Measuring Intra-Party Democracy

This book presents an integrated approach to measuring the level of intra-party democracy through deductive and standardized content analysis of party statutes. Following the two main criteria of intra-party democracy - inclusiveness and decentralization - three main categories of intra-party democracy are theoretically derived: members' rights, organizational structure and decision-making. On the basis of theoretical considerations further sub-categories and individual items are deduced from these main categories and put together into a comprehensive coding scheme. Furthermore, precise coding instructions are presented. Since it is the ultimate aim of this book to present an approach to measuring the level of intra-party democracy for any party statute and to express this in numerical terms, the final step is the quantification of the coded data and the calculation of a numeric measure of intra-party democracy. A numeric value of intra-party democracy can be calculated for any statute of any political party. Furthermore, empirical examples from Hungary, Slovakia and Romania are presented. ?

Benjamin von dem Berge is a researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim in Germany. The main focus of his research is on political parties and party systems with an emphasis on European integration and transition processes.

Thomas Poguntke is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf and Director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute (PRuF) in Germany. He has previously held chairs at the universities of Keele, Birmingham and Bochum. He was series editor of numerous publications.

Peter Obert is a research assistant at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim in Germany. His main research focus is on political parties and political participation in particular with regard to Central and Eastern Europe.

Diana Tipei was a research assistant at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim in Germany. Her research focus was on theory-led content analysis and Eastern European political parties.