a left-right divide: left-wing parties would be

more supportive of intra-party reforms increasing the participation of party members;

whereas right-wing parties –and especially, conservative parties– show a greater support for

delegating power to experts and non-partisan agencies.

24

Political parties differ in their level of support and in the type of reforms that they deem

desirable, to a similar extent that citizens differ in their preferences for different sorts of

decision-making processes. But only political elites have the power to implement reforms.

This research has shown that some political parties support reforms that would increase

citizens’ participation in the day-to-day decision-making process, but that these parties are

those that are mostly excluded from government. Yet bringing them to government does not

guarantee that change will occur. Indeed, research on electoral reform has repeatedly shown

that “opposition parties support reform […], only to renege on such commitments once in

office (and vice versa)” (Flinders 2010, p.43). Strategically, political parties might publicly

display their readiness to implement reforms in order to regain legitimacy and attract votes.

They may also defend participatory forms of democracy –either within parties or in the whole

political process– because of profound ideological convictions. But, once in power, they may

be far less inclined to implement changes that would lessen their capacity of control over the

decision-making process.

25

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29

Appendix

Country (& year of

election)

Parties Count %

Seats

Date of

birth

Ideological

family

Austria (2008) FPÖ 10 19.13 1955 Radical Right

GRÜNE 8 10.38 1986 Green

ÖVP 15 27.32 1945 Christian-

democrat

SPÖ 18 31.69 1889 Social-democrat

Belgium (2007) CDH 6 6.67 1972 Christian-

democrat

CD&V 12 16.7 1968 Christian-

democrat

MR 8 13.33 1961 Liberal

OPEN VLD 6 12 1961 Liberal

PS 10 13.33 1978 Social-democrat

SP.A 9 9.33 1978 Social-democrat

VLAAMS BELANG 7 11.33 1978 Radical Right

France (2007) PS 21 32.2 1905 Social-democrat

UMP 21 54.2 2002 Conservative

Germany (2009) CDU 32 31.19 1945 Christian-

democrat

CSU 6 7.23 1946 Christian-

democrat

BÜNDNIS 90/DIE

GRÜNEN

18 10.93 1993 Green

DIE LINKE 26 12.22 2007 Radical left

FDP 19 14.95 1948 Liberal

SPD 33 23.47 1875 Social-democrat

Hungary (2006) Fidesz 36 39.9 1988 Conservative

MSZP 48 48.19 1989 Social-democrat

SZDSZ 6 4.66 1988 Liberal

Ireland (2007) FIANNA FÁIL 14 46.99 1926 Conservative

FINE GAEL 10 30.72 1933 Conservative

LABOUR 6 12.05 1914 Social-democrat

Israel (2009) Kadima 11 23 2005 Liberal

Italy (2008) Partito Democratico 18 34.4 2007 Social-democrat

Popolo della Libertà 16 43 2009 Conservative

Netherlands (2006) CDA 21 27.33 1977 Christian-

democrat

PvdA 19 22 1946 Social-democrat

SP 8 16.67 1971 Radical Left

VVD 11 14.67 1948 Liberal

Norway (2005) Arbeiderpartiet 16 36.09 1887 Social-democrat

Fremskrittpartiet 11 22.49 1973 Radical Right

Høyre 7 13.61 1884 Conservative

Socialistisk Venstreparti 6 8.88 1975 Radical left

Poland (2007) PiS 13 36 2001 Conservative

PO 21 45.43 2001 Conservative

Portugal (2009) CDS/PP 11 9.13 1974 Conservative

PSD 25 35.22 1974 Liberal

PS 30 42.17 1973 Social-democrat

CDS/PP 11 9.13 1974 Conservative

Spain (2008) PP 26 44 1989 Conservative

PSOE 68 43.43 1974 Social-democrat

30

Switzerland (2007) CVP 8 15.5 1912 Christian-

democrat

FDP 11 15.5 1894 Liberal

SPS 10 21.5 1888 Social-democrat

SVP 9 31 1971 Conservative

United Kingdom (2010) Conservative Party 22 36.1 1834 Conservative

Labour Party 30 29 1900 Social-democrat

Liberal Democrats 7 23 1988 Liberal