(Comparative Politics) Gauja Anika-Party Reform - The Causes Challenges

PARTY REFORM
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
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Party Reform
The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences
of Organizational Change
ANIKA GAUJA
1
3
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Acknowledgements
Party reform has a been a subject that has interested me, in one way or
another, for almost a decade now. As such, this book is the product of
many papers, workshops, conferences, and conversations that have shaped
my thinking and ideas over time. A Discovery Early Career Researcher
Award (2013–15) from the Australian Research Council (ARC) provided
funding that enabled me to undertake the empirical research for this project
and the time to bring it all together. I am extremely grateful to the ARC and
the colleagues who supported me in this project. In particular, I would like to
thank those who have inspired my own work, and who have generously
commented on various drafts or engaged with my ideas on reform: Nicole
Bolleyer, Ken Carty, Bill Cross, Florence Faucher, Emilie van Haute, Stewart
Jackson, Dick Katz, Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, Susan Scarrow, and Ariadne
Vromen. Thanks also to Adele Webb, Michael Vaughan, Liam Hogan, Alice
Judell, and Tom Harrison for their invaluable research assistance. Research
such as this is not possible without the cooperation of many party members,
officials, and parliamentarians, and I thank everyone who agreed to be
involved in the research (both formally and informally) for their generosity
and time.
This book is dedicated to my nephews, little Cliffy and Guy, as the foun-
dation of their party education . . . when they are old enough to read it!
Contents
List of Tables ix
List of Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction 1
2. Analysing Party Reform 6
Part I. Understanding the Drivers of Party Reform

3. The Internal Drivers of Party Reform 27
4. Competitive Pressures for Reform 50
5. Systemic Pressures for Reform 76
Part II. Party Reform in Practice

6. Comparative Patterns of Reform 101
7. The Process of Reform: When the Problem Becomes the Solution 119
8. The Protagonists of Party Reform 145
9. The Challenges and Consequences of Party Reform 169
References 189
Index 203
List of Tables
2.1 A multi-level framework for analysing party reform 9

4.1 Electoral gains/losses after semi-open primaries: Australia
and the UK 53
4.2 Effect of ALP reform announcement on voting intentions 57
4.3 Parties’ social media presence: organizations and leaders
(February 2016) 71
5.1 Political activity: Australia 82
6.1 Party reform initiatives: Australia, 2005–15 103
6.2 Party reform initiatives: UK, 2005–15 104
6.3 Social democratic party reform initiatives: Australia,
Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom 106
6.4 Australia: timing of reforms 113
6.5 UK: timing of reforms 113
7.1 Party organizational reviews 122
9.1 UK Labour members’ attitudes to supporters’
participatory rights 175
9.2 German Social Democrats’ associational attitudes to
non-member participation 176
9.3 Australians’ likelihood of engaging in party-related activities
in the future 180
9.4 Reasons for voting in the ALP ‘community pre-selection’ 181
9.5 ALP ‘community pre-selection’: respondents’ future
involvement in the party 181
List of Abbreviations
ALP Australian Labor Party

CDU Christian Democratic Union of Germany (Christlich Demokratische Union
Deutschlands)
ECPR European Consortium for Political Research
NDP New Democratic Party (Canada)
NSW New South Wales
NZ New Zealand
PD Social Democratic Party, Italy (Partito Democratico)
PS Parti Socialiste (Belgium and France)
sp.a Social Democratic Party, Belgium (Socialistische Partij Anders)
SPD Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands)
UK United Kingdom
UKIP UK Independence Party
US United States
VLD Flemish Liberals and Democrats, Belgium (Open Vlaamse Liberalen en
Democraten)
1
Introduction
Taking the podium for his first public address as the newly elected National
Secretary of the Australian Labor Party, parliamentarian Mark Butler called
upon delegates to the 2015 National Conference to finally ‘grasp the nettle’,
and to undertake ‘real party reform’. Dismissing the view that reform was
simply an exercise in navel gazing and a ‘distraction against winning elec-
tions’, Butler argued that changes to the party organization were needed to
‘repay the hard work of party members with real trust and more power’, and
that it was ‘about time Conference listened to the clamour’ (Butler 2015). As
the television cameras closed in on the party leader and his deputy sitting in
the front row, the auditorium filled with applause as conference delegates and
observers welcomed the call to arms.
Two years earlier, and half a world away, Ray Collins stood addressing the
2013 UK Labour Party conference in Brighton to put the case for internal
party reform. Selling a reform package that would fundamentally alter the
relationship between the party and its trade union affiliates, Collins—a former
general secretary of the party and a life peer—passionately argued the ‘need to
change the party so that we are in a better position to change the country’.
While Collins acknowledged that some in the party were ‘nervous about
change’, he suggested that they should not be afraid of it, and that ‘broaden-
ing and deepening the party’s relationship with ordinary people across the
country’ was the primary means of achieving it (Collins 2013a). Delegates
politely applauded when Collins completed his speech, but it was the unionist
who spoke next, pleading that ‘years of history should not be thrown away for
an electoral gimmick’, who received a standing ovation from the crowd.
Regular observers of political party conferences would be familiar with
debates of this kind. Conferences, as the highest formal decision-making
bodies of many political parties, are the natural arenas for internal reform
debates. Nevertheless, to describe these two reform initiatives as purely
internal matters would be to underplay the public quality of the announce-
ments and the substantial, outward-facing campaigns that accompanied
them. For example, Butler’s call for reform within the Australian Labor
Party (ALP) was accompanied by an opinion piece in the national Australian
newspaper, and a petition from more than 1,000 party members.1 Collins’
trade union reform campaign began with a public address by former party
2 Party Reform
leader Ed Miliband at the St Bride Foundation in London, in which he
proclaimed ‘I want to build a better Labour Party’, and argued that: ‘We
will do so by shaping a Party appropriate for the twenty-first century, not the
twentieth century in which we were founded. Understanding we live in a
world where individuals rightly demand a voice. Where parties need to
reach out far beyond their membership’ (Miliband 2013). In the months
that followed, the highly stylized interim and final Collins Review reports
were covered in major British press outlets, including the Times, the Tele-
graph, the Guardian, and the Independent newspapers.2 The campaign ended
at a specially convened conference of the Labour Party one year later, in
which delegates voted overwhelmingly to approve the reforms that removed
the electoral college for the selection of the Labour leader and replaced it with
a one-member, one-vote system—which included registered supporters and
union affiliates. In September 2015, under these new rules and amidst much
controversy and allegations of ‘entryism’ (supporters registering simply to
sway the contest), Jeremy Corbyn was elected as the new leader of the UK
Labour Party.
UNDERSTANDING PARTY CHANGE IN A CLIMATE

OF MEMBERSHIP DECLINE AND DEMOCRATIZATION
How political parties, as organizations, change over time is certainly not a new
topic of academic inquiry. On the contrary, it has concerned party scholars
working across many different subfields of political science (for example,
comparative politics, political institutions, political and organizational soci-
ology) for more than a century. In one of the earliest and most well-known
examples of work on the causes and consequences of party organizational
change, Robert Michels argued that the development of organizational
complexity necessarily resulted in the creation of hierarchy (1915). Models
of party organization such as the mass, catch-all, electoral professional
and cartel party types, which have had a major impact on the trajectory of
comparative party research (Duverger 1954; Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco
1988; Katz and Mair 1995, 2009), also originated from a concern with
organizational change and adaptation.
While Michels’ ‘iron law of oligarchy’ still resonates today, the debate
concerning party change has broadened significantly over the years. Real-
world developments such as technological advances and the changing nature
of social relations have been crucially important in driving the need for
theoretical and explanatory advances. In 1997, the organizers of a workshop
at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions
Introduction 3
and a resulting special issue of the journal, Party Politics, cited the fact that
‘after a few decades observing some parties “decline” and then “renew”, it was
perhaps natural that more attention would be focused on how they got from
there to here’ (Harmel and Svasand 1997: 291). The key questions these
scholars identified as important in this research agenda were: What roles do
internal and environmental factors play in party change? How likely is change
to occur (that is, is it inevitable, probable, or random)? Is it reactive or
proactive? Is change gradual or abrupt? And who are the relevant actors in
the process of party change? While more researchers are addressing these
questions, and providing more and more answers, as Chapter 2 will argue, the
scholarship suffers from a lack of integration of different perspectives and
methods.
Almost two decades on from the publication of the special issue of Party
Politics, the context within which organizational change is experienced (or
practised) by parties and studied by scholars has itself altered quite signifi-
cantly. Perhaps the greatest concern that overshadows studies of party organ-
ization today is the collapse of formal party membership. For parties such as
the German Social Democrats, the halving of membership since the 1990s has
created what has been described as ‘beyond catastrophic circumstances’,
which mean that ‘party reform is today more urgent than ever’ (Totz 2011;
see also Spier and Klein 2015: 89–92). The decline in party membership has
been well documented in previous research (Scarrow 2015; van Haute and
Gauja 2015; van Biezen et al. 2012; Whiteley 2011; Scarrow and Gezgor
2010), but it impacts upon how we might think about party organizational
change in a number of important ways.
The first is the sheer pervasiveness of membership decline, which has been
shown to affect parties both across democracies and across party families.
Rather than being a specific ‘problem’ faced by only some parties, it is now
part of a broader fight for institutional survival.3 This highlights not only the
salience of the trend, but also the complexity of the problem as encompassing
social changes that transcend states and parties with different ideological
standpoints and organizational histories. As the Social Democratic Party
(SPD) in Germany noted when it embarked on its organizational reform
programme in 2009, new political ‘citizens have become more self-assured;
they no longer wish to simply be “plugged” into an organization. They are
demanding opportunities for political participation’ (SPD 2011: 1).
Another aspect of this pervasiveness is the extent to which membership
decline impacts upon key party functions. Members have traditionally been
seen as a committed group of activists that promulgate a party ideology, a
source of outreach and policy innovation and as the provider of financial and
campaigning resources (Scarrow 1996: 42–6; Ware 1996: 63–4). Insofar as
dwindling party memberships affect the performance of parties’ participatory
and representative functions, they also raise broader questions about the
4 Party Reform
continued capacity of parties to enhance the quality of democracy (see, for
example, van Biezen 2014: 178). Perhaps the most important role that party
members have played is in creating a sense of democratic legitimacy for a
political party. Although many are increasingly questioning the ‘golden age’
of the mass party and now regard it as a historical episode (see, for example,
van Biezen and Poguntke 2014: 205), it still carries significant weight as a
normative model of how political parties should be organized—evident in the
common legal requirement that political parties must be established as mem-
bership organizations (Gauja 2015a).
The phenomenon of ‘party decline’ is, however, cyclical. Whilst member-
ship crises might seem acute at the time of writing, Harmel and Janda (1994:
260) note that much of the literature on the decline of party systems in the
1980s was stimulated by the ‘real or perceived “decline” of political parties in
industrialized societies’ and the expectation that other political organizations,
such as interest groups, might one day replace them.4 If we accept that fears of
party decline come and then go, then come again, the timing of this book is
predictable. However, the focus is not so much on whether political parties are
in decline—it is on how they perceive this tenuous position, and how this, in
turn, influences what they do about it.
As a book dedicated to the topic of what motivates political parties to
undertake organizational reforms, and how they go about this process, the
arguments developed within speak to the debate on party decline in several
ways. It is important to note at the outset that the book does not present a
longitudinal analysis stretching back decades, but rather a more contempor-
ary examination. The last ten years of party organizational reform in a
handful of established democracies is analysed: Australia, the United King-
dom, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand. Readers will therefore need to
form their own judgements on how similar reform debates of the present day
are to those undertaken in the past, and whether the events and motivations
described here resonate in their own party systems. The primary concern of
the research is in establishing how parties’ perceptions of the social trends in
which they operate shape reform agendas, and how this relates to competitive
demands and pressures from within the party for organizational change.
A fundamental question that this book grapples with is whether, in a climate
of membership decline, party reforms are designed to reinvigorate the nor-
mative ideal of the mass party model of representation, or whether the
breakdown of membership (coupled with social change) has created a climate
conducive to reforms that might fundamentally alter the way in which parties
connect citizens and the state. The chapters that follow focus particularly on
four key reform initiatives that begin to blur the traditional boundaries of
party: the introduction of primaries, the changing meaning of party member-
ship, and issues-based online policy development and community organizing
campaigns.
Introduction 5
In addition to the substance of change, the research is equally concerned
with the process of change. As this book will demonstrate, declining party
memberships have had a fundamental effect on the way in which political
parties ‘sell’ organizational reform: as part of a broader rhetoric of democra-
tization, of re-engagement, and of modernization delivered to diverse
audiences—both internal and external to the party. The way in which Ray
Collins spoke of the UK Labour Party as needing to deepen and broaden its
relationship with ‘ordinary people’ provides a nice example of this type of
rhetoric. Reform is therefore conceptualized not only as organizational
change, but also an opportunity for public engagement and rebranding.
Chapter 2 further articulates the concept of ‘party reform’ in the context of
the existing scholarship on party organizational change, outlining the analyt-
ical framework and research design that forms the basis of the book.
NOTES
1. Mark Butler, ‘ALP national conference: Reform should give more say’, Australian,
23 July 2015; see also, Michelle Grattan, ‘Butler will press for ALP reform’,
Conversation, 21 July 2015.
2. Building a One Nation Labour Party Interim Report (released September 2013) and
Building a One Nation Labour Party: The Collins Review into Labour Party Reform
(released February 2014). Press coverage included Patrick Wintour, ‘Ed Miliband
to put Labour union reform to vote at special conference’, Guardian, 23 July 2013;
Andrew Grice, ‘Miliband plans to cut off the hand that fed him with ambitious plan
to rob trade unions of their one-third share of Labour leadership vote’, Independent,
17 January 2014; and Christopher Hope, ‘Labour funding reforms will not
“damage” party’s links with unions, says Lord Collins’, Telegraph, 19 September
2013.
3. However, with the expanding availability of party (rather than aggregate national
level) membership figures over time, new research is suggesting that the effects of
membership decline are not even across all parties, with Green parties—for
example—actually increasing their memberships (Paulis et al. 2015).
4. See, for example, Lawson and Merkl (1988). However, for a more critical view see
Reiter (1989).
2
Analysing Party Reform
As noted in the Introduction, change is a subject that has concerned party

scholars for some time. It is an interest that is reflective of the fact that
political parties are dynamic organizations (Harmel 2002). The existing lit-
erature on party organizational change can be categorized into three main
approaches: that which seeks to determine a more generalizable account of
change (see, for example, Krouwel 2012; Harmel et al. 1995; Harmel and
Janda 1994; Panebianco 1988; Appleton and Ward 1997), that which seeks to
examine change within a particular party or a limited number of parties (see,
for example, Bale 2012; Quinn 2005; Russell 2005; Müller 1997), and that
which concentrates on a specific type of change, typically contained within
work on particular party functions: for example, candidate and leadership
selection (Cross and Blais 2012; Hazan and Rahat 2010; Barnea and Rahat
2007) and policy development (Gauja 2013).
Studies of individual party change typically adopt a historically oriented,
thick-descriptive account of organizational transformation. Two excellent
examples are Bale’s (2012) longitudinal study of the drivers of change (both
organizational and policy) in the British Conservative Party and Russell’s
(2005) account of modernization in the UK Labour Party. Research such as
this demonstrates that it is a myriad of complex factors (both internal and
external to the party) that come together to produce organizational change in
particular contexts. It also highlights the crucial importance of thick-
descriptive accounts of change for advancing both theoretical and empirical
scholarship.
For those seeking a more generalizable account of change, the primary
concern shifts to identifying the most relevant or salient catalysts and condi-
tions for change. Harmel and Janda’s (1994) ‘integrated theory’ of party goals
and party change has perhaps been the most influential example of this
approach. In acknowledging that party change ‘does not just happen’,
Harmel and Janda’s (1994: 264–6) model incorporates three important
explanatory elements. The first is the recognition that change arises from
both internal and external drivers. The second is the importance of ‘party
operatives’, or key decision makers, in advocating for change. The third is the
necessity of building a coalition of support to overcome the organizational
resistance that is common to large organizations such as political parties.
Analysing Party Reform 7
Harmel and Janda argue that political parties are essentially goal oriented and
that any organizational changes made need to be consistent with their primary
goal, whether it is vote or office maximization, the participation and repre-
sentation of members, or policy advocacy. Although change may arise as a
result of internal factors (leadership change, membership agitation, etc.), the
most likely catalyst is an ‘external shock’. The broadest changes happen as a
result of significant external events because political parties are conservative
organizations—change will only take place when there is good reason and not
simply for the sake of change. This account privileges external shocks and
assumes the coherence of the party as a whole.
What we see reflected in this discussion is the perennial tension between
detailed and more generalizable accounts of political phenomena. Successive
contributions to the debate on party change have also highlighted the salience
of numerous factors internal and external to the party in shaping the agenda
for change, including factions, party leaders, and institutional pressures such
as party funding and resources, electoral competition, and technological
developments. Yet the process by which these pressures are translated into
organizational change, and who is responsible for this, remains an area where
both theory and empirical investigations are dispersed, and consequently, the
relationship between these different catalysts is not entirely clear. Reflecting
back on the scholarship on party change, Harmel (2002: 128) expressed a
concern that maintaining these ‘theory islands’ may prove counterproductive
in the longer term, particularly when all involve some form of multi-level
explanation, and all are ultimately aimed at explaining the ‘purposeful deci-
sions’ to change a political party’s organization, and the consequences of
those decisions.
A MULTI-LEVEL FRAMEWORK FOR

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE
The literature canvassed so far has pointed to a myriad of different internal

and external influences that both initiate, and condition, party change. There
is general consensus that although one dominant factor may drive change
(be it a change of leader or an electoral setback), this alone will usually not be
sufficient to create actual reform to a party’s structures and/or processes.
Rather, a combination of conditions and catalysts both inside and outside
the party is necessary to create change (Harmel 2002: 127–8). For example,
an electoral setback might be paired with a change of leader who provides
the necessary willingness and motivation to address the ‘problem’. However,
questions remain. What combination of conditions is necessary? How can we
8 Party Reform
distinguish between internal and external drivers? What motivates change in
each of these arenas? The binary distinction between internal and external
catalysts (and the creation of two rather broad categories) also arguably
obscures some of the nuances surrounding external motivations. Does an
external ‘shock’ arise only from electoral setbacks, or can it be linked to the
political system more generally? Must it be sudden, or appear gradually
through a shift in norms and values? Are there some external factors that
affect all political parties equally?
Writing specifically on the reform of candidate selection processes, Shlomit
Barnea and Gideon Rahat propose a multi-level framework for analysing
change, which forms the basis of the framework adopted in this book. These
authors suggest that reforms to candidate-selection processes can be viewed
on three different levels: that of the political system, the party system, and the
political party (Barnea and Rahat 2007: 377). Although scholars such as
Florence Faucher (2015a) and Tim Bale (2012: 6) have rightly argued that
party change cuts across levels, disaggregating reform in this way is beneficial
for several reasons. Building on previous work by scholars such as Harmel
and Janda, the framework provides an extremely useful step forward in
theorizing the range of factors that prompt change and the various arenas
from which they come, but perhaps more importantly, the motivations that
accompany them. As the book will demonstrate, these motivations, in turn,
shape the character of the organizational response. The framework accom-
modates a range of potential driving factors in a parsimonious way, enables a
multi-level analysis that does not a priori privilege explanations at any one
level, and allows for the incorporation of individuals, groups, and institutions
as relevant political actors. For example, the three-tiered framework accom-
modates Harmel and Janda’s argument that ‘party change does not just
happen’, and is ‘normally’ the result of a change in leadership, a change in
the dominant faction, and an external stimulus (1994: 261–2). However,
unlike Harmel and Janda’s model, it does not pre-suppose that these are the
only factors driving change. The framework can be applied to a range of
different democracies, party systems, and types of party reform. As detailed
below, an analysis of the interplay of motivations between the three levels enables
us to ascertain when reform is more likely to be successfully implemented.
THE DRIVERS OF REFORM
Each of the three levels provides a different set of incentives for reform. The
political system refers to the arena in which the ‘general norms’ of political
conduct are determined, and the legitimacy of a political party as an electoral
actor is secured. Changes to candidate-selection processes at this level might
be motivated by changes in the nature of democratic expectations and the
balance of power between citizens and elites. Electoral competition is the
primary motivator of reform at the party system level, whereas the contest
between individuals and groups for the distribution of power becomes more
apparent at the intra-party level.
Moving from level to level, the scope and units of analysis shift to reflect a
diverse range of actors and institutions that play a role in the process of party
reform. Inside the party, the basic unit of analysis is the individual politician,
party member, and formal (or informal) intra-party groupings (Barnea and
Rahat 2007: 379). Each of these respective actors is situated within the specific
organizational practices and structures of their party. At the level of the party
system, where the norms of electoral competition dominate, political parties
are viewed as unitary actors, driven by the desire to maximize seats and votes,
and increase their policy relevance. Turning to the level of the political system,
the norms, conventions, and practices that govern political behavior are the
key units of analysis.
The particular drivers for reform at each of these three levels, as well as the
scope and units of analysis, are illustrated in Table 2.1. The first row depicts
the general scope and objects of analysis for each of the three levels. The
second row provides examples of some of the underlying factors that drive
T A B L E 2 . 1 A multi-level framework for analysing party reform
Party level Party system Political system
Scope and objects Interactions and Interactions (largely Norms, conventions, and
of analysis relationship premised on the basis existing patterns of
between individuals of competition) democratic practice.
and groups within a between unitary These norms and
particular party parties in a party practices are situated
system within the general
cultural, social, and
political environment
Potential drivers Enacting changes to Enhancing electoral Changes to the norms
for reform the balance of competitiveness, and conventions of
power within a through: ‘good’ democratic
party, through: · remedying failure or practice, through:
· leadership change damage to reputation ·
changes to public
· a party merger or · proactively expectations
split creating advantage ·
legitimacy concerns
· weakening/shifting · contagion effects ·
democratization
factional influence ·
personalization
· increasing
participation
·
‘Americanization’
Source: Adapted from Barnea and Rahat (2007: 378) and Gauja (2012).
10 Party Reform
reform at each level. As the drivers for party reform at each of these three
levels constitute much of the detailed analysis in the first part of the book
(Chapters 3, 4, and 5), only a brief overview is provided here, based on what is
claimed to be important in previous theoretical and empirical studies.
As noted above, previous studies of party change have pointed to the
importance of changes in leadership and the dominant faction as internal
catalysts for reform. Although conceptualized as discrete variables for the
purpose of empirical analysis, these factors can be viewed as a part of a
broader shift in the balance of power within a political party. Changing
power dynamics assist organizational changes for several reasons. From a
rational choice perspective, actors and groups within the party are expected to
act to enhance their power base and weaken those of their internal opponents,
which may involve a change in the rules. From a sociological standpoint, a
change in balance of power might also allow a new group of elites to challenge
the dominant ideology of the party and its philosophical direction, creating
opportunities for organizational changes that reflect new political and
strategic goals. Barnea and Rahat (2007: 378) argue that in addition to
leadership changes, party mergers or splits (as well as ‘power struggles
between challengers and apparatchiks’) are likely to produce organiza-
tional reform. Examining the process of candidate-selection reform in
Australia, Gauja (2012) found that restricting the role of factions (or
collective groupings within the party) and increasing participation provided
significant motivations for party reform (also see further Chapter 3 in this
volume, ‘The Internal Drivers of Party Reform’).
Disaggregating the category of ‘external factors’ into drivers at the level of
the party and political systems advances previous scholarship and provides
valuable insight into the distinction between longer-term forces that osten-
sibly affect all political parties, regardless of their success, and the factors that
motivate political parties to enhance their electoral competitiveness. The
latter is the primary motivator for reform at the level of the party system,
and can stem from an electoral loss or damage to public reputation (Barnea
and Rahat 2007: 378). Gauja (2012) argues, however, that such motivations
need not necessarily be reactionary—they can be motivated by a proactive
desire to create electoral advantage, often copying or emulating the organ-
izational practices of political parties deemed to be successful in other
political contexts.
Perhaps the least theorized and well-understood arena for party change,
motivations at the level of the political system, constrain the direction of
parties’ organizational choices and include ‘long-term social, cultural and
political trends, such as modernization, democratization, and the personal-
ization of politics’ (Barnea and Rahat 2007: 378). As I will argue further
in Chapter 5, changes to the norms and public expectations surrounding
political practice and good governance threaten the legitimacy of all political
parties, irrespective of their electoral strength, and therefore represent some
of the most important and pressing catalysts for organizational reform in
the modern era.
THE PROCESS OF REFORM
While the discussion thus far has highlighted some of the reasons as to why
political parties (and the diverse range of actors that constitute them) might
contemplate change, relatively little has been said of the process of change—
particularly in the context of the relationship between the three levels
described above. In explaining their framework, Barnea and Rahat (2007:
378) provide some indications of how party reform filters through the various
levels. The general norms and expectations that characterize the political
system constrain both the choice and general direction of the initiated
reforms. For example, in a climate of ‘democratization’—manifest in increas-
ing expectations for inclusive candidate-selection processes—a political party
would presumably be more willing to consider reforming candidate-selection
procedures to enfranchise all individual members rather than assigning this
authority to a party leader. Party system events, such as electoral defeats and
political scandals, influence the timing of reform initiatives more than they
create a decisive factor for change. While a decisive loss at the polls might
prompt a political party to consider change, reform would only eventuate if
backed by a measure of internal will. As Barnea and Rahat (2007: 377)
explain:
Developments at the two ‘upper’ levels (political system and party system)
influence intra-party decision-making by determining the anticipated
costs and benefits of each decisions for the party as a whole. But at the
end of the day decisions are taken internally, with a certain level of
autonomy for the decision-makers.
Panebianco’s (1988) analysis of party change is in broad agreement with the

basic processes described above, although he uses the internal/external dis-
tinction and privileges structural accounts of change over individual agency
(see discussion below). According to Panebianco, ‘organizational change is, in
most cases, the effect of an external stimulus (environmental and/or techno-
logical) which joins forces with internal factors’ (1988: 242). Therefore, a
congruence of factors, or favourable conditions across all three levels, suggest
a stronger impetus for change or a greater chance for successful implementation.
Of course, as Harmel and Janda argue, ‘some party change can be explained
by internal factors alone, i.e. without an external stimulus’ (1994: 265).
12 Party Reform
Political System
Level
Party System
Level
Party Level
F I G U R E 2 . 1 The ‘Swiss cheese’ model of party reform
However, the presence of drivers at all three levels would suggest that reform
is not only much more likely, but that its effects will have greater resonance
and be longer lasting.
The relationship between the three levels—intra-party, party system, and
political system—and the way in which motivations in each of these arenas
can come together to produce change, is illustrated in Figure 2.1, the ‘Swiss
cheese’ model of party reform. Originally developed as a model of accident
causation in aviation and health care (Reason 1997), the ‘Swiss cheese’ model
can be applied to other complex and multi-layered systems, such as political
systems, and reinterpreted such that accidents simply become changes or
reforms. In the model, the complexity of the system is represented by individ-
ual slices of cheese (the party, the party system, and the political system). Each
slice creates a barrier to reform by virtue of the operation of norms, conven-
tions, and complex organizational processes that are generally resistant to
change (see, for example, Eldersveld 1998: 326). The holes in each of the slices
represent the drivers and motivating factors listed in Table 2.1, varying in
magnitude or importance. They can be created and/or expanded through
conscious acts or events, or can represent latent conditions. A hole (or
motivation) in any one of these layers can potentially create change but
change will most likely occur when the holes (or motivations) multiply,
increase in magnitude (importance), and momentarily align, thereby creating
a trajectory for reform.
Swiss cheese is a simple metaphor, and the model is a useful heuristic device
for not only explaining why change occurs, but when it is most likely to occur.
It highlights the complexity of change, in particular, the relationship between
different layers of the overall environment and the relationship between
intentional and latent motivations and conditions. It conveys the fact that
no single motivation or driver will be sufficient to produce a successful
reform—rather it involves the conjunction of (often unforeseeable) factors
arising from different levels.
As with the multi-level framework more generally, the ‘Swiss cheese’ meta-
phor might be criticized on the basis that the three levels (or slices) do not exist
independently of each other, but are mutually reinforcing. Another criticism is
that the model does not explain the trajectory of change—that is, how the
holes come to line up. Rather than trying to refute the first of these criticisms,
the complexity of change and the interdependence between the levels is readily
acknowledged throughout the book. However, as previously argued, disag-
gregating the three levels for the purpose of empirical analysis allows us to
better understand this complexity. Addressing the trajectory argument, and
by drawing on insights from a constructive institutionalist approach, I argue
throughout the book that both intra-party actors (such as parliamentarians)
and some actors external to party (for example, think tanks) have signifi-
cant discursive power in shaping their institutional context through ideas
and rhetoric, and in this sense political parties and their constituent
actors—through their reform campaigns—have some ability to create new
holes or increase the size of existing ones. Through this process parties
highlight, or produce alignments between the three levels in ‘selling’ the
message of change.
THE STRUCTURE AND AGENCY DEBATE

IN POLITICAL PARTIES
One of the common elements shared amongst existing theories of party

change, including the Barnea and Rahat framework, is that despite internal,
political, and party system catalysts, the ‘final say’ ultimately rests with
individuals and groups within the party organization, or as Harmel and
Janda describe them, ‘party operatives’ (Harmel and Janda 1994: 261; see
also Harmel 2002: 128). Rational choice accounts of party change depict these
actors, often defined as ‘elites’ or dominant coalitions with control of party
resources,1 as acting according to a series of ‘party goals’ or individual, self-
interested motivations that are established exogenously to the analysis (Hall
and Taylor 1996: 951). For example, Harmel and Janda develop ‘a theory of
party change that uses party goals as a major concept in explaining changes in
individual parties’ (1994: 259), while Barnea and Rahat (2007: 379) argue that
‘[p]oliticians can be expected to attempt to enhance or protect their status in
the intra-party hierarchy (and their image in the public eye) through change
(or preservation) of the rules of the game’.2
14 Party Reform
Rank-and-file members feature as potential agents for change, but their
efforts to enact reform are hampered by cumbersome existing structures and
are usually lost to more powerful groups and individuals from within the
organization: most commonly, factions and party leaders. Perhaps because of this
lack of success, relatively little has been said of the organizing capacity of
party members, although Harmel and Janda (1994) have noted that building a
coalition of support is necessary to overcome the organizational resistance
that is common to large organizations such as political parties.
The motivations of key actors and their place within particular institutional
environments illustrates one of the key points of contention not only in
studies of party organization, but within the institutionalist approach more
generally—that is, the relative balance of structure and agency in accounts
of organizational reform. In adopting the multi-level framework described
above, which combines both systemic drivers with the actions of individuals
and groups within political parties, the analysis in this book attempts to go
beyond what critics of institutionalist analysis have identified as a funda-
mental weakness that can be applied to the study of parties as well—that
is, the tendency to ‘lapse inadvertently into institutional determinism’ with
accounts that privilege exogenous shocks or crises as explanations for
change (Bell 2011: 885).
To this end, constructivist variants of institutionalist analysis offer a prom-
ising path forward in analysing the dynamics of structure and agency in
political parties through a particular focus on the ideational and discursive
aspects of the environment. For an empirical analysis of party reform, this
entails paying particular attention to the discourse of reform and how actors
within the party construct the narrative of change. The focus on discourse
creates a ‘more fluid and flexible environment in which to affect change,
largely because this move ostensibly allows agents to “construct” their realities
and fields of action, apparently unimpeded or less impeded by institutional
constraints’ (Bell 2011: 886). Lowndes and Roberts (2013: 98) argue that ‘ideas
and beliefs about an organization are not simply embedded within that setting,
but are continuously transmitted between actors by narration’. As accounts
of the narrator’s ‘grand conception’ of party politics, or how, for example,
participatory processes ought to take place within parties, such narratives ‘rely
for their potency on iteration and elaboration over time, and transmission
across an expanding collective of actors’ (Lowndes and Roberts 2013: 99). As
Chapters 7 and 8 will show, this transmission takes place through a range of
‘creative agents’ (Schmidt 2009) not only within the party, but also extending to
the media, interest groups, think tanks, and the parliamentary arena.
In a constructivist analysis the perceptions of party actors as to their
institutional environment are just as—if not more—important than the envir-
onment itself. As Bell (2011: 888) writes, it is ‘the ideas that actors hold about
the context in which they find themselves rather than the context itself which
informs the way in which actors behave’ (emphasis in original). In the context
of comparative party organization scholarship, this was a crucial point first
acknowledged by Kris Deschouwer (1992), who argued that in order for
environmental factors to have any actual impact on party change, these
factors and their probable effects must be perceived and acknowledged by
critical actors within the party. As such, ‘perception’ is the ‘intermediate
variable that has to be placed between objective facts and the reactions of
the parties’ (Deschouwer 1992: 17). With the exception of Harmel and Janda
(1994: 264), Scarrow (1994: 58), Bale (2012), and Cross and Blais (2012), few
studies have cited Deschouwer’s argument.
This particular attention to how actors perceive and construct their realities
also picks up on Florence Faucher’s important caution that in many studies of
party change that are oriented solely towards identifying causal relationships,
the ‘analysis of exogenous and endogenous stimuli often merely highlights
the obvious point that circumstances create opportunities that are seized
upon, to varying degrees, by internal actors seeking to improve their own or
their party’s competitive advantage’ (Faucher 2015a: 798). The advantage
of adopting a constructivist perspective, as well as drawing on the Swiss cheese
heuristic, is that both these frames shift the analytical focus away from rather
static exogenous/endogenous stimuli, emphasizing the importance of the
discursive environment and the role of elite perceptions. This, I argue, brings
many important insights into the debate on party organizational change that
go beyond rational choice accounts and show how actors are able to obtain
consensus and produce change, particularly in an era where party reviews,
reform documents, and other very public means of organizational introspec-
tion have become more commonplace.
WHAT IS PARTY ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE?
Having established the potential motivations and drivers behind party reform,
as well as briefly articulating some of the processes that underpin these
changes, the chapter now turns to consider what exactly is meant by party
change—and in particular, how organizational reform (the subject of this
book) can be distinguished from organizational change. Four main contours
of the debate are considered: the speed of the change (is it abrupt or incre-
mental?), the subject of the change (does it alter informal processes or formal
rules?), the substance of the change (could it be classified as major or minor?),
and finally, the genesis of the change (is it intentional or accidental?) A brief
examination of the existing literature reveals that scholars have interpreted
the meaning and scope of party change in quite different ways.
16 Party Reform
The Speed of the Change
A general point of consensus within the literature on party change is that most
organizational changes are ‘incremental and gradual’ (Harmel and Janda
1994: 260). This is, for example, a characteristic of both developmental and
evolutionary models of party change (see Panebianco 1988: 239), regardless of
whether this change is path dependent or whether it stems from changes
in the relative balance of power between strategic actors in the organization.
Gradual party change is emphasized in much of the work on ideal-type
organizational models and the nature of parties as adaptive organizations,
such as the catch-all party (Kirchheimer 1966), the electoral professional party
(Panebianco 1988), and the cartel party (Katz and Mair 1995; 2009). Incremental
change can often accumulate to fundamental transformations (Mahoney and
Thelen 2010: 2). The emphasis on gradual change does not mean that organ-
izational changes that happen rapidly should be excluded from the analysis,
but previous studies do imply that they are far less likely to occur. This
expectation is consistent with the multi-level framework proposed earlier:
while it is entirely possible that changes to a party’s organization may be
made quickly, particularly where they require little support from members
within the party, a confluence of driving forces at the political system, party
system, and intra-party levels will take longer to occur. Furthermore, the percep-
tion of party change as a gradual process reflects the fact that it is often difficult to
discern a clear start and end point for change. Changes, for example, might occur
some time after a catalytic event, they may be additive and incremental, or the
process of change may commence and then stall. The expectation that change is
more likely to be incremental than abrupt, and the mechanics of the processes
behind party change, are explored in greater detail in Chapter 7.
The Subject of the Change

While previous research has conceptualized party change in terms of organ-
ization, policy direction, and political strategy (Bale 2012; Harmel and Janda
1994: 275; Harmel et al. 1995), this study is confined to changes that relate
directly to the organization of a political party: that is, the structures and
processes that guide the party’s key functions. Given that there is an inherent
inter-relationship between the organization of a party, its policies, tactics, and
philosophies, narrowing the scope of analysis in this way is ultimately a
matter of viability. At its most broad, party change can be defined as ‘any
variation, alteration or modification in how parties are organized, what
human and material resources they can draw upon, what they stand for
and what they do’ (Harmel and Janda 1994: 275). But, as these authors’
note, this definition raises unrealistic expectations about the scope of a theory
of change. Furthermore, without limiting the study to organizational change,
empirical analysis beyond a single organization, especially comparative
longitudinal analysis, becomes extremely difficult to achieve.
Organizational change in this study is conceptualized in terms of four key
areas: membership, policy development, and candidate and leadership selec-
tion, which reflect the most important dimensions, or functions of a party’s
linkage role (see, for example, Webb 2002; Gunther and Diamond 2001). The
subject of the change is not limited to alterations in the formal rules as
expressed in constitutions (see Miragliotta 2015a), but extends also to docu-
mented (though not necessarily codified) practices and routines. Some degree
of institutionalization of practices is necessary—as in any other case change
may not be observable. This is an important limitation of studying party
organizations as an outsider that should be acknowledged. Whilst researchers
can employ a number of different methods to ascertain the everyday practices
of political parties (such as interviews and ethnographic observation in com-
bination with documentary analysis), the type of change we are able to study
is necessarily limited by what we can practically observe.
The Substance of the Change

Irrespective of the speed of the change, or what aspect of the organization
it addresses, are all party changes of all magnitudes worthy of analysis?
Scholars have differed in their approaches to this issue. At one end of
the spectrum, Panebianco (1988: 243), for example, was ‘interested in fun-
damental changes’, that is, those that ‘change the organization’s authority
structure’ (see also Bille 1997). Yet, minor changes—that is, those not
explicitly connected with the party’s organizational identity or the core of
authority within the party, have also captured the attention of party scholars
(see, for example, Miragliotta 2015a: 701), as well as organizational ‘innov-
ations’ (Appleton and Ward 1997: 342). Others, such as Harmel et al. (1995),
have pursued a compromise—including all types of change as relevant in their
analysis, but adjusting for the degree of change for each individual indicator.
Another distinction, which has been made theoretically although it has not
been subject to wide empirical examination, is the distinction between sym-
bolic and substantive change (Harmel 2002: 140). Symbolic change is that
which is largely formal and ceremonial, without creating any corresponding
alteration in political practice. Change may be symbolic because it codifies an
existing practice, or because it primarily seeks to change attitudes rather than
enforce a particular type of behaviour. Substantive change is that which sees
an alteration to a party’s structure and/or practices that is observed by the
relevant party actors.
As explained in further detail below, through the distinct focus on party
reform, this study is concerned with well-publicized, major changes. Both
18 Party Reform
symbolic and substantive changes are considered, but because reforms
also play an integral role in promoting the party organization to supporters
and the public, the symbolism of the change is emphasized in the analysis.
Adopting a constructivist perspective, the discourse surrounding the reform
is, as a means of advertising the party’s organizational goals, even more
important than whether it is actually implemented in practice.
The Genesis of the Change

Whether or not party change is a result of intentional action, or whether it
may be produced by circumstances and events outside the party’s control is a
significant point of contention in the existing literature on party change.
Panebianco (1988: 240) identifies two schools of thought on the issue: ‘the
management theories, where change is seen as intentional’, and those theories
that conceptualize change as ‘the arbitrary result of the organizational dynamic’.
He concludes that neither of these two approaches is entirely wrong, because
organizational change results from both intentional changes, and ‘because of
the actor’s bounded rationality and the multiplicity of organizational pres-
sures, unforeseeable effects’ (Panebianco 1988: 242).
Although it is difficult to theoretically separate intentional and unintended
changes, which essentially reflect the interplay between structure and agency
in accounts of organizational change, empirical studies have focused predom-
inantly on changes that are intentional, and in many ways, more readily
identifiable and measurable. For example, Harmel and Janda’s theoretical
framework ‘predicts those aspects of party change that are within a party’s direct
control—that it decides to change’. The interest of these authors is ‘in explaining
party change that comes directly from a group decision or from action taken by a
person authorized to act for the party in that sphere’ (Harmel and Janda 1994:
275). Similarly, Appleton and Ward’s study of organizational innovation encom-
passes the ‘attempt to introduce new organizational forms and practices without
precedent’ (1997: 342, my emphasis)—an account that focuses on the agency of
intra-party actors, irrespective of whether the attempt is successful or not.
PARTY REFORM VERSUS PARTY CHANGE
Up to this point in the chapter, I have used the concepts of party change and
party reform interchangeably, which reflects the fact that they have often been
used as synonyms in the party organization literature. However, to do
so obscures the fact that organizational ‘reforms’ and ‘changes’ can involve
substantially different processes of decision making, communication, and
consultation. It is the former, organizational reforms, with which this book
is primarily concerned. As a subset of organizational change, and drawing on
common usage of the term, party reform can be defined as: intentional and
publicized changes that are made to a party’s structures and practices in order to
improve them. The speed with which the reform is implemented can vary
considerably depending on the political system, party system, and intra-
party factors identified above, and is a matter for empirical investigation
rather than theoretical assumption. Reforms can be made to all aspects of
the party organization, from the minutiae of rules concerning the composition
of meetings, to practices surrounding campaigning and membership, to the
implementation of gender quotas. However, the essence of a reform is that it is
driven by the need for improvement and is intentionally publicized, and
therefore it is more likely that reforms will concern major rather than minor
organizational changes.3 Reforms need not necessarily involve formal rule
changes or constitutional amendments, but given the significance of these events,
it might be expected that the majority of reforms would involve rule changes.
This is, however, an expectation that needs to be empirically investigated.
Harmel and Janda (1994; citing Janda 1980) argue that there is ‘a tendency
in the literature to interpret party change as “reform” and to assume that
reforms function as intended—despite reformers’ mixed record of success’.
The multi-level framework developed above does indicate the combination of
conditions in which a reform is more likely to be successful, however, this
study does not assume that reforms will necessarily succeed, nor does it try to
develop a measure of success. Rather, the concept of reform adds to the
discussion of substantive versus symbolic change—in the reform scenario,
the symbolism of the change may be just as important as the substance
(including whether or not the reform initiative actually succeeds in changing
established party practice). As an outcome, reform is captured in deliberate
and often very public changes to parties’ organizational rules and/or processes.
As a process, reform offers the party the opportunity to ‘rebrand’ and publicly
alter its image, to emphasize certain strategic priorities over others, and to alter
relationships of power within the party. In this sense, party reform is also much
more than organizational change—it is equally a process (rather than being
exclusively outcome oriented) and a legitimating or branding activity.
UNDERSTANDING PARTY REFORM: A RESEARCH DESIGN
This book aims to make a substantial and original contribution to the schol-
arship on party reform, and more broadly, party change, in four main ways.
20 Party Reform
First, by focusing on party reform as a specific subset of change, the research
engages more fully with the notion of symbolic changes that can have reson-
ance beyond the party. It also develops a framework for understanding
reform not only as a means to an end, but a process that carries significance
as a branding exercise and potentially a creator of new norms and expect-
ations, even if the reforms are not fully implemented, or seen as successful.
Second, in drawing on the constructivist institutionalist approach, the three-
level framework, and by utilizing the Swiss cheese heuristic, the book tries
to develop our understanding of how and when reforms occur by focusing on
actors within political parties as mediating agents. Specific reforms do not
simply occur as a result of internal and external forces, but crucially, how
political parties (or more accurately, the groups and individuals within
them) perceive and interpret these pressures, and the moments at which
they align. Third, acknowledging the fact that the politics of reform are
practised across many different political institutions and organizations,
the book attempts to expand our perspective on the study of parties by
introducing concepts and analytical frameworks from other subdisciplines,
including public policy, interest group studies, and political communica-
tion. Fourth, it examines some of the most contemporary organizational
developments in parties that aim to open up the party and blur the
boundaries between members and non-members, including registered sup-
porters, community organizing, and online strategies for engagement and
participation.
The research is based on a comparative design that attempts to navigate a
path between single-party case studies and analyses that aim to provide more
generalizable accounts of party change. The focus is on the contemporary era:
the decade from 2006 to 2015. Six political parties in Australia and the United
Kingdom form the core of the analysis: the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal
Party of Australia, and the National Party (Australia), and the Conservatives,
the Labour Party, and the Liberal Democrats (United Kingdom). The analysis
of these core parties is complemented by a discussion of the comparative
context, and the work draws extensively on illustrative examples from
four more parties in a further four democracies: the Liberals (Canada), the
Labour Party (New Zealand), the Social Democrats (Germany), and the
Parti Socialiste (France).
The selection of these cases has been driven by both empirical and
theoretical considerations. The two core democracies, Australia and the
United Kingdom, were selected on the basis of most-similar-systems
logic (in terms of political culture, parliamentary system, party systems) and
because of the deep familiarity the author has with these two democracies—an
understanding that is crucial for in-depth, qualitative research. Australia and
the United Kingdom make good comparators because they present similar
problems of party decline and citizen disaffection,4 leading us to expect
that party reform trajectories in both these democracies would follow
similar paths.
Within these two democracies, a total of six established membership parties
are included in the analysis, which cover a variety of different party families
(conservative, social democratic, agrarian, and liberal). This diversity is
important to the design of the project because insofar as party change is
conditioned by ideology and organizational tradition, party family has been
identified in the existing literature as a potentially important variable
(Miragliotta 2015a: 701; Harmel and Janda 1994; Panebianco 1988: 50;
Duverger 1954). Of these six parties, two are established social democratic
parties that have been in existence since the beginning of the twentieth
century—the UK Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party—and two
are established conservative parties: the UK Conservatives and the Liberal
Party of Australia. Together, these four parties have governed in alternation
in their respective democracies for the last century. The Liberal Democrats
(UK) were formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social
Democrats, while the National Party—a conservative agrarian party—has
existed in Australian politics since the 1920s. The National Party, also known
as the Nationals, has joined the Australian Liberal Party in coalition for most
of its history. From 2010–15 the Liberal Democrats governed in coalition
with the Conservatives, before facing their worst result at the 2015 General
Election, where they were reduced to just eight members of parliament. The
variation in governing status amongst the six parties also allows for an
examination of the extent to which a party’s legislative position—and also
its corresponding electoral success and failure—might impact upon patterns
of party reform. As previously noted, external shocks such as electoral failure
figure prominently in existing accounts of party organizational change. Each
one of these six parties claims to be a membership organization, though
throughout their histories all have experienced an average decline in mem-
bership numbers.5
To complement the analysis of these six ‘core’ parties, examples are drawn
also from the Liberals in Canada (allowing for a consideration of a party
within a traditional multi-party system, see Harmel et al. 1995; Wauters 2014)
and the social democratic parties in New Zealand, Germany, and France.6
The addition of these social democratic parties allows for a more nuanced
analysis of the impact of party family, in particular, whether the motivations
for and processes of reform in social democratic parties transcend national
boundaries. While each of the political parties examined in the book has a
tradition of being a membership organization, the social democratic parties
stand out in this respect as they were founded on the basis of organizational
democracy and strong links with the union movement. We might therefore
expect the maintenance of intra-party democracy and popular participation
to be particularly important for these parties.
22 Party Reform
Most of the existing studies that deal with similar questions of why and how
political parties undertake organizational reforms tend to be single-party
or single-country case studies (see, for example, Wauters 2014; Bale 2012;
Barnea and Rahat 2007; Eldersveld 1998; Müller 1997). In their seminal
article, Harmel and Janda (1994) produced a detailed theoretical model of
party change, but did not empirically test it in that work. The project on which
the article was based collected data on nineteen parties from four democra-
cies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Denmark
(Harmel et al. 1995). However, in a subsequent article in which this theory
was tested, only six political parties across the four democracies were actually
analysed, due to the limited availability of data (Harmel et al. 1995: 8). Hence
there appears to be somewhat of a natural limit on the size of empirical studies
of organizational reform. As Bale argues, while there have been several well-
cited theoretical pieces on party change, ‘there have only been limited
attempts to check whether their ideas work in the real world . . . This could
be because the case studies required to conduct those tests are so labour-
intensive and so historical’ (Bale 2012: 3).
The method of selection used in this project is appropriate because the aim
of the research is to provide a better understanding of the range of motivations
for change, and the process by which it is achieved within particular political
parties. The design of the research therefore enables the book to say some-
thing of reform trends across a number of parties, but it does not lose sight of
the ‘cultural, social and historical dimensions of political parties’ (Faucher
2015a: 798), which requires a more detailed analysis of individual political
parties within their particular domestic settings.
The methodology of the study is qualitative, and consists primarily of an
in-depth analysis of party review documents, placed in context through
interviews with party activists and elites, an analysis of websites, blogs, and
social media sites, mainstream media reports, petitions, other internal party
documents and surveys, as well as commentaries and pamphlets published
by advocates of reform. Ethnographic observations also constituted an
invaluable source of data. From 2012–15, I attended six party conferences
in Australia and the United Kingdom, several public events such as policy
meetings and fundraisers, and compiled extensive field notes based on my
observations of debates and speeches, attendance at party member ‘train-
ing sessions’, and my informal conversations with activists, members, and
party staff.
The diversity of methods employed has been driven by the need to triangu-
late various sources of data to provide the most comprehensive picture of
intra-party activity in order to facilitate an analysis of the social processes and
phenomena involved. While this methodology has a long tradition and legacy
in studies of party organization stretching back to the work of Michels (1915),
as Faucher (2015a: 798) argues, ‘mainstream comparative politics, and in
particular the study of political parties, has tended to drift away’ from these
more in-depth qualitative approaches. However, as Gauja and van Haute
(2015: 200–1) suggest, this method of inquiry has the potential to shed new
light on studies of party membership and organization by exploring the
meaning that actors place on membership and partisan participation, as
well as the relationship between party actors and the organizational structures
that encapsulate them.
OUTLINE OF THE BOOK
The book comprises two main sections. The first section, ‘Understanding
the Drivers of Party Reform’ (Chapters 3 to 5), explains why political
parties choose to undertake deliberate and often highly publicized organ-
izational change. Building on the theoretical framework developed in this
chapter, it looks at both the internal and external pressures that drive
change, including adaptations as a result of social, technological, and insti-
tutional developments, but also seeks to move beyond these explanations to
analyse the impact of intra-party politics in creating catalysts for change (for
example, factional dynamics), electoral performance, the impact of citizens’
expectations (or at least parties’ perceptions of them), and the role of conta-
gion and entrepreneurial practices (copying practices from other parties and
organizations).
The second section, ‘Party Reform in Practice’ (Chapters 6 to 8) maps the
types of reforms that political parties typically undertake and the particular
aspect of the organization they seek to address (for example, policy or
candidate/leadership selection). It provides an analysis of when reform
events typically occur (for example, after leadership changes, electoral
losses, etc.) and the process by which reform occurs, focusing particularly
on internal party reviews as a mechanism for building consensus. This
section of the book also identifies the key protagonists of party reforms,
addressing the debate in party scholarship as to the respective roles of
party members and elites in agitating for organizational change, as well
as analysing the role of actors and institutions not often studied in party
organizational scholarship: think tanks, the media, and party ‘statesmen’.
Chapter 9 analyses the consequences of these patterns and processes of
reform, focusing in particular on citizens’ reactions to reform initiatives,
the tensions created in the reform process, how decision making within
parties has changed, and how this in turn impacts upon the representative
and participatory functions that political parties perform in contemporary
societies.
24 Party Reform
NOTES
1. See Panebianco (1988: 38).

2. See also Schlesinger (1991); Aldrich (1995).
3. Barnea and Rahat (2007: 379), for example, distinguish between ‘significant
changes’ and ‘reforms’ in the context of candidate selection. A significant change
‘refers to the integration of an additional selectorate, while still preserving the
dominance of the previous one. Only an overall replacement of the selectorate . . . is
defined as reform’.
4. See, for example, Evans and Stoker (2016) who make this comparison; Hay (2007);
Stoker (2006: 32–46).
5. Details of all party membership figures over time are available from the Members and
Activists of Political Parties Project Database: see <http://www.projectmapp.eu>.
6. During the initial stages of the project, a search for major organizational reform
initiatives was undertaken for all major parties in these systems from 2006–15, but
overwhelmingly, initiatives were concentrated within the social democratic parties,
and in Canada within the Liberals.
Part I
Understanding the Drivers of Party Reform

3
The Internal Drivers of Party Reform
Focusing on the first level of the three-level model of reform presented in

Chapter 2, this chapter analyses the internal motivations for organizational
reform. That is, the pressures for change that concern the intra-party dynam-
ics of a political party, and those that relate to its organizational form and
survival. While previous studies have indicated the importance of a power
imbalance in creating the catalysts for change, whether it is between individ-
uals, factions, or faces of the party, the idea of an imbalance (or a shift) in
power relations has been used to explain when party change is likely to occur,
rather than why such change takes place—including the motivations and
normative assumptions that lie behind key party reform initiatives. Although
it might be one of the primary goals of any reform initiative, there is surpris-
ingly little systematic analysis of how party reforms are crafted and used by
political parties to address intra-organizational challenges.
Using a series of examples that address one of the most important and
prevalent reforms of the last decade—the gradual introduction of primaries for
candidate and leadership selection—the chapter analyses the motivations for
reform at the intra-party level and how they relate to, or attempt to overcome,
disputes over power and intra-organizational challenges. I identify three main
themes in the discourse and motivations surrounding intra-party reform: first,
the functional desire to improve satisfaction with intra-party processes and either
sustain, or grow, a large membership. Second is a strategic desire to shift the
balance of power within the organization. This is manifest by calls to increase the
degree of individual influence (often referred to as the ‘say’ of the ordinary
member) at the expense of collective groups such as factions or unions. Third is
a concerted effort to locate any proposed changes associated with reform in the
broader organizational history and ideological context of the party.
THE POLITICAL PARTY AS AN ARENA FOR REFORM
Individual political parties serve as the primary sites for organizational

reform in two key respects. First, they are the arenas where the process of
28 Party Reform
reform occurs—where actors (party leaders, members, activists, etc.) solicit
support or block proposed changes through a series of formal and informal
mechanisms. As Harmel et al. (1995: 2) argue,
party change does not ‘just happen’. Decisions to change a party’s organ-
isation or identity face a wall of resistance common to large organisations,
such that a successful effort to change the party will normally involve not
only a good reason but also the building of a coalition of support.
For these authors, designing and implementing a successful reform agenda is

dependent on a range of internal factors, such as a change in leadership or the
dominant faction of a party. These factors, including intra-party politics and
how this relates to the process of reform, are explored in Chapters 6 to 8 of this
book. However, it is important to note that these factors should not always be
seen as independent variables—it is equally plausible that changes in leader-
ship or factional balance could be symptomatic of reforms, rather than their
cause (Bale 2012: 7).
While the institutional features, the power structures within a party—as
well as the relationships between its strategic actors—influence the process of
party reform, they also create the motivations for seeking organizational
renewal. It is these motivations, or drivers, that are the focus of this chapter.
A key question then becomes: how do we define, or identify what is considered
‘internal’? Chapter 2 acknowledged that there are inherent difficulties in
distinguishing between reforms motivated by intra-party, competitive, and
systemic pressures (see the discussion on pp. 7–8). Nonetheless, teasing out the
primary motivations in each of these arenas is important for understanding
the actors involved, the organizational consequences at stake, and how the
process of reform evolves over time.
To this end, internal drivers are defined as those concerned with the organ-
izational challenges that emerge as a result of a party’s institutional features
(including the ideological disposition of the party and its basic decision-making
processes), the power structures/relations within the party (how these decision-
making processes are exercised in practice), and the relationship between actors
(both individuals and groups). These motivations may be geared towards a
functional, a normative, or a strategic purpose. In each case, however, reform is
directed towards actors within the political party—either as an audience, or as
beneficiaries or targets of the reform initiative.
Once we get down to the level of the political party, and indeed delve within
it, the proposition that parties can be seen as unitary actors with common
goals concerning vote and office maximization, policy, ideology, and intra-
party democracy (see, for example, Harmel and Janda 1994: 269–71) becomes
extremely difficult to sustain. Ideas, values, and strategies are contested, a
debate that also extends to issues of organizational control and institutional
design. The approach in this chapter, therefore, is to determine the preferences
The Internal Drivers of Party Reform 29
of the actors empirically from analysis of the ‘structure of the situation’, rather
than operationalize goals and self-interest as endogenous to the empirical
analysis (Thelen and Steinmo 1992: 8). Although previous work has identified
changes to the balance of power within a party as the primary catalyst for
change, focusing specifically on leadership changes, mergers, and factions
(Barnea and Rahat 2007),1 the analysis here is guided but not constrained
by these previous findings.
EXAMINING THE ‘PRIMARY’ AS A REFORM INITIATIVE
To look in more detail at the intra-party motivations that underlie reform, this
chapter considers a diverse range of initiatives, but pays particular attention
to one general area: the introduction of primaries for candidate and leadership
selection. Candidate- and leadership-selection methods are a particularly
good case study of the internal motivations and machinations of parties,
because they are ‘high-stakes’ activities that define a party’s characteristics,
form the basis of many power struggles within the party, and determine
the composition of the legislature, the government, and the public face of
a party’s campaign activities (Hazan and Rahat 2010: 6–12; Cross and
Blais 2012: 1–5).
However, as Kenig et al. (2015) argue, with the increasing use of primaries
over the last few decades, the term has become prone to conceptual confusion,
being used by scholars to refer to a wide variety of selection contests. What the
term aims to capture in its most basic usage, and the way in which it is used in
this research, is to denote a selection process that is more open, participatory,
or inclusive than pervious restricted and exclusive selection processes—
specifically a process where either all party members, party supporters, or
voters constitute the selectorate (Kenig et al. 2015: 151–3). In the context of
party reform it is also useful to think of a primary as a ‘relative’ term—one
that captures the spirit of ‘opening up’ the selection (or other intra-party
decision-making) processes: a phrase that is often used in justifying the
change.2 Adopting the classification developed by Kenig et al. (2015), two
‘types’ of primary election are of particular interest in the context of recent
examples of party reform because they fundamentally challenge the trad-
itional notion of candidate and leadership selection as an intra-party activity.
The first is the open primary, the most inclusive method in which all voters
may participate in the process without any prior party affiliation, and the
second is the semi-open primary, in which participants must register
as supporters of the party or sign a declaration of support for the party’s
30 Party Reform
principles. In the political parties under consideration, these are the two
variants referred to when ‘primaries’ are mentioned.
MEMBERSHIP AS A MOTIVATING FACTOR FOR REFORM
A political party can hope for nothing more than a membership that
wants to be involved at every level in the operations of the party. This is
a deep, genuine and treasured desire of our members. There can be no
better sign of the future health of our party, but we need to make the
changes necessary to harness, rather than frustrate, this vital commit-
ment. (Liberal Party, Canada 2009: 14–15)
Much of the literature on the decline of political parties in recent years has
been concerned with the ‘hollowing out’ of parties as membership organiza-
tions and, consequently, as mechanisms for societal-state linkage. As noted in
the Introduction to this book, previous research has established a marked
decline in both party membership numbers and in levels of intra-party activ-
ism (Scarrow and Gezgor 2010; van Biezen et al. 2012; van Haute and Gauja
2015; Whiteley 2011). While there is a broad consensus on the pervasiveness
and salience of membership decline, scholars disagree as to the consequences
of this decline for the future of parties as linkage organizations, and whether
membership is actually necessary for parties at all. For example, Katz and
Mair’s cartel party thesis (1995; 2009) highlights a changing organizational
dynamic within parties where members become marginalized at the expense
of an increasing dependence on the state. In this view of what parties have
become, sustaining a large membership is more about validating the ‘legit-
imising myth of party democracy rather than remain[ing] true vehicles of
linkage between party elites and society at large’ (van Biezen and Poguntke
2014: 205).
The alternate view is that members continue to remain important to the
party organization in the contemporary era. The value of membership is
usually conceptualized in terms of the core functions that parties perform in
representative democracies: in addition to acting as a source of democratic
legitimacy, they provide a means of linking elites with society through
their ideological and issue-based activism, as a source of outreach and
policy innovation, and one of campaigning and financial support (Scarrow
2015: chapter 5; Scarrow 1996: 42–6; Ware 1996: 63–4). While it is certainly
not surprising, all of the political parties in this study both celebrated
and maintained a commitment to the continued importance and role of
party members in both public discourse and that designed for internal party
consumption.
A good example can be drawn from a recent report into reform within
the UK Labour Party, which argued:
Members are the lifeblood of our party. It is essential that the rights that
come with membership are recognised and understood. Party members
play a crucial role in holding their MP to account, selecting their parliamen-
tary candidate, selecting the Leader and Deputy Leader, picking delegates
for annual conference, and much more besides. (Collins 2013b: 10)
While statements such as these invariably serve a strategic purpose and

should not be taken at face value, Cross and Gauja (2014: 614) have found
that, at least in the Australian context, the major political parties ‘remain at
least outwardly committed to being membership organisations’, a senti-
ment that was corroborated by these authors through interviews with party
elites, and through an analysis of internal party reviews not intended
for public circulation. For example, in an internal party report that was
not released to the public, the Victorian division of the Liberal Party of
Australia (a conservative party) argued the functional advantages of mem-
bership in an entire section tellingly headed ‘The Party Needs Members’.
The report noted that
it is from the membership that we draw our candidates and Members
of Parliament, our key campaigners, our organisational leaders, those
to whom we look for ongoing fundraising, our understanding of the
communities the Party seeks to represent, and many of the policy ideas
that will address their major concerns. (Liberal Party, Victoria 2008: 1)
Whether one subscribes to the cartel thesis or not, shrinking party mem-
berships provide a strong motivation for organizational reform, whether it is
to secure more members for functional reasons, or simply to demonstrate the
party’s legitimacy. For example, following the findings of Tan (1997: 371),
Wauters (2014: 64) hypothesizes that for those political parties with declining
memberships, the decentralization (and potentially the democratization)
of leadership-selection procedures reflects the desire of elites to stabilize
party memberships and curb the trend of decline. In the case of the
German SPD and CDU, both Mjelde (2013) and Bukow (2012: 6) argue
that the reforms undertaken in the last decade in these parties have been
also motivated by membership decline and the need to preserve these
parties’ organizational legacies—an important factor being that in the
German system, declining memberships go hand in hand with shrinking
party finances.
As the remainder of this chapter will demonstrate, when political parties
introduce reform initiatives, whether these pertain to policy development,
decision-making processes, campaigning, or personnel selection, the attain-
ment or maintenance of a strong membership organization is at the
32 Party Reform
forefront of both intra-party and public campaigns for change. However,
this is a misleadingly simple target. As the case studies show, there are
three distinct themes that emerge when organizational reform is used to
respond to membership decline, which potentially create a series of
internal tensions. The first is that reform is directed towards increasing
the size of the membership. The second involves reform as a way in which
to strengthen the role of members, or to address a breakdown in intra-
party democracy. The third variation involves a combination of these two
different strategies.
Growing the Membership of the Party

The first theme, growing the membership, is a prominent justification for the
introduction of almost every instance of party reform, whether this involves
changes to policy making, personnel selection, or candidate and leadership
elections. As we might expect, based on their organizational traditions, social
democratic parties such as the German SPD describe the maintenance of a
membership base as a strong priority. The SPD, for example, ‘lives through its
membership’ and, despite organizational transformations, ‘will always be a
membership party’ (SPD 2011: 3). Perhaps more interestingly, this sentiment
also extends to the Australian Liberal Party—a conservative political party
whose members have traditionally played a supporting role relative to the
parliamentary grouping (John Howard, interview with author; Errington
2015: 17; Miragliotta 2015b: 73). After a narrow loss at the 2010 Australian
federal election, the Liberal Party commissioned a review into the party
organization that advocated strongly for ‘boosting’ party membership, as it
was ‘not a passing fad’. The report argued that members were ‘central to the
philosophy of the Liberal Party’, constituting an important source of labour
and financial resources for campaigning, as well as being ‘representative of the
public at large’ (Reith 2011: 28).
The UK Labour reform document, Building a One Nation Labour Party,
provides an excellent illustration of how both the need for, and the strengths
of, party reform can be conceptualized in terms of expanding the number of
party members, as well as the notion of membership itself. Conducted by
House of Lords peer and long-time trade unionist Ray Collins in 2013–14, the
review was charged with reforming the party–trade union relationship under
the auspices of building ‘a truly 21st century party’ (Collins 2013b: 3). The
most significant reform proposed by the review was to replace the system of
automatic collective union affiliation with the party with a system based on
individual choice. Under the proposed scheme, individual unionists would
have to explicitly agree to the payment of union affiliation fees, and in doing
so become ‘affiliated supporters’ of the party. The scale of a trade union’s
affiliation would then be governed by the number of levy payers who con-
sented to the payment of affiliation fees (Collins 2014). However, the changes
to union affiliation also went hand in hand with changes to the process of
electing the party leader.
Under these reforms, the three-way electoral college (comprised of mem-
bers of the parliamentary party, party members, and trade unions) that was
originally established in 1981 was replaced by a one-member-one-vote system
where the votes of Labour parliamentarians, party members, affiliated union
supporters, and registered party supporters were simply aggregated and
weighted evenly. In implementing these reforms the party moved from a
closed leadership-selection process in which unions had a collective voice
to a semi-open one. The inclusiveness of the selectorate was increased
through the addition of registered supporters to the eligible voter pool, a
move that was foreshadowed in the 2011 reform document Refounding
Labour to Win.3 In advocating for the individualization of union affili-
ation and the introduction of registered supporters, Building a One Nation
Labour Party aimed to grow the party and realize Ed Miliband’s ‘bold
vision to mobilise these individuals and build Labour into a mass party,
growing our membership from 200,000 to 500,000, 600,000 or more’
(Collins 2013b: 3).
While Ed Miliband’s leadership ended after the party’s 2015 general elec-
tion loss, his vision for the party may have come to fruition. A group of over
552,000 Labour Party supporters signed up to participate to select his succes-
sor, Jeremy Corbyn, which comprised of 292,000 full members, 148,000
affiliated supporters, and 112,000 registered supporters. This contrasts signifi-
cantly with party membership in 2013, which stood at 190,000. During his
first speech as Leader to the Annual Labour Party Conference in September
2015, Corbyn highlighted the fact that 160,000 new members had joined the
party—50,000 of those after the results of the leadership contest were
declared. However, the way in which he referred to party membership within
his own electorate, as an aggregate of members and supporters, was particu-
larly telling: ‘I’m very proud to say that in my own constituency, our mem-
bership as of last night had just gone over 3,000 individual members and 2,000
registered supporters. 5,000 people in my constituency’ (Corbyn 2015). The
notion of growing the membership in this particular instance of Labour Party
reform departs from previous recruitment strategies in that it adopts a
broader understanding of the concept of membership. By individualizing the
practice of affiliation, the party is seeking to grow the membership by con-
verting previous collective affiliates into individual supporters, effectively
achieving an instant injection of members through redefining the notion of
affiliation. By expanding the franchise to registered supporters, the Labour
Party expands the notion of membership in a functional sense and creates
a much larger base of support to legitimize and promote the leadership
34 Party Reform
selection. This vision of growing the party is encapsulated nicely by Ed
Miliband’s (2013) St Bride’s Foundation speech:
I want to build a better Labour Party . . . by shaping a Party appropriate
for the twenty-first century not the twentieth century in which we were
founded. Understanding we live in a world where individuals rightly
demand a voice. Where parties need to reach out far beyond their
membership.
The Australian Labor Party is also using a similar reform strategy of growing
the membership by incorporating individuals with a prior connection to the
party. In March 2014, party leader Bill Shorten launched an ambitious plan to
double the party’s membership by giving those who donate to the party the
ability to ‘opt in’ to gain internal voting rights.4 Addressing the party’s
National Policy Forum, he argued that ‘membership processes need
to match the reality of the modern world’, that union membership should
no longer be a requirement for party membership, that donors needed to be
embraced, and that the 233,000 people on party email lists in 2013 needed to
be placed on membership rolls (Shorten 2014). This announcement comple-
mented a rhetorical shift from ‘broadening and increasing the membership of
the Party and involvement of the members in Party activity’, which was a term
of reference of the earlier 2002 National Committee of Review intra-party
inquiry (Hawke and Wran 2002: 6), to ‘the need to broaden participation
in the Party to ensure a greater say for members, supporters and stakeholders’
in the Review 2010 (Bracks et al. 2011: 5). Outside Australia and the United
Kingdom, this dual strategy of growing the party’s base by targeting both
members and supporters has been adopted by the Liberals in Canada, as well
as the two major New Zealand (NZ) political parties (Liberal Party, Canada
2011: 4; NZ Labour Party 2012a; NZ National Party 2013).
Interestingly, the evidence presented here conflicts with the motivations for
party reform that Bram Wauters (2014) found in his analysis of the Belgian
case. Wauters (2014: 64) had expected that membership decline would con-
stitute an important driving factor for organizational reform. However, in
interviews he conducted on the experience of the Belgian parties in introdu-
cing leadership primaries in the 1990s, he noted that while most interviewees
admitted that ‘attracting new members and keeping old members on board
was a goal when adopting party primaries’, it was only a secondary goal, or
a bonus. The reason Wauters cited for this ‘is the declining importance of a
large membership’ (2014: 71; see also Scarrow 2015: 16–17). This contradict-
ory empirical evidence may reflect the exceptionalism of Belgium, the par-
ticular perceptions of the interviewees, or the difference between what
parties say in public and what they are prepared to say in private. However, it
may also be explained by the fact that the primaries Wauters referred to
are ‘closed’—in the sense that they extend candidate selection to all party members,
but not beyond them (Wauters 2014: 65). If the major concern of parties is
redefining membership to open up the party to greater participation from affiliates
and supporters, then these views may not necessarily be inconsistent.
Strengthening Membership
The second key theme that is evident from party reform initiatives examined
in this research is the need to ‘strengthen’ the party organization and, in
particular, to remedy potential democratic deficits in intra-party processes
and restore the rights of party members. Despite the possibility that primaries
might dilute the influence of party members, the suggestion that they will
increase and revitalize membership is used as a key rhetorical device in selling
the message of reform. This sentiment is also evident in academic accounts of
the trends towards greater inclusiveness in leadership selections. For example,
Kenig (2008) documents a radical shift in party leadership-selection processes
in the period between 1976 and 2007, particularly in Canada, the United
Kingdom, Japan, and Israel. He argues that these changes ‘were designed to
overcome an intra-party democratic deficit and to bring the citizens back
into the political process’. Like Cross, writing of the experience of leadership
selection reform in Canada (1996), Kenig found these parties’ primary motiv-
ations for reform revolved around responsiveness, transparency, representa-
tion, and competitiveness—ideals that reflected ‘the desire to reduce [the]
oligarchic tendencies of parties by creating a participatory revolution and by
providing the rank-and-file members a chance to make a difference’ (2008: 241).
The recommendations of internal reform reviews in the Australian Labor
Party, which were undertaken in 2002 and 2010, strongly emphasized the
need to respond to branch members’ concerns that they felt ‘frustrated and
ignored’ and were not given any voice in the party (Bracks et al. 2011: 7).
These concerns were, in turn, reinterpreted by senior party parliamentarians
to suggest that ‘rank and file members needed a greater say in policy’, and that
party reform needed to ‘reinvigorate and empower an ageing, declining and
increasingly disenfranchised membership’.5 In reforming the leadership-
selection process of the party in 2013, former party leader Kevin Rudd spelled
out in ‘unambiguous terms’ the rationale for the changes, which included
giving the rank and file a say equal to the caucus in the selection of the party
leader (Kefford 2014: 5).
Within Australia, the motivation for introducing candidate- and
leadership-selection reforms as a means to increase the role of members is
not limited to the social democratic party. Subsequent reviews into the
conservative Liberal Party organization have also argued the need to
strengthen the party on the ground by increasing the involvement of members.
For example, the Victorian division of the Liberal Party’s Party Futures
36 Party Reform
review identified a ‘groundswell for cultural change in the Party: to make it
inviting and to increase member participation’, and that it was ‘clear that
having a say in the choosing [of] the individuals who will represent the Party in
elections is one of the main reasons why people join the Party’ (Liberal Party,
Victoria 2008: 14, 32). This is not, however, a new argument within the party.
The 2008 Victorian Liberal Party review echoed the suggestions of an internal
review conducted more than thirty years earlier, which suggested that the
‘plebiscite system’ (or closed primaries), ‘could get to the root of one of the
Party’s longstanding problems—the low level of membership. A plebiscite
system could be an incentive to membership because it would give every
registered Liberal Party supporter the right to vote in the preselection of his
or her candidate’ (Valder 1983: 88). Former prime minister John Howard
suggested that giving members this right was even more important in conser-
vative parties, where policy making is a prerogative of the parliamentary
party (Howard 2015, interview with author). In introducing the very first
candidate-selection primary to Australia, another conservative party—the
National Party—saw the potential for this exercise to ‘attract a large number
of new members to local branches’ and give electors ‘a sense of ownership and
connection with a body that may otherwise seem closed and remote’. It would
‘invigorate the local branch and provide it with a greater purpose than simple
fundraising activities’ (NSW National Party 2010: 4).
This motivation also underpinned the organizational reform initiatives
contained in the Canadian Liberal’s Change Commission report, A Time to
Act, which resolved to ‘strengthen and empower our Party’s grassroots . . . The
end result will be a more open and democratic Party—united around Liberal
values—better able to compete and win’ (Liberal Party, Canada 2009: 13), as
well as policy development reforms in New Zealand’s Labour Party—‘overall
the goal was to increase membership participation’ (NZ Labour Party 2012a:
7–8). Similarly, resolving to offer a culture that ‘welcomes members, provides
them with support and takes their opinions seriously’, the German Social
Democratic Party acknowledged that membership participation is inextric-
ably linked to the structural opportunities and conditions offered by political
parties (SPD 2011: 3, 5). Moving from delegate assemblies to membership
votes was regarded as a way to ‘empower all members to play a greater role in
creating political will and in nominating functionaries and mandate bearers’
(SPD 2011: 5–6).
Conflicting Motivations: Is It Possible to Both Increase

and Strengthen Membership?
Although increasing the size of the membership and enhancing the role that
party members play within the organization have been discussed as two
separate motivations for reform, they are often cited together, or form a two-
pronged strategy to revitalize party memberships. For example, addressing
the 2011 Australian Labor Party National Conference, former Prime Minister
Julia Gillard spoke of the need for Labor to be a ‘party of members’ and
launched a recruitment drive to increase the party’s membership by 25 per
cent. However, beyond simply growing the membership roll, Gillard also
spoke about the need to empower members by providing them with ‘more
opportunities to have a say and a direct vote in important decisions’ (Gillard
2011). Similarly, at the launch of the 2010 ALP National Review, former
parliamentarian and ‘party elder’ John Faulkner argued that ‘we need to
open the Party to more members and give those members more of a say’
(ALP 2011). Two-pronged membership strategies (both increasing and
enhancing participation) have been a feature of the most recent organiza-
tional reform initiatives of the New Zealand Labour Party (2012a; 2012b) and
the German Social Democrats (SPD 2011). In contrast, the recent leadership-
selection reforms in the UK Labour Party are characterized by a different
balance, one in which members are acknowledged, but are not seen as the
sole source of support for the party. As Ed Miliband (2013) explained, ‘as
we reshape our Party for the future, we must always value the role of party
members. And I do. But valuing Party members cannot be an excuse for
excluding the voice of the wider public’.
Whether or not increasing a party’s membership can be achieved simultan-
eously with the expansion of participatory opportunities will depend upon the
structure of democratic decision making within a party (Gauja 2013: 48–50).
If participation is seen as a deliberative, consensus-driven activity, or as an
activity to be undertaken in person, then expanding participation whilst
growing the party may be difficult to achieve. To the extent that it entails
creating false expectations that cannot be practically realized it could also be
counterproductive. However, if increasing participation is conceptualized in
terms of more individualized practices such as one-member-one-vote ballots
or consultation exercises, then these two motivations could be reconciled in
practice. The former mechanism, for example, also benefits from the symbolic
practice of voting, which in the context of publicly advertised reforms, can be
just as important as the effectiveness of the process (see Faucher 2015a: 801).
The potential tensions between these two motivating factors have important
implications for how we think about party reform, and how different motiv-
ations constrain the consequent design of institutional reforms.
This tension between expanding and strengthening membership has a
particular resonance for the implementation of open and semi-open primar-
ies, which add a new layer of complexity to the relationship between party
size and membership participation by effectively blurring the boundaries of
the party through extending candidate selection to non-members. One of the
empirical indicators of this tension in practice is that when the introduction of
38 Party Reform
primaries has been put to party members for consideration, the reception has
been mixed. For example, in 2007, a survey of UK Labour members found
that only 9 per cent supported extending candidate-selection rights to non-
members (see further, Chapter 9).6 There was even recognition in the Building
a One Nation Labour Party review process that ‘there is limited appetite
within the Labour Party for the widespread use of primaries at this time’
(Collins 2014: 34). When the National Party in Australia decided to undertake
a trial of an open primary in the New South Wales State Parliament seat of
Tamworth, 90 per cent of the Tamworth party branch voted in favour of it
(Khan 2010, interview with author). However, a similar trial was rejected in
the NSW electorate of Dubbo, where branch members ‘voted overwhelm-
ingly’ against it, concerned with the possibility of interference from other
parties.7 Low (2011: 6) also noted a muted reaction from Conservative
Party activists, and observed that in contrast to the euphoria of party profes-
sionals at the prospect of universal primaries, local parties had to ‘console
themselves in the face saving retention of the “final say” through a Special
General Meeting immediately after the primary to confirm the result’.
A possible organizational accommodation of these competing interests lies
in the adoption of mixed electoral colleges when selecting candidates and
party leaders. These colleges are designed to enable more participants, but—
at the same time—maintain a privileged role for party members vis-à-vis
supporters. An example is the community pre-selections that have been
conducted by the Australian Labor Party, in which the votes of party mem-
bers and registered supporters are weighted equally as two separate blocs. In
each instance, the number of members participating in these pre-selections has
been far less than the number of registered supporters, which means that
members’ votes have carried greater value. Reflecting on the Labor commu-
nity pre-selection held in the inner Sydney electorate of Balmain, candidate
and ex-parliamentarian Verity Firth claimed that the 50/50 split was instru-
mental in ensuring that branch members were on board, giving them a sense
that members were getting a say in the decisions that mattered (Firth 2014).
As Cross and Gauja (2014: 621) argue, in this way, the party is able to attract
a broader base of voters but does not give up ‘control’ over the pre-selection to
casual supporters at the expense of more committed and dedicated members.8
Another way in which parties have sought to mitigate these tensions is by
clearly demarcating the rights of full members from those of party supporters.
When the UK Labour party changed the way in which unions affiliated to the
party and amended its leadership-selection processes to disband the three
separate voting colleges, it gave trade unionists the opportunity to affiliate
individually with the party as supporters. This reform was designed to
increase individual membership numbers and give unionists a more transpar-
ent and direct way of engaging with the party. However, it was clear that
affiliated supporters would not enjoy the same rights as full party members.
While affiliated (union) supporters have the ‘right to be attached to a CLP and
to vote in leadership selections. They will not be able to represent the Labour
Party or to participate in the election of party representatives—with the
exception of primaries and leadership ballots—unless they join as full mem-
bers’ (Collins 2014: 7; see also UK Labour Party 2016: appendix 1). Other
parties such as the Canadian Liberals and the New Zealand Nationals have
attempted to clearly codify the respective rights of members and supporters,
but as Chapter 5 argues, in practice this difference is not always clear.
NORMATIVE AND IDEOLOGICAL MOTIVATIONS
While it is reasonably well established in the existing literature that party elites
and activists may be ‘enthused’ by goals that go beyond electoral consider-
ations (see, for example, Miragliotta 2015a: 701), the role of ideology and a
party’s founding goals is typically conceptualized as a constraint on the
trajectory of reform (Panebianco 1988; Bille 1997: 386; Miragliotta 2015a:
702). In this way, it is expected that the age of political parties, their organ-
izational ethos, and the degree to which internal structures and processes have
become institutionalized will influence the direction of reform. The experience
of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom provides an example of the
way in which ideology and organizational history influence debates, and thus
potentially constrain party reform. While both the Conservatives and the
Labour Party have significantly reformed their candidate-selection processes
over the years, and more recently opening up these selections to the wider
public, there has been little interest within the Liberal Democrats in pursuing
this path. Although the Conservative Party experiments in Totnes and
Gosport sparked debate among some Liberal Democrat activists, the party
remains ‘strongly committed to internal party democracy, and there is there-
fore opposition to diluting the privileges of membership by allowing outsiders
to select party candidates’ (Williams and Paun 2011: 39).
In their study of leadership selection, for example, Cross and Blais (2012:
39) suggest that newer political parties, with less institutionalized organiza-
tional ideals, might more readily embrace organizational innovations as a
way of differentiating themselves from their competitors. The formation and
first leadership election in the Italian Democratic Party also nicely illustrates
the relationship between party age and democratic innovation. At the forma-
tive debates leading to the creation of the Democratic Party, the party was
conceptualized by Walter Veltoni and his staffers to be one ‘without
membership’—to encourage the participation of citizens and voters in less
intensive and more ad hoc ways than within traditional party organizations.9
40 Party Reform
Although this model of organization was subsequently moderated to one
encompassing both ‘electors and members’ (Bordandini et al. 2008: 316–17),
the relatively ‘loose’ definition of membership and the organizational ethos of
the ‘open party’ was entirely consistent with the open primary (in which over
3.5 million Italians participated) that was used to elect its first leader.
But equally, we find numerous examples of ideology and organizational
ethos being used to justify reform initiatives and to more positively shape the
direction of party change rather than to block it. As Scarrow (2015: 19–20)
and Gauja (2013) argue, organizational choices are essentially ideological
products, encompassing a wide array of normative decisions about the direc-
tion of the political party and the particular attributes it wishes to be known
for, for example, ideology, links to social groups and movements, or policy
and/or leadership capacity. For both the Australian Labor Party and the
Australian Liberal Party, the persistence of long-standing ideas about party
organization is prominent within their most recent reviews. Barry (2015:
161–2) notes, for example, that the very deliberate moves by Robert Menzies
to establish a Liberal Party with a mass membership and a strong extra-
parliamentary party back in the 1940s ‘have modern-day echoes’ in the
emphasis placed in modern Liberal Party reviews on ‘building a strong
and active membership base, and strengthening the capacity of the Federal
Organisation’.
This link between ideology and organizational reform is also evident in the
way in which the party–trade union relationship has been restructured in the
UK Labour Party. Under the banner of Building a One Nation Labour Party
and reforming the leadership-selection process, the recommendations of the
Collins Review significantly altered the traditional relationship between the
party and its union affiliates. Unions retain their collective constitutional role
within party structures, however union members will now make a choice as to
whether or not they would like to make a financial contribution to the party
through their union (affiliation fees). After a transitional period, the number
of trade unionists who consent to paying the levy will govern the scale of a
trade union’s collective affiliation. Levy-paying union members are also given
the option of joining the party individually—at no extra charge—as affiliated
supporters. Supporters will enjoy the right to vote in leadership contests and
primaries, but not select parliamentary candidates (Collins 2014; see previ-
ous discussion, pp. 32–4). Unsurprisingly, the reforms elicited significant
criticism from the union movement, where many saw the proposals as
fundamentally undermining the principle of collective affiliation—whereby
trade unions, not unionists, are members of the party (see, for example,
Ewing 2013).
A critical reading of the Collins Review provides several examples of how a
party’s organizational ethos is carefully used to promote rather than constrain
reform, and to reconcile what might otherwise be seen by many as contentious
changes with the broader logic of historical roots, organizational develop-
ment, and modernization. For example, the changes to trade union affiliation
are presented in the context of a detailed history of reform within the party,
acknowledging the importance of its structure as a ‘federation of organisa-
tions’, yet acknowledging that ‘the builders of Labour’s post-war organisation
believed the new structures would evolve over time’ (Collins 2014: 11–12).
Altering the means by which unions contribute affiliation fees to the party is
framed as creating ‘a more transparent link with trade unions’, and the
process of creating links with individual trade unionists is framed as ‘a closer
relationship with levy paying trade unionists’ (Collins 2014: 20–4).
The deference to existing party organizational structures and a founding
ideology is also evident in the way in which Australian Labor Party leader Bill
Shorten announced that he would be directing the party’s National Executive
to remove the long-standing requirement that party members must also be a
member of their relevant workplace union. In announcing the change as part
of a broader speech on party reform, Shorten (2014) declared that
If we are truly serious about modernising the Labor Party, we need to

modernise our relationship with the union movement . . . Together, Labor
and the union movement created one of the most successful social-
democratic countries in the world. But our world and our workforce are
changing. As a party we can’t remain anchored in the past—we need to
rise with the modern tide.
As is evident in this quote, the notion of modernization is crucial here, and

provides an overarching justification that links these intra-party organiza-
tional challenges to competitive and systemic imperatives for reform (see
further, Chapter 7). If we return to the Swiss cheese metaphor discussed in
Chapter 2, the framing of reform as ‘modernization’ acts as a tool to both
increase the impetus for renewal (thereby enlarging the holes in each slice of
cheese), as well as securing their alignment (creating the trajectory for change).
While reforming, or ‘modernizing’, the relationship between unions and
political parties might find an ideological basis in social democratic politics,
returning—or staying faithful—to a party’s ideological roots and organiza-
tional ethos also finds expression in the conservative side of politics. In 2010,
the New South Wales (NSW) branch of the National Party was the first of
any Australian political party to trial an open primary (termed a ‘community
pre-selection’) for the selection of its parliamentary candidate for the state
electorate of Tamworth. A key architect of the trial, parliamentarian Trevor
Khan, described the primary as ‘quite a deliberate strategy’ that tried to
‘change the focus of candidate selection away from the party membership
and more towards community involvement’ (Khan 2010, interview with
author). As with the example of union reform within the UK Labour Party,
in this situation the NSW National Party was also faced with a reform
42 Party Reform
proposal that was open to criticism from within the party, as it shifted the
power of candidate selection away from the party membership.
Acting as a buffer against this potential resistance from within the party,
the philosophical origins and pragmatic orientation of the National Party—as
a party with a ‘close connection’ to the community—was used to support the
logic of the proposed change. As Khan argued, ‘local control’ was a key
differentiating feature of the National Party structure, and hence open pri-
maries were ‘an extension of the philosophy that if we’re interested in
developing political power then the ultimate devolution of political power
is to say that everyone in the electorate can help you choose your candi-
date’ (Khan 2010, interview with author). For Nationals’ Deputy State
Director Greg Dezman, another key protagonist in the reform debate,
‘the idea [of community pre-selections] fits neatly into our party. The
Nationals have always maintained a strong strand of maverick individu-
alism: parliamentarians bucking the party line to stand up for their elect-
orates’. He described the party as ‘one of the most democratic parties in
Australia’, in which rank-and-file members have always selected candi-
dates for parliament, and it ‘has meant that it has not been unusual to hold
pre-selections attended by two, three or four hundred people’ (Dezman
2014).10 In each of these cases, organizational ethos has been used to
support the reform agenda, creating a discourse that suggests organiza-
tional changes are necessary—or natural—because they return a party to
its ideological roots, or simply modernize attitudes and structures that
always existed within the party.
STRATEGIC MOTIVATIONS FOR REFORM: THE BATTLE

FOR ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL
So far this chapter has considered two broad motivating factors for party
reform: functional imperatives (maintaining and enhancing a membership)
and ideological considerations (implementing institutional designs consistent
with the organizational ethos of the party). However, if we think about the
political party as an arena comprised of numerous individuals and groups—
each with differing interpretations of ideology, of different policy ideas, and
political strategies—then the battle for organizational control would also
constitute an important motivator for party reform. As Barnea and Rahat
(2007: 378) argue, if intra-party actors are regarded as behaving in accordance
with their rational self-interests, then politicians ‘can be expected to attempt
to enhance or protect their status in the intra-party hierarchy (and their image
in the public eye) through change (or preservation) of the rules of the game’.
In existing accounts of party change, leaders and factions are seen as the
most important actors in this battle. As actors in the process of reform, the
role of leaders is discussed further in Chapters 7 and 8. The remainder of this
chapter looks specifically at factions and other collective groupings within
political parties, but shifts the focus from factions as participants in reform, to
factions as motivators for reform. In doing so, the analysis highlights how
factions and other collective actors are portrayed as ‘undemocratic’ in reform
debates, and as groups that operate at the expense of more transparent and
individualized forms of intra-party decision making.
Mitigating the Power of Factions within the Party

The Australian political parties present an excellent case study of the role of
factions as a motivating force in party reform due to the relatively institution-
alized position of factions in Australian party politics (Gauja and Almeida
2009). Factions are perhaps most prominent within the Australian Labor
Party, and this is where most scholarly attention lies,11 but they also exist in
more fluid forms within the Liberal Party. When examining intra-party
debates over the introduction and trial of primaries for candidate and
leadership selection, a number of interesting, and in some cases, unexpected
trends emerge.
The first of these findings is that in the reform debates over the last decade,
the motivation to use primaries to circumvent the influence of factions was
principally raised by Liberal Party proponents of primaries. This is a surpris-
ing finding given that it is the Australian Labor Party that is often regarded as
having a more problematic history of factional influence. The Reith Report
into the 2010 federal election, for example, stressed the potential of primaries
to serve as a tool to ‘mitigate the operation of factions to discourage branch
stacking and importantly, promote active participation in the political pro-
cess’ (Reith 2011: 22). The report also cited former Liberal leader and Prime
Minister John Howard as arguing that a large membership that is engaged
in the candidate-selection process results in better candidates, as Howard
bemoaned that ‘reduced and less representative membership has made
political parties more susceptible to internal group control of the candidate
selection process’ (Reith 2011: 19, emphasis added). The NSW Liberal Party
Executive cited the prevention of factional bickering as its main aim in
wanting to trial a series of primaries within the party.12
While surprising, the prominence of mitigating factional influence as a
justification for reform in the Liberal Party reinforces the point that the role
of factions is pervasive and just as much of a concern for conservative party
elites as their social democrat counterparts, and may indicate that they play a
larger part in the internal politics of the party than political scientists have
44 Party Reform
previously acknowledged. In 2012, a debate over closed primaries and the
power of the State Executive to impose candidates over the wishes of branch
members turned into a costly legal dispute. The changes to pre-selection were
supported by the hard right faction and opposed by the centre-right and
moderate factions, which control the State Executive.13 This concern is clearly
evident in the 2014 internal report into organization of the NSW Liberal
Party, in which an entire section was allocated to the issue of factionalism.
The report noted that:
It is unrealistic to imagine that some level of factionalism will not exist in

a major political party. The existence of groups within a political party
holding genuinely different opinions on major policy issues is understand-
able. It is, however, undesirable for these groupings to develop into
factions which seek on a continuing basis to promote their own loyalties
by excluding non-loyalists from party positions and engage in activities
designed to damage other party members. When groupings within a party
are no more than permanent cooperatives they do not advance the overall
welfare of the party; inflict reputational damage upon it and can fre-
quently contaminate the pre-selection process. (Howard 2014: 4–5)
Elaborating on these detrimental processes, Howard argued that ‘factionalism

has produced this terrible situation where branches will reject people because
they might alter the factional balance’ (Howard 2015, interview with author).
In recommending the introduction of plebiscites (closed primaries) for candi-
date selection within the party, his report argued:
Plebiscites will not automatically guarantee larger fields but because, in
the opinion of the panel, pre-selections by way of plebiscites can contrib-
ute to the weakening of factional influences, the plebiscite approach is
more likely to attract a larger number of candidates of the ‘talented
outsider’ category who increasingly find the present factional grip on pre-
selections unwelcoming. There are other reforms which can contribute to
reducing the influence of factions, especially reforms that enhance the
attractiveness of the party and increase its membership. (Howard 2014: 5)
In contrast, the Australian Labor Party has been reluctant to overtly cite factional
influence as a specific reason for the introduction of primaries, although these
groups have been named more generally in both recent federal party reviews as a
cause for concern, and as a primary reason for ‘opening up’ a range of party
processes to more broadly based involvement from the membership. In 2002, the
National Committee of Review Report noted the following:
in all political parties there will be a tendency towards some form of
association between individuals who share the same orientation on
policy matters. But there is widespread, genuine dissatisfaction with the
deadening impact of factionalism and the associated phenomenon of
branch stacking. We make a number of recommendations directed to
these issues and calculated to broaden the basis of membership activity,
capacity for involvement in policy formulation and the election of parlia-
mentary and conference representatives. (Hawke and Wran 2002: 5)
By 2010 the mechanism of influence had shifted from ‘branch stacking’ to

‘branch stripping’ (the process Howard also saw as occurring in the Liberal
Party), but the proposed solution remained the same:
The Review Committee was struck by evidence from the state and terri-
tory officials of the Party, that while the practice of ‘branch stacking’ has
been largely curtailed by the reforms of the late 1990s and 2000s, a new
practice of ‘branch stripping’ has arisen in its place whereby branches
are discouraged from recruiting members and having them participate
in the affairs of the local area. This allows individuals to then exert
greater influence over the outcome of ballots and contests for positions. The
Review Committee believes that the only way to confront issues like this is to
open up the processes of the Party to greater involvement by the members
themselves, thus giving them the responsibility of deciding who will represent
them at the highest levels of the party. (Bracks et al. 2011: 17–18)
The subtle way in which the authors of the 2010 review dealt with the issue of
factional influence contrasts with the strong views of party members who were
quoted in the report. Members argued that reform should be based on making
‘branches more relevant and factions less relevant’ and that ‘while we continue
to allow the factional carve up of positions and decisions are taken on factional
grounds, people will continue to be turned off ’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 8). Given the
party’s long history of factional intervention in candidate-selection contests
(Leigh 2000), this may signify the continued dominance of these groups and
their desire to preserve power within the organization. But the emphasis on
opening up the party rather than constraining the power of factions may also
reflect that reforms are as much an exercise of public rebranding as they are of
organizational change, and the construction of a positive party image is para-
mount. These themes are discussed in greater detail in Chapters 7 and 8.
Taking place without any sustained consultation within the party, the
reforms to leadership selection within the Australian Labor Party that were
instituted by former prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2013 also provide evidence
of the importance of factions—or more accurately, the desire to mitigate their
influence—as prominent reason for reform. The changes were made during a
period of leadership instability (although as Chapter 4 argues, the idea had
been circulating within the party for some time previously). Upon becoming
prime minister for the second time in June 2013, one of Rudd’s first acts was to
announce changes to the way in which party leaders could be selected and
removed. The model of selection that Rudd proposed, and which was later
adopted by the parliamentary party group, was that leaders were no longer to
46 Party Reform
be selected by an exclusive vote of the parliamentary party, but by a ballot
split 50/50 between the parliamentary party and the membership.
Kevin Rudd claimed that his reforms to the leadership-selection process
were necessary to break the ‘absolute union-based factional power which
enables factional thugs to click their fingers and decide who the next leader
of the Labor Party was going to be’.14 The reforms, which ultimately con-
strained the power and flexibility of the parliamentary party in removing and
appointing leaders, were also explained as increasing the rewards of party
membership: ‘each of our members now gets to have a say, a real say in the
future leadership of our party. Decisions can no longer be simply made by a
factional few’ (Rudd 2013a). Unions, which are often affiliated with particular
factions in the ALP, were not allocated a share of the vote in the contest.
Rudd’s position on the issue was that ‘what we are seeking to do here with this
reform is say to all our friends and supporters in the trade union movement,
we want you active in the branches of the Australian Labor Party . . . That is
where we want to see the activism of our trade union friends and that is what
this reform is designed to encourage’ (Rudd 2013a).
Looking beyond Australia: Dismantling Collective Affiliations

and Reducing the Power of Collective Groupings
Although the Australian political parties provide a good case study of how
factional power has been used to drive reform in a motivating rather than
process-oriented sense, examples of the desire to mitigate the influence of
collective groupings within the party can also be found in other democracies.
In another political party where factional divisions are endemic, the French
Socialist Party, the introduction of primaries was viewed as a means through
which to dilute the influence of these groupings where previous rules-related
changes, such as the introduction of individual, secret ballots, had only
weakened them. Membership recruitment was an important part of this
strategy: membership fees were temporarily reduced and new members were
immediately given the right to vote in the selection of the party leader
(Faucher 2015a: 806). The process ultimately created new sets of opportun-
ities for different elites within the party—younger and non-aligned parlia-
mentarians such as Segolene Royal ‘benefitted from the influx of members
because she was able to present herself as an outsider—she was not a member
of the party elites nor did she lead her own faction’ (Faucher 2015a: 806).
Given the dominance of factions within the party, Faucher’s research high-
lights the significance of these reforms in a political environment prone to
inertia, and the importance of achieving ‘internal party balance’ and ‘the
ability of contenders to mobilise myths of democracy and external support’
(Faucher 2015a: 806).
The example of recent reforms to the link between trade unions and the UK
Labour Party has already been discussed—and it too demonstrates how
increasing individual links with supporters has been linked with arguments
for enhancing membership influence while dismantling collective affiliations
within the party. The Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) also removed
the 25 per cent share of votes that it had previously allocated to unions in the
vote for the party leader in 2012. As Cross and Blais (2012: 24) note, the
inclusion of unions in the selection of the party leader has been, when viewed
in a broader historical perspective, quite controversial. They note that this was
a radical departure from the traditional restraint that unions were expected to
exercise, concentrating their efforts predominantly on industrial policy (see
also Russell 2005; Minkin 1992). With the removal of unions from the
leadership selectorate in both the UK Labour Party and the Canadian
NDP, unions are now not separately included in any leadership contests in
the Anglo parliamentary democracies, excepting New Zealand.
However, the broader trend to reform the party–collective actor relation-
ship is not limited to trade unions. In his research on party leadership-
selection reforms in the Belgian political parties, Bram Wauters argues that
circumventing the power of middle-level elites, or more specifically, ‘breaking
the power of the arrondissemental federations’ (regional branches) was one of the
primary motivations for the reforms in the French-speaking and Flemish social
democrats. Like both the Australian and UK Labour examples, this change was
accompanied by a corresponding devolution and dispersion of power, which
involved shifting the right to vote at conferences from the regional branches to
local party groupings (Wauters 2014: 71–2). This motivation also extended to the
Flemish Christian Democrats, where the ‘domination’ of intra-party decision
making by the three social organizations in the party (the farmers’ organization,
the workers’ organization, and that of the self-employed) threatened the
Christian Democrats’ mass party origins. In extending leadership selection
to the membership, it was Van Hecke’s (the party leader’s) ‘aim to break
through this . . . by reinforcing the party leader and by giving him a mandate
directly from the members (CVP party secretary)’ (Wauters 2014: 72).
ORGANIZATIONAL SURVIVAL, IDEOLOGY, AND

STRATEGY: RECONCILING THE INTERNAL
MOTIVATIONS FOR PARTY REFORM
If we attempt to reconcile the three primary motivations for reform at the

intra-party level: membership growth, reducing collective influence, and
maintaining ideological orientation, then it becomes clear as to why ‘opening
48 Party Reform
up the party’ is used as a catch-cry in so many instances of reform. Increasing
participation and support speaks to all three of these imperatives: creating
incentives for more people to engage with the party builds organizational
capacity, increasing the size of the party (whether by members or supporters)
invokes the nostalgic model of the mass party, and broadening the base of
participation mitigates the influence of undesirable or undemocratic collective
groupings within the party.
While ameliorating a democratic deficit may be the primary concern of the
parties, some uneasy tensions arise in the process. The first is the demarcation
of the respective roles of members and supporters—whether this is actually
possible in practice, and what looser forms of affiliation might mean for
the nature of the party, including the reactions of members and activists.
The second is the implications of the trend towards dismantling collective
affiliations and, at the same time, expanding more individualized forms of
engagement. The work of Richard Katz (2001) and Peter Mair (2005; 1994),
among others, reminds us that there is potentially a darker side to democra-
tization. Expanding participation, strengthening membership, and breaking
the power of undemocratic factions also serve to strengthen the power of
party elites. These implications are more fully explored in Chapter 9.
NOTES
1. Although Barnea and Rahat (2007) identify party splits and mergers as a relevant
catalyst for organizational change, an analysis of this specific factor is beyond the
scope of the study as there were no splits or merger within the parties in the time
period under consideration.
2. The German Social Democrats are a great example of this: ‘we have always seen
ourselves as a democratic membership party with a program—and this we want to
retain, even in a changing society. This is why we are opening ourselves up’ (SPD
2011: 2). See further, Chapter 5, pp. 87–94.
3. The 2011 conference of the UK Labour Party adopted the principle of opening the
ballot for the leadership election to registered ‘supporters’, once their numbers
exceed 50,000 (Faucher 2015a: 809; Gauja 2013: 107). The introduction of a
registered supporters’ category of affiliation is discussed in greater detail in
Chapter 5.
4. Mark Kenny, ‘Bill Shorten outlines goal to lift ALP membership’, Sydney Morning
Herald, 8 March 2014.
5. Senator Mark Abib (former New South Wales (NSW) Labor State Secretary) and
NSW Labor Opposition Leader Luke Foley, quoted in the Sydney Morning
Herald, 29 March 2011, p. 6.
6. N = 670. The survey was conducted by YouGov and commissioned by the LabOur
Commission (YouGov 2006).
7. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), ‘Dubbo votes down community
preselection trial’, News Online, 15 October 2009.
8. In expanding participation but at the same time rewarding loyal party activists, this
model bears some similarity to the ‘optimum’ model of candidate selection suggested
by Hazan and Rahat (2010: 174–5), which balances the ideal outcomes of candidate
selection: participation, representation, competition, and responsiveness.
9. See, for example, Vassallo and Passarelli (2016).
10. Davey (2008: 23) also notes that ‘from its earliest days . . . the country party
[Nationals] in NSW rejected the idea of pre-selecting candidates for parliament.
Originally anyone who accepted the constitution and platform of the party could
nominate as a candidate and, providing inquiries by the party’s central council
uncovered nothing untoward about a person’s character or personal affairs, they
would be endorsed. This frequently led to five or six country party candidates
contesting the same seat’.
11. See, for example, Economou (2015); Leigh (2000); and Parkin and Warhurst
(2000: 37–9).
12. Heath Aston and Stephanie Peatling, ‘Liberals join the trend of picking by
primaries’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 2011; see also Miragliotta and
Errington (2010).
13. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 November 2012.
14. Cited in the Sydney Morning Herald, 9 May 2015.
4
Competitive Pressures for Reform
There seems to be little contention amongst party scholars that the logic of
electoral competition—the desire to improve electoral performance—is one
of the primary motivators, if not the most important factor, influencing
party change. Like the influence of factions, however, empirical analyses of
the effect of electoral competition tend to be based on the timing of reforms
and their proximity to electoral setbacks (Harmel and Janda 1994; Harmel
et al. 1995; Cross and Blais 2012; Wauters 2014: 63–4). Hence a relatively
common hypothesis that is tested is whether or not political parties are
likely to implement organizational reforms after an electoral defeat (Chiru
et al. 2015). Perhaps unsurprisingly, where this has been examined scholars
have observed a correlation between defeat and reform. However, fewer
attempts have been made to understand, in more detail, why this might be
the case. Does it, for example, reflect the changing power dynamics within
political parties that a reduction in parliamentary representation might
produce? Is there a connection, or a perception, that reform will increase
votes? Is reform linked to a broader process of organizational renewal and
rebranding?
In this chapter I analyse the importance of electoral competition through a
constructive institutionalist lens, focusing specifically on how political parties,
and in particular, party elites, understand and perceive the electoral benefits of
reform. The chapter is structured according to five key themes, which build on
the Barnea and Rahat (2007) framework presented in Chapter 2 and that
serve as the primary motivators for reform at the level of the party system: the
perceived relationship between reform and electoral success, mitigation of
scandals, contagion effects, organizational branding, and the quality of rep-
resentation. The first three of these motivators feature in the framework
developed in Chapter 2, and the final two are included on the basis of empir-
ical observation. They are the five themes that figure the most prominently in
discourse surrounding reform in the Australian and UK political parties and,
as is evident from the supplementary examples examined, have significant
resonance elsewhere.
Competitive Pressures for Reform 51
THE ELECTORAL BENEFITS OF PARTY REFORM
Reform projects face a difficult task because, in addition to addressing the

many internal pressures for reform, the necessity of enhancing electoral
competitiveness is also a key consideration of many reviews, particularly
those commissioned in the wake of disappointing electoral performances.
There is, however, a clear recognition in review documents that party
renewal is necessary to maintain competitiveness, and clear link—at least
in party rhetoric—between party reform and electoral success/survival. For
example, in 2005 the Canadian Liberals established the Red Ribbon Task
Force. It was charged with evaluating how the operational and decision-
making structures of the party could be made more efficient. The Task Force
members noted that ‘our biggest challenge is to remain competitive as a
political body . . . We steadfastly believe the choice in front of us is relatively
simple: change or become unable to compete and win’ (Liberal Party,
Canada 2006: 4–5).
Certainly the timing of many reform reviews indicates the primacy of
electoral considerations. Shortly after the 2009 German election, in which
the Social Democrats won just 23 per cent of the vote, party leader Sigmar
Gabriel announced the SPD’s organizational review (Totz 2011: 3). Similarly,
the 2012 organizational review of the New Zealand Labour Party was initi-
ated immediately after the party’s second consecutive electoral defeat (NZ
Labour 2012a). The ALP’s National Committee of Review Report was com-
missioned just after the November 2001 federal election, when the party faced
its third consecutive term in opposition having achieved only 38 per cent of
the primary vote, its lowest since 1906. The 2010 ALP and Australian Liberal
Party reviews were both undertaken in the context of an election where the
result was so close that neither party gained a majority of seats in the lower
house of parliament, the first time since 1940.
Commissioned after the party’s 2010 defeat at the general election, the
opening sentence of UK Labour’s Refounding Labour: A Party for the New
Generation is also telling: ‘Last year the Labour Party was beaten badly,
recording our lowest share of the popular vote since 1983 and losing dozens
of excellent MPs’ (Hain 2011a: 4). Most recently, following their disastrous
2015 general election result, the UK Liberal Democrats Federal Executive
began a comprehensive review process of the party’s internal governance
structures, the results of which will be delivered to the 2016 Autumn Confer-
ence (Liberal Democrats 2015).
While the proximity of these initiatives to electoral defeats provides a
strong indication of the salience of the timing of reform, it is necessary to
examine in closer detail the justifications given for reform to understand why
these processes are initiated in the wake of an electoral defeat. Explaining the
52 Party Reform
rationale for the trial of the Australian Labor Party’s community pre-
selection process in her inner-Sydney electorate of Balmain, former parlia-
mentarian Verity Firth (2014) commented that the process originated as a
‘result of the soul searching that happens after an electoral defeat’, referring to
the party’s landslide defeat in the 2011 New South Wales state election, after
sixteen years in government. But why is it exactly that parties choose reform
in such instances, and what influences the specific organizational response
that they take? It is here that the perception of party elites is crucial. While
‘objective’ evidence as to the electoral dividend following the introduction
of reforms such as primaries is mixed (Scarrow 1999), evidence from the
Australian and British parties covered in this study suggests that party elites
perceive the electoral payoffs of organizational reform positively, irrespective
of whether or not this might actually be the case.
Any number of statements from party elites and organizational reviews
could be used to provide an illustration of this perception, which concurs with
studies of reform in other democracies such as Belgium (Wauters 2014: 70),
Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland (Cross and Blais 2012). Examples range
from general impressions: ‘a strong, well organised branch membership
undoubtedly contributes to electoral success’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 14), to
more specific justifications of the link between reform and improved electoral
performance. For example, the New South Wales Director of the Australian
National Party claimed that the party’s ‘overseas research’ suggested that the
candidates selected for parliament through open primaries increased their
vote by 4 to 6 per cent.1 While positive sentiments abound, with much of
the discourse surrounding party reform predicated on the assumption that
reform activities will bring electoral benefits, little systematic empirical
research has been done to substantiate that claim.
One relatively crude indication might be provided by a party’s vote share at
the election before a reform is introduced, compared to its vote share in the
election(s) after the initiative has taken place. While many different types of
party reform might be implemented with a view to improving electoral
outcomes, the introduction of trial primaries is perhaps the easiest to evaluate
when compared to changes in other party functions, such as policy develop-
ment, although the relationship is by no means clear-cut. Table 4.1 provides
details of the open and semi-open primary contests held since 2009 for the
selection of parliamentary candidates in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Although the focus of this book is on examining the motivations for reform
rather than conclusively determining their actual ‘success’ or ‘failure’, how
political parties assess the value of reform initiatives, particularly when they
are experimental, influences their uptake and the rate at which these practices
spread, within and across party systems. Hence providing some basic data on
the competitive electoral effects of primaries is useful in illustrating how, and
why, contagion effects occur (also, see pp. 63–7).
T A B L E 4 . 1 Electoral gains/losses after semi-open primaries: Australia and the UK*
Party Seat Year Previous party vote Subsequent party vote Change Outcome
(%)
Australia
Nationals Tamworth 2010 40.0 55.0 +15.0 Nationals gain
ALP Kilsyth 2010 38.9 30.5 8.4 Liberal hold
ALP Balmain 2014 30.2 31.8 +1.6 Greens hold
ALP Campbelltown 2014 38.6 50.3 +11.7 ALP gain
ALP Ballina 2014 11.9 24.7 +12.8 Greens gain
Average vote change +6.5
UK
Conservatives Totnes 2009 41.7 45.9 +4.2 Conservative hold
Conservatives Gosport 2009 44.8 51.8 +7.0 Conservative hold
Conservatives Bath 2013 31.4 37.8 +6.4 Conservative gain
Conservatives Berwick 2013 36.7 41.1 +4.4 Conservative gain
Conservatives Boston and Skegness 2014 49.9 43.8 6.1 Conservative hold
Conservatives Clacton** 2014 53.0 24.6 28.4 UKIP gain
Conservatives Dudley South 2014 43.1 43.8 +0.7 Conservative hold
Conservatives Hampstead and Kilburn 2013 32.7 42.3 +9.6 Labour hold
Conservatives Havant 2014 51.1 51.7 +0.6 Conservative hold
Conservatives Louth and Horncastle 2014 49.6 51.2 +1.6 Conservative hold
Conservatives Mid-Worcestershire 2013 54.5 57.0 +2.5 Conservative hold
Conservatives North East Hampshire 2013 60.6 65.9 +5.3 Conservative hold
Conservatives Rochester and Strood** 2014 49.2 34.8 14.4 UKIP gain
Conservatives South East Cambridgeshire 2013 48.0 48.5 +0.5 Conservative hold
Conservatives Taunton Deane 2013 42.2 48.1 +5.9 Conservative gain
Conservatives Tonbridge and Malling 2013 57.9 59.4 +1.5 Conservative hold
Conservatives Twikenham 2013 34.1 41.3 +7.2 Conservative gain
Conservatives Wealden 2013 56.6 57.0 +0.4 Conservative hold
Conservatives Yeovil 2013 32.9 42.5 +9.6 Conservative gain
Conservatives Aberdeenshire and Kincardine 2013 30.3 28.8 1.5 SNP gain
Average vote change +0.9
* Although the ALP also held a community pre-selection in the seat of Newtown in 2014, it is not included here as it was a new seat created through a periodic electoral
redistribution.
** By-elections triggered as a result of Conservative MPs switching to UKIP.
54 Party Reform
In contrast to the enthusiasm displayed by party elites, and as indicated in
Table 4.1, the electoral benefits of experimenting with primaries are actually
quite mixed. For the British Conservatives, the overall change in vote share in
those electorates where primaries were held to select the parliamentary can-
didate (0.9 per cent) did not deviate substantially from the party’s overall vote
share at the 2015 election (a gain of 0.8 per cent across all electorates). In by-
elections held in two constituencies, Clacton and Rochester and Strood, the
conduct of a primary was not enough to defeat two former Conservative
parliamentarians who defected to the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
In Australia, where relatively few primary candidate-selection trials have
been held, Tamworth (Nationals) and Campbelltown (ALP) could be cited as
the two examples in which the introduction of primaries not only saw the
party increase its vote substantially at the election following the primary, but
also win the parliamentary seat. As the first open primary contest in Australia,
the Tamworth community pre-selection benefited from voter interest, with
over 4,000 electors participating (10 per cent of the electorate). Although it
took place at roughly the same time, the Kilsyth Labor experiment attracted
only 170 community participants due to poor publicity and organization and
hence failed to make a substantial impact (Gauja 2012). It was later dismissed
in a post-election review as having ‘consumed a significant amount of
resources, delivered little or no electoral benefit and had incited “disgruntle-
ment” among local members’ (Miragliotta 2011: 4).
The community pre-selections conducted by the ALP in the two Sydney
electorates of Campelltown and Balmain also provide an interesting juxta-
position of the electoral success of primaries as a reform strategy. Both
selections were conducted in March–April 2014 and were open to Labor
members and registered community voters, whose votes were split equally.
In Balmain, 5,110 members of the community took part, alongside 357
branch members, whereas in Campbelltown only 1,061 community voters
participated alongside just 28 branch members.2 While it might have been
expected that the benefits of greater community involvement in the Balmain
contest would flow through to votes in the March 2015 election, this is
not what occurred. The party did experience a modest increase in its vote
(1.6 per cent), but it was not able to defeat the Green Party, which had won the
seat in the previous election. In Campbelltown, by contrast, the ALP
increased its vote by almost 12 per cent and was able to win the seat from
the Liberal Party—despite lower levels of community participation. Party
officials claimed that the relative success of the Campbelltown primary was
due to the fact that it was able to create a new local party membership that,
with the assistance of a committed field organizer, was able to mobilize a
base of support that did not previously exist. Party membership tripled in
Campbelltown after the primary, and unlike in Balmain—where a much
larger and established party organization was already in place—the primary
brought much greater marginal benefits to the party. In this case the perceived
electoral benefits of the primary resulted through the creation of a more
vibrant local party organization.
Chapter 3 examined increasing and sustaining party memberships as an
important motivation for organizational reform. As highlighted in the
example above, party elites also drew a connection between reform initiatives
that increase memberships and electoral success. This practical connection
supports similar findings of a comparative study of the German SPD and
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) (Mjelde 2013), and echoes the writing of
scholars such as Susan Scarrow, who have disaggregated the relationship
between membership and party sustainability by examining the functions
that members perform: providing volunteer labour, providing financial support,
standing as candidates for public office, transmitting ideas and preferences into
party debates, providing electoral support, communicating party ideas, and
enhancing legitimacy (2015: chapter 5). As the Liberal Democrats’ membership
officer Jonathan Steen explained, ‘without party members we have no know-
ledge of the country’ (Steen 2013, interview with author). Members were also
conceptualized as a campaigning resource, seen by Australian Labor Party
campaign officials as ‘invaluable in a marginal electorate where resources are
tight and feet on the ground can make all the difference’.3
Nonetheless, as with the electoral benefits of party reform, academic studies
show no clear correlation between membership increases and organizational
reforms, particularly the opportunity to take part in internal ballots. Faucher,
for example, argues that in Britain and France ‘the efficiency of leadership
selection as a means to recruit more members remains in question, even if it is
likely to have increased the mobilisation of potential voters in the run up to
the general or presidential elections’ (2015a: 813; see also Scarrow 1994: 57).
In some ways, the 2015 UK Labour leadership contest has challenged this
view, with over 100,000 new party members joining to participate in the
contest, and a further 50,000 joining since Jeremy Corbyn was elected (see
Chapter 3, p. 33). Australian Labor Party membership has also increased by
10,000 since the introduction of the membership vote for the party leader in
2013. Whether or not these increases reflect the impact of organizational reform,
electoral cycles, the phenomenon of entryism, or popular party leaders is difficult
to discern—particularly with ‘patchy’ reporting of membership figures in
Australia. Indeed, after the introduction of the Refounding Labour reform
package in 2011, the UK Labour Party actually experienced a small drop in
membership numbers over the following three years,4 despite the reforms
ostensibly strengthening the role of members in policy development, reintro-
ducing the category of registered supporters, and increasing participation
through training and organizing initiatives (UK Labour Party 2011a, 2011b).
Although modest, there is a positive perception on the part of the political
parties that reforms are bringing people back to party politics. These include
56 Party Reform
reforms to membership processes that are designed to reduce the financial cost
for potential new members (see Scarrow 2015: 130). For example, in the year
after the Australian Labor Party lost the New South Wales state election the
implementation of a reduced membership fee of $5 saw the party’s numbers
increase by around 30 per cent.5 In December 2010 the UK Labour Party
implemented a one-year discount (1p) membership scheme for first-time
members under the age of 27 in its ‘speak out for your generation campaign’.
After 24 hours, the party reported in positive tones that the scheme had
already attracted 400 new sign-ups.6 Similarly, Greg Dezman reported an
increase in the National Party’s membership after the Tamworth community
pre-selection (Dezman 2014). Yet, as previously noted, the impact of primar-
ies is greatest in areas where existing party memberships are relatively weak.
Although ALP membership tripled in the Campbelltown area, only 8 per cent
of participants surveyed after the Balmain pre-selection indicated that they
would consider joining the party.7
Furthermore, as the disastrous performance of the Liberal Democrats at
the 2015 general election nonetheless highlights, despite efforts to ‘rebrand’
membership and reform the recruitment process, an influx of new members
will not necessarily guarantee electoral popularity. In 2013 the party
‘rebranded’ the membership product and made changes to the way in
which revenue from membership subscriptions was distributed internally so
as to provide incentives to local branches to recruit and, if possible, to sign
new members up via continuous direct debit. The rationale behind the
reforms was intended to
improve our retention rate, improve our income and improve the local
party income. They can spend that money on campaigning, the financial
resource for the campaigning resource goes up. They knock on more
doors, they get a higher profile. They increase the likelihood of somebody
saying yes when they’re asked, do you want to join? It’s all about
pushing—it’s taking all the different drivers and pushing them all in the
same direction. (Steen 2013, interview with author)
Yet, despite these measures, the party’s vote at the 2015 general election fell to
just 8 per cent. It lost all but eight seats in the Commons and was surpassed by
the Scottish National Party as the third party in UK politics.
Survey evidence from Australia suggests that while reform activities do
provide some limited impact upon public perceptions of the party, this effect is
conditioned by patterns of partisan affiliation. In April 2014, leader of the
Australian Labor Party Bill Shorten proposed a series of reforms to the party
to change the role played by members and unions in the organization. The
proposed reforms were designed to make it easier to be a party member,
eliminating the requirement that individuals had to also be a union member
and proposals to increasing member involvement in the selection of leaders
T A B L E 4 . 2 Effect of ALP reform announcement on voting intentions (percentage of respondents)
Total Vote ALP Vote Lib/Nat Vote Greens Vote other
Total more likely 26 38 15 38 26

Total less likely 6 2 10 5 7
Much more likely 8 16 3 5 6
A little more likely 18 22 12 33 20
Make no difference 59 51 71 49 61
A little less likely 2 1 1 2 4
Much less likely 4 1 9 3 3
Don’t know 9 9 4 8 6
Source: Essential Media Communications (2014)
and candidates. A survey conducted shortly after the announcement indicated

that overall, around one quarter (26 per cent) of respondents would be more
likely to vote for the ALP as a result of the reforms. However, as Table 4.2
illustrates, most respondents said it would make no difference.
The positive electoral effect of the reform announcement was largely
limited to voters already identifying with the Labor Party, although even
the majority (51 per cent) of these voters said that it would make no difference.
Voters identifying with the conservative Liberal/National Coalition were far
more critical of the exercise, with 10 per cent of these respondents indicating
that organizational reform would make them less likely to vote for the
ALP. Interestingly, electoral support for these organizational reforms was
quite prominent amongst Greens’ identifiers—a traditionally grassroots,
democratic party—suggesting that public assessments and hence the effect
of organizational changes is related to citizens’ preferences for particular
participatory structures.
ORGANIZATIONAL BRANDING
Previous studies of the implementation of more inclusive methods of candi-

date selection have shown that in addition to the substance of the change, the
potential publicity surrounding the event is an important incentive to adopt
organizational innovations. Consistent with the underlying rationale of a
reform as opposed to organizational change more generally, ‘going public’
with ‘something positive’ and catching the eye of the media and the public
(Wauters 2014: 69; Gherghina 2013: 188) is just as—if not more—important
than the substance of the change itself. In the case of the Belgian Parti
Socialiste (PS), the party even prohibited postal and proxy voting in its
58 Party Reform
primary so members would be forced to line up on the streets, rendering the
process far more visible. According to the PS Party Secretary, this practice
had ‘the desired effect’: ‘there were queues of people waiting to cast their vote.
Everyone could see that social-democratic party activists could elect their
leader’ (cited in Wauters 2014: 70).
For the NSW National Party, one of the key benefits of the community pre-
selection trial was the significant attention to the party brand that the event
would bring. The party did not introduce spending limits for candidates
throughout the contest, and invested significant sums of money on the pro-
duction of brochures and advertising, as they thought that the money spent on
promoting the candidates and the party brand was a benefit of the community
pre-selection process (Dezman 2014). Achieving ‘a level of differentiation’
from other political parties was an important consideration in process (Khan
2010, interview with author). Owing to a concerted effort from the party, the
reform was highly publicized in regional media, and also attained national
coverage. According to Dezman (2014), ‘the most important part of the
process was to get the message out far and wide that the party genuinely
wanted the community to engage with the process and select their own
Nationals’ candidate’. A comprehensive media strategy was employed, from
the official slogan ‘Your Vote, Your Choice’, to constituent mail-outs and
community meetings, newspaper advertising, press releases, and even televi-
sion advertising. In the ALP community pre-selection trials held in 2014, the
party contributed financial resources through the provision of a direct mail-
out brochure to all eligible electors in the community, as well as enabling
candidates to use head office phones to canvass electors (Firth 2014).
Financial outlay can also act as an indicator of a party’s commitment to a
particular reform, and in the case of open primaries, the outlay that some
parties have spent on the process has been substantial. In addition to the
advertising purchased by the NSW National Party (costing approximately
AUD$63,000 according to electoral disclosure returns), all four candidates
promoted the process through their own campaigns, with two candidates
purchasing television advertisements. In the community pre-selections staged
by the ALP in 2014, participants were subject to a AUD$15,000 expenditure
cap, but participant Verity Firth nonetheless noted that it was ‘a very expen-
sive process to run’ (Firth 2014). The Conservatives spent £40,000 in each of
the two seats that held open primaries prior to the 2010 election, and approxi-
mately £10,000 for each open primary meeting (Gauja 2012: 648; Gay and
Jones 2009: 4; Williams and Paun 2011: 23). The Nationals felt that their
community pre-selection ‘well and truly paid off ’ and created ‘the sort of
publicity that money can’t buy’ (NSW National Party 2010). With this level of
expenditure in mind it is telling that in the UK, the Conservative–Liberal
Democrat Coalition government (formed after the 2010 general election)
made a commitment, which was not ultimately implemented, to fund 200
all-postal primaries as part of its Programme for Government (HM
Government 2010: 27). In this instance, the proposal was designed to shift
the financial burden of party reform to the state, but in other instances (for
example, the French Socialist Party presidential primary, the UK Labour
Party leadership election in 2015), political parties charged participating
supporters a nominal fee (1 Euro or 3 pounds). This effectively shifted the
financial burden to participants, not to mention creating a significant fun-
draising bonus for the parties involved.
At least in their first iteration, the Australian experiments with semi-open
primaries were gentle in the way they were conducted to maximize exposure
for the party brand, but also minimize the potential for negative publicity.
Verity Firth reports, for example, that in the Balmain contest candidates were
‘very polite about each other’ and the contest was run according to a ‘Gentle-
man’s agreement’, with no directives from head office (Firth 2014). The
selection of seats for the trials was also an important consideration in the
process of creating and publicizing the party’s democratic ‘brand’. Both
the Australian Labor Party and the Nationals chose their trials carefully on
the basis that they did not want to subject sitting members to the process, and
picked seats which were categorized as ‘marginal’ and the party had a realistic
chance of winning. The media interest in these marginal seats contributed to
the likelihood of widespread coverage and hence to the advantages of the
reforms from a branding perspective.
ENHANCING SKILLS AND INCREASING THE QUALITY

OF PERSONNEL AND CANDIDATES
Another prominent motivation that relates to the internal organizational

challenges faced by political parties, although one that also touches signifi-
cantly on the logic of electoral competition, is increasing the quality of
candidates and personnel within the political party. In the United Kingdom,
this debate has focused on the issue of representativeness. This has quite a
long and complex history in the interplay between the rights of party members
and the public to select their candidates for parliament, and the use of
affirmative action measures, such as all-women shortlists and A-lists (Low
2011). The Commission on Candidate Selection, convened by the Electoral
Reform Society, noted that the state of candidate selection in the UK
resembled
a picture of a narrow group of representatives selected by a tiny propor-
tion of the population belonging to parties, for which ever fewer members
60 Party Reform
of the public vote and for whom even fewer people have any feelings of
attachment. One of the main reasons why the candidates selected are still
unrepresentative is that the main parties now attract a narrower range and
smaller number of members than in the past. This has been recognised by
the parties themselves as they have discussed how to attract support in
new ways. (Riddell 2003: 5)
In Australia, the focus on competence for both the Labor and Liberal parties
has been greater—preventing ‘some of the bad candidates that were picked
last election’,8 and finding the ‘best possible candidate’.9 Former prime
minister John Howard noted in his biography that the social changes that
are muting participation within political parties have also weakened the
available pool of candidates to run for public office. The implementation of
more inclusive methods of candidate selection was a way to remedy this: ‘far
too many new MPs . . . have no working-life experience outside a political or
union office. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the talented outsider to
win party favour’. Howard argued that embracing plebiscites for candidate
selection would be ‘likely to deliver a more representative bunch of future
candidates’ (Howard 2010: 656). Subjecting candidates to more inclusive and
publicly oriented processes of selection is also seen in terms of appropriate
training. As ALP campaign managers explained, ‘to win, a candidate has to
drum up support on the ground, campaigning in local groups, sports teams
and community organisations. All this is excellent preparation for the real
election’.10
The contrast in emphasis between representativeness and competence
shows how potentially contradictory outcomes have been used selectively by
reform advocates to push for the introduction of primaries. Again, the motiv-
ations expressed by political parties in Australia and the United Kingdom
appear to corroborate recent research conducted elsewhere. In Romania, for
example, Gherghina (2013: 188–9) argues that ‘party elites responsible for the
organisation of primaries argued that their adoption aimed to select candi-
dates more fit for representation’, while the NZ Labour Party (2012a: 8)
suggested that a key aim of its organizational reform project was to ‘promote
the election of high-calibre candidates’.
DAMAGE CONTROL
If political parties generally believe that reforms to the party organization will
deliver electoral benefits, an opportunity for rebranding, and better candi-
dates/quality of representation, then it also stands to reason that reforms
might also be implemented as a strategic tool following on from an incident
that has damaged the party’s popularity—such as a political scandal. As
Barnea and Rahat (2007: 384) argue, ‘the adoption of a more open, inclusive
and transparent system . . . can be presented as an antithesis to what is termed
“dirty politics”’. Although Wauters (2014: 69) and Gherghina (2013: 188)
point to the importance of scandal in prompting the introduction of closed
primaries for leadership selection in Belgian and Romanian political parties, as
with the relationship between reform and electoral success, the specific factors
at play are often hard to disentangle—particularly since scandals or other
political setbacks are often cumulative and organizational responses tend to
be slow. The natural tendency would therefore be to link the two events.
Of all the reform events studied for this book, only two can be directly linked
to scandals (in the sense of public allegations of impropriety), whereas one
further party reform—changes to the Labor leadership selection in Australia in
2013—was the direct result of leadership instability and turmoil within the
party. The first of the reforms that can be directly linked to a political scandal
was the UK Conservatives’ decision to experiment with postal primaries
before the 2010 general election. This experimentation was a strategy to
ameliorate some of the damage done to the party in the parliamentary
expenses scandal (McSweeney 2010: 537–8). Both constituencies selected for
the postal primaries—Totnes and Gosport—had previously been held by
Conservative MPs who were directly and publicly implicated in the scandal.
The second instance of reform within the sample of parties examined that
was motivated by a political scandal was the most recent review into the UK
Labour Party organization, Building a One Nation Labour Party, a review
that was commissioned by former leader Ed Miliband in the wake of the
‘Falkirk’ scandal. In what might be described in Australia and other political
contexts as a ‘branch stack’, Unite, one of the party’s biggest union donors,
was accused of signing up its members to the Labour Party in Falkirk—some
without their knowledge—in an effort to have its preferred parliamentary
candidate selected. The union recruited around 100 members to the branch
(which had a total membership of 200) and paid for their memberships as a
block. Whether this could be described as a legitimate recruiting exercise or a
blatant breach of the rules, the scandal resulted in an internal party inquiry,
the suspension of the local branch, a police inquiry, and ‘the biggest reform of
our party in a generation’.11
Announcing the review that would re-examine Labour’s relationship with
the trade unions, Miliband (2013) distanced the party from the events that had
previously happened:
I am here today to talk about how we can build a different kind of
politics . . . About a politics that is open, transparent and trusted. Exactly
the opposite of the politics we’ve recently seen in Falkirk. A politics that
62 Party Reform
was closed. A politics of the machine. A politics that is rightly hated.
What we saw in Falkirk is part of the death-throes of the old politics.12
In each of these examples, it is interesting to compare the nature of the

scandal and the corresponding organizational response. Two of the events
pertained to the candidate-selection functions of their respective parties for
members of public office: whether this pertained to the party leader (as in the
case of Australian Labor) or a party’s parliamentary candidates (UK
Labour). In the Conservatives’ case, the scandal involved the misuse of
parliamentary expenses. What links these three events is the fact that all of
these events concern activities that blur the private/public divide within
political parties. As Kevin Rudd argued in defence of his leadership selection
and removal reforms in the ALP, ‘Australians demand to know that the
Prime Minister they elect is the Prime Minister they get’ (Rudd 2013a). In
contrast to other practices and areas of party organization that may be
equally controversial to many in the party (for example, issues regarding
conference representation), these events have the potential to attract signifi-
cant public attention and criticism.
However, in only one instance (the ALP leadership-selection reforms), was
the organizational response targeted explicitly to the practice that was seen as
problematic. While the Conservatives’ decision to implement open primaries
in Totnes and Gosport was designed to ‘empower local people and allow them
to have the final say’ over their parliamentary candidates13 (and perhaps
direct responsibility to the public as well), this did not directly address the
issue of parliamentarians’ use of their allowances. Some of the recommenda-
tions of the Collins Review provided for fairer selection contests, for example,
giving the National Executive greater power to enforce the rules of the contest
(Collins 2014: 30), but others—for example, reforming trade union affiliation,
reforming the Labour leadership-selection process, and implementing a pri-
mary for the selection of the London mayoral candidate—went far beyond it.
Thus the reforms undertaken ostensibly in response to a particular scandal
have the potential to create organizational changes that reach far beyond the
practice that originally caused public concern.
Nonetheless, like the other motivating factors discussed so far in this book,
the existence of a political scandal will not necessarily create organizational
change by and of itself, but may rather act as a catalyst to speed up an appetite
for reform that already existed. It also hints at the importance of having
multiple motivations for reform in order that change actually occur, both
within three levels described in Chapter 2 and also between them. The Secre-
tary of the Belgian socialist party, for example, noted that ‘after the Agusta
and Dassault scandals broke out, a tornado went through the party, the party
was completely perturbed . . . I believe that these scandals have clearly put into
action the plans to reform the party’. This interpretation was affirmed by the
leader, who argued that for him, party modernization was an existing con-
cern, but that ‘the scandals the party was involved in some years later gave me
an additional reason to carry through the reforms [emphasis added]. They
eventually adopted party primaries in 1997’ (Wauters 2014: 69). Like the
reforms discussed above, while the Agusta and Dassault scandals involved
matters of substantial public concern (the payment of over 4 million Euros of
bribes to the Belgian PS and Social Democratic Party (sp.a)), the organiza-
tional solution (reform of leadership-selection processes) did not necessarily
directly correspond with the problem.
CONTAGION
When describing the reasons why reforms are adopted in particular contexts,
public policy scholars speak of policy transfer or diffusion (see, for example,
Marsh and Sharman 2009; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Evans and Davies
1999). The literature on political parties does not talk of policy transfer but
does speak of ‘contagion effects’. Contagion—at its most basic—can be
defined as ‘copying the behaviour of successful parties’ (Gauja 2012: 652).
However, as a mid-level phenomenon, contagion as both a catalyst and a
process of change tends to be overlooked, or squeezed out, in the general and
case-specific approaches to party change. In general accounts, contagion
effects flow from leadership or factional change, as new personnel bring
with them new ideas and practices (Harmel et al. 1995: 4). Specific accounts,
by their very nature, are limited in identifying forces for change that originate
beyond the party—unless the source of and inspiration for these changes are
acknowledged by actors within the party.
In the limited instances in which contagion is specifically mentioned in
studies of party change, it tends to be conceptualized in terms of the competi-
tive environment (Gauja 2012: 653–4). For example, in his study of why
Belgian political parties have embraced primaries for the selection of the
party leader, Wauters (2014: 64) argues that ‘parties that are operating in a
competitive arena look at each other and tend to copy features of party
organisation that prove to be successful’. This effect, Wauters notes, only
applies to what the major parties do—if a minor party embraces change, it
does not necessarily follow that other parties in the same system will follow.
Referring back to the discussion earlier in this chapter of the relationship
between reform and electoral success, positive perceptions of the impact of
reform on a party’s ability to win votes are not only used as a justification for
reform within the party, but may also provide a catalyst for reform across
multiple parties operating within the same system, with the actions of the
64 Party Reform
larger—or more established—parties holding more influence. The extent to
which contagion effects might also travel across democracies is a subject for
empirical investigation.
Contagion, as it has been used to date in studies of party organization, has
referred exclusively to the transfer of organizational traits between political
parties. However, as described below, there is evidence to suggest that at the
same time as fending off competition for participation from other types of
political organization such as advocacy groups, political parties are learning
from them, too. These adapted processes might include the establishment of
online campaigning and issue-advocacy platforms, or less obligatory forms of
membership affiliation, such as the way in which membership is conceptual-
ized in online advocacy groups such as GetUp, Avaaz, 38 Degrees, and
MoveOn (Bimber et al. 2012; Karpf 2012; Kreiss 2012) and more traditional
interest groups such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International (Jordan and
Maloney 2007: chapter 4). Contagion, therefore, is a concept that not only
captures policy transfer between political parties (whether in the same party
system or across geographic divides) but also between political parties and
other types of political organization.
There is no systematic way within the field of party scholarship to accur-
ately identify instances of contagion. Previous research has relied on two main
methods. The first is to infer contagion by comparing the substance and
timing of organizational change across political parties. If party X, for
example, introduces open primaries for the selection of the party leader and
then this is followed by party Y, then contagion could be argued to have
occurred. However, this method fails to differentiate changes that are the
result of contagion, from those driven by coincidence or convergence. Nor are
we given any real idea of the time frame in which these changes should be
made. Can we infer contagion if the subsequent change in party Y occurs a
year after party X, or ten years? The second, perhaps more reliable method of
establishing contagion is to discover the motivations and sources of inspir-
ation for parties in implementing organizational reforms (Seddone and
Venturino 2013; Wauters 2014: 71; Gauja 2012). These might be sourced
from interviews, official party documents (such as reviews), media releases
and statements, and political biographies. A third methodology is to track the
movement of personnel from organization to organization, or in this instance,
from party to party (see, for example, Kreiss 2012: 12; and the methodology
adopted by Vromen 2015 in her study of online advocacy organizations).
Copying from Other Political Parties

Party reform documents and the public commentary surrounding reform
initiatives made by party elites provide a wealth of empirical evidence to
suggest that contagion—or copying the practices of other political parties and
organizations that have been seen as successful—is important in establishing
both the necessity and the utility of organizational reforms. The evidence
presented here largely confirms previous studies that have highlighted the
importance of contagion, but usually in terms of the timing of reforms rather
than their motivation (Harmel and Janda 1994).
The contagion effect is particularly apparent when examining the introduc-
tion of open and semi-open primaries for both candidate and leadership
selection. In Belgium, for example, Wauters notes that in making changes to
their leadership selectorates, almost all party interviewees acknowledged the
importance and inspiration of the prior experience of the Flemish Liberals
and Democrats (VLD)—the first party in Flanders to introduce closed pri-
maries (Wauters 2014: 71). Yet the effect is certainly not limited to the
experience of political parties within one’s own system: in moving from a
semi-open to a fully open primary in 2011, the French Socialist party drew
inspiration from the Italian Partito Democratico and the US Democrats
(Socialist Party, France 2009; Seddone and Venturino 2013: 314). In a report
on the implementation of primaries within the party, the Commission for
Renovation specifically reported on the Obama presidential campaign and the
specific lessons that it might adopt, including the need to modernize, how
primaries might be effectively used to engage party activists, and the necessity
of a focus on field campaigning (Socialist Party, France 2009; annex 2).
In explaining his reforms of the selection of the Labour leader to the
Australian public, Kevin Rudd noted that ‘parallel reforms, reforms like
this have taken place in many other western political parties in countries
right around the world in recent decades. We’re not Robinson Crusoe on
this, in fact, we’re a bit late’ (Rudd 2013a). A year before this, the NZ Labour
Party noted in its proposal for leadership selection reform that ‘New Zealand
and Australia are the only countries where progressive parties do not yet
have membership input into leadership elections’ (NZ Labour Party 2012a).
The media releases and advertising material that the National Party
(Australia) distributed to residents in Tamworth (the trial area for its com-
munity pre-selection) specifically pointed to the experience of the Conserva-
tive Party in the UK, suggesting that ‘open community votes’ could be
implemented as a ‘way of restoring trust in [the] party and the political
system’ (NSW National Party 2009; Gauja 2012: 654). The party was
‘inspired’ by what it saw as the successful trial of primaries by the Conser-
vatives for the 2005 general election, as well as the election of Boris Johnson
as London mayor (Dezman 2014). The document also mentioned the posi-
tive experience of parties in the United States, Italy, South Korea, and South
America. Architects of community pre-selection trials in Australia regarded
these experiences as examples to be learned from, and examples of inter-
national ‘good practice’ (Firth 2014).
66 Party Reform
The Reith Report, in advocating for the trial of primaries within the
Australian Liberal Party, reported positively on the experience of the Con-
servatives in the UK. It also cited the momentum and community interest
created by the Nationals’ community pre-selection in Tamworth to justify its
own trial of an open primary (Reith 2011: 22). Arguing for the introduction of
leadership-selection reform in the Liberal Party (Australia), party activist
John Ruddick suggested that party leaders should be elected by a broad
base of all party members, and pointed to the experience of comparable
nations:
The results speak for themselves: when David Cameron was elected leader
of the Conservative Party in 2005, around 235,000 everyday party mem-
bers participated in the ballot. A year earlier, Stephen Harper was elected
leader of the Canadian Conservatives by almost 100,000 members. Cam-
eron and Harper have not faced a spill in a decade. The New Zealand
Labour party recently had 50,000 members participate; the Australian
Labor Party had around 40,000.14
As demonstrated in the comments above, political parties will generally look

to parties of the same family for organizational inspiration, or at the very
least, justification. While the experiences of US parties are often cited as
exemplars of the primary process, as the examples show, this is by no means
the most important source of inspiration and justification—parties in the
Westminster democracies appear to be more comfortable citing instances of
successful reform initiatives within this parliamentary tradition.
Experiences of political parties overseas are usually invoked in very general
terms to provide positive reinforcement for change. However, there are
several examples of instances in which parties are able to articulate what
they see as the more specific benefits of emulating practices elsewhere. In
justifying the Nationals’ experimentation with community pre-selections,
Greg Dezman (2014) noted: ‘studies in the US have consistently shown that
open pre-selections produce candidates that are more representative of the
general electorate as compared to candidates selected only by party members
or officials. Overseas examples also indicated that local party membership
would rise as a result of this initiative’. To suggest that contagion effects only
flow in one particular direction, for example, from the United Kingdom to
Australia, is also inaccurate. The Collins Review into the UK Labour party,
for example, cited ‘international experience for evidence of how primaries can
engage the public and produce political benefits’, specifically ‘the Australian
Labor Party’s use of a primary to select its mayoral candidate in Sydney,
which engaged thousands of non-members and boosted voter identification
files’ (Collins 2014: 34). The Sydney mayoral primary attracted the participa-
tion of 3,595 members of the community, contrasted with 372 party voters
(Gauja 2012: 646).
However, the experiences of other political parties can also be used as
a justification not to pursue particular types of reform, in a process that
is usually referred to as ‘negative contagion’. In referring to previous
ALP experience with the Kilsyth trial in designing its own process, the
National Party noted that the contest ‘was only open to party members
and registered supporters (who needed to sign up well before polling day).
With only 170 people voting it was generally felt to be a disappointing
result. The NSW National Party was determined not to replicate the
mistakes made in Kilsyth’ (Dezman 2014). In their study of leadership
selection, Cross and Blais (2012: 56–7) found negative perceptions of the
organizational performance of other political parties an important reason
cited by political parties as to why organizational reform was neither
necessary nor desirable.
Community Organizing: Copying from Other Parties

and Political Organizations
In September 2013, UK Labour Party General Secretary Iain McNicol gave a
speech to Conference entitled ‘Rebuilding Our Party’. In it he argued that what
matters to the party is ‘how we organise, build campaigns and tackle cynicism’
and that ‘we’re getting back to community grassroots campaigning’. He noted
that ‘when we listen, learn and trust, and give power back to the people, that’s
when we win support’ and that ‘community organising is the shining key to our
future as an organisation’. McNicol then revealed that 110 full-time Labour
organizers were attending Conference (a group of young people sitting at the
front of the auditorium all stood and waived), presented graduates from
Labour’s trainee organizer programme on stage, and announced that the
party was to undertake a campaign to train 100 new organizers and mobilize
10,000 new activists in strategic seats in preparation for the 2015 general
election.
McNicol’s speech highlights the way in which UK Labour has appropri-
ated the concept of community organizing to reform campaign techniques.
Originally copied from advocacy and third-sector organizations, the basic
principles of community organizing—asking people what they care about
rather than telling them what to think (Schutz and Sandy 2011: 5)—have
become fused in the campaign practices of US political parties in the last
decade through network building and the ‘creation, cultivation, and mainten-
ance of ties with supporters that staffers could mobilize for collective social
and symbolic action’ (Kreiss 2012: 10). Community organizing—as American
political parties have borrowed and applied it—reflects a process of techno-
logical adaptation and of learning and diffusion not simply between parties,
but between parties and other political organizations that have creatively
68 Party Reform
‘redefined organizational membership and pioneered more novel fundraising
practices’ (Karpf 2012: 3).
In turn, what has been successfully used in American campaigning is seen as
a source of inspiration to party organizations in Canada, Australia, and the
UK. For example, the Canadian Liberal Party pointed to the experience of
the US Democratic Party in the foreword to its 2009 Change Commission
Report and noted that ‘Obama’s community development model has demon-
strated the success in turning every supporter into a worker, a policy source
and then a donor. They have perfected a model in which a supporter with four
hours to contribute can be immediately plugged into four hours of meaningful
work’ (Liberal Party, Canada 2009: 1). In 2013, Obama field director Jeremy
Bird was recruited to work with the NDP and Canadian progressives through
the Broadbent Institute to train volunteers, strategists, and candidates.15 One
of the key recommendations of the 2010 National Review of the Australian
Labor Party that was adopted by the party conference was that Labor
‘explicitly adopt[s] a community organising model which aims to empower
and equip members to work in their local communities on campaigns, to build
stronger community connections and to recruit members’ (Bracks et al.
2011: 15). In explaining that ‘growing and rebuilding the Labor Party should
not be divorced from our electoral challenges’, the report specifically mentioned
the practice of the UK Labour Party as a way to ‘re-embrace community
organising as a model for growing and building the Party’ (Bracks et al. 2011:
14). Yet, as this section of the book seeks to demonstrate, learning has not come
exclusively from other political parties. Looking specifically to the experiences
of non-party organizations, the 2011 Refounding Labour to Win report argued
that to ensure organizational survival, the UK Labour Party must also ‘explore
how new organisations in community/political organising interact with non-
political organisations. Local Labour members were but a part of the progres-
sive alliance in Barking and Dagenham that drove out the BNP. What can
38 Degrees and London Citizens teach Labour about being a force for
good?’ (Hain 2011a: 17). This transferal of organizational practices from both
American political parties and advocacy groups to political parties in the UK
and Australia was readily apparent at the party conferences observed as part of
this research. Party conferences are appropriate sites to examine the implemen-
tation of new organizing and campaigning techniques, as well as broader
debates around party organizational change. On the one hand, they are very
public events—presenting a carefully constructed image of the internal party
organization as it would like to be portrayed to parties and the media. On
the other hand, however, they provide important forums for the training of
delegates and the opportunity for private reflection on intra-party affairs in
closed-door meetings. As Faucher-King (2005: 4) argues, ‘party conferences are
not the place where collective beliefs are enacted but rather where some British
political repertoires of action are elaborated and transmitted’.
In 2013, Australian Labor Party members at the Chifley Research Centre
‘Building a Progressive Australia’ conference were able to learn directly from
former Obama campaign director Buffy Wicks, who schooled delegates in the
techniques and benefits of team-based organizing. One of the main events at
the Conservatives’ 2013 conference in Manchester was the launch of ‘Team
2015’, the party’s campaign volunteer network. Under the advice of Obama
staffer and 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina (a paid consultant for the
Conservatives), Chairman Grant Schapps set up Team 2015 to distribute
volunteers to strategic seats. Similarly, the training programme offered to
the Liberal Democrats’ conference delegates was premised upon adapting to,
and learning from, success stories such as ‘the winning Obama campaign’.
This continues a tradition amongst parties of all ideological persuasions, as
described by a former Conservative director of campaigning and organization,
of ‘taking a good look at what the Americans do’ (Gilbert 2003: 19). Giorgia
Gamba, Training Manager at Head Office’s ‘Department of Elections and
Field Operations’, similarly described her party as ‘always learning . . . we
have been testing and embracing fresh techniques of getting our message across,
developing skills and earning votes—at the same time as improving the way we
work as a party, encouraging new volunteers and refreshing basic skills’
(Liberal Democrats 2013).
The centrepiece of the UK Labour Conference’s ‘Train to Win’ pro-
gramme was the community organizing sessions run by Chicago-based
community organizer Arnie Graf—Director of the Industrial Areas Foun-
dation created by Saul Alinsky. Brought over from the US by the Labour
Party as a consultant, Graf has been responsible for training Labour
activists in community organizing principles. During the Graf-led session,
delegates were coached in the power of storytelling and emotional connec-
tion, techniques for canvassing, having conversations, and tapping into
individuals’ self-interest, involving and recruiting individuals to local cam-
paigns and creating manifestos and issue priorities at the local level. At the
2015 Australian Labor Party National Conference, delegates were given
the opportunity to attend training sessions in the ‘art of storytelling’,
conducted by Purpose (<http://www.purpose.com>), an online for-profit
advocacy organization that describes itself as a ‘public benefit corporation’
that ‘builds movements and new power models to tackle the world’s
biggest problems’.
Moving Organization Online

The transfer of modes of organizing from political advocacy organizations to
political parties (and vice versa) is, however, not limited to offline activities.
Perhaps more importantly to the way in which political parties structure
70 Party Reform
themselves and engage with their members and supporters than the diffusion
of community organizing and campaigning practices has been the gradual
uptake of social networking sites and online platforms to provide the basis for
a different kind of online organizational infrastructure. For example, all three
of the major parties in the UK have adopted Nation Builder as an online
community organizing software platform that enables parties to build cam-
paign sites that incorporate communications, fundraising, and volunteer
management/profiling functions. A US company, Nation Builder describes
itself as ‘a unique non-partisan community organizing system’ that enables
clients to establish campaign sites at a relatively low cost and with a relatively
low level of expertise (<http://nationbuilder.com>). Delegates to all three
party conferences were encouraged to attend training sessions to learn how
to use the software, which according to the Labour Party, offers the oppor-
tunity to ‘reach out to new supporters and engage current supporters in new
and improved ways’ and allows ‘Labour activists across the country to better
keep in touch with supporters and voters, to raise money and promote their
message’ (UK Labour Party 2013b: 32).16
The social media networking site Facebook was a prominent presence at
the 2015 Australian Labor Party conference, where the company sponsored
the official delegates’ opening reception and held several training and infor-
mation sessions for conference delegates and party activists. Staffers and
members were shown how Facebook could be used as an effective platform
to raise funds, persuade voters, and to engage with party members and party
supporters. The discussion and questions that participants asked during the
session indicated that many were already using Facebook as a political
communication tool, but the audience was nonetheless reminded of the bene-
fits and reach of social media for political parties, particularly when the paid
services of the corporation were used to disseminate party messages. When on
Facebook, the company claimed, ‘most of the time you talk about the things
that matter to you . . . A lot of that is going to be about government and
politics’. Specifically, conference goers were told that news items about the
ALP had a much greater reach than the size of the party’s actual fan base on
Facebook—reaching around 1.2 million people when the news item is pro-
moted, compared to just over 230,000 people who have ‘liked’ the party’s
Facebook page. The presence of Facebook and Nation Builder as exhibitors
at party conferences supports the findings of a broader literature suggesting
that political parties are increasingly embracing these tools (Chen 2015;
Scarrow 2015: 141–4; Chen 2013: 24, 26, 43) and that they are regarded by
political parties as an ever more important aspect of their strategic and
organizational repertoires.
Table 4.3 presents the number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers all
the major political parties and their leaders have in six democracies: Australia,
the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and France. The
T A B L E 4 . 3 Parties’ social media presence: organizations and leaders (February 2016)
Country Party Facebook Twitter Leader Facebook Twitter Latest membership

likes followers likes followers figures
Australia ALP 244,495 99,500 Bill Shorten 104,430 129,000 53,930

(2014)
Liberal Party 241,948 97,800 Malcolm Turnbull 265,971 540,000 45,000
(2013)
Nationals 4,758 N/A Barnaby Joyce 22,796 67,300 100,000
(2013)
United Kingdom Labour 422,053 301,000 Jeremy Corbyn 483,043 398,000 194,000
(2014)
Conservatives 544,895 192,000 David Cameron 958,910 1,350,000 149,800
(2014)
Liberal Democrats 130,263 118,000 Tim Farron 7,577 45,300 44,000
(2014)
Canada NDP 109,779 153,000 Tom Mulcair 111,881 216,000 128,351
(2005)
Liberals 177,709 185,000 Justin Trudeau 1,634,432 1,330,000 127,261
(2009)
Conservatives 194,735 89,700 Stephen Harper* 271,989 980,000 Not available
Germany SPD 94,451 164,000 Sigmar Gabriel 56,267 63,900 473,662
(2013)
CDU 100,327 94,000 Angela Merkel 1,765,529 No verified account 467,076
(2013)
New Zealand Labour 43,668 15,100 Andrew Little 24,167 8,948 56,741
(2010)
National 45,424 9,645 John Key 211,286 202,000 Not available
France Socialists 120,307 133,000 Jean-Christophe Cambadélis 19,800 41,700 173,286
(2012)
UMP (Les Républicains) 153,840 174,000 Nicolas Sarkozy 957,323 1,140,000 251,347
(2013)
Note: figures as at February 2016

* In November 2015, Rona Ambrose became interim leader of the Conservatives. The election to select Harper’s permanent replacement will be held in May 2017.
72 Party Reform
relatively personalized nature of these communications technologies is high-
lighted in comparing the ratio of parties’ to leaders’ social media followers.
In two thirds of the parties examined here party leaders attracted more
followers on Twitter than their respective party organizations. This was
particularly apparent amongst Conservative Party leaders such as David
Cameron, Stephen Harper, and Malcolm Turnbull, whose Twitter following
outnumbered their parties, on average, more than seven times over. Just
over half the leaders had a larger base of Friends on Facebook than their
respective parties, with Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron,
and Justin Trudeau attracting followings that far exceeded their parties’
memberships.
It is interesting to note how rapidly parties’ engagement with social media
has grown. For example, Susan Scarrow (2015: 141–3) reported that in 2011
only one party, the British Conservatives, had more than 100,000 Facebook
likes. She also noted that in each country as a group, the number of traditional
members still exceeded Facebook followers. In 2016—of the fifteen parties
covered in this sample—eleven had more than 100,000 Facebook likes and the
Conservatives were up to 545,000. However, the evidence presented here also
supports Scarrow’s argument that rates of social media engagement relative
to traditional party membership are not uniform across all democracies.
While it is safe to say that social media audiences are larger than party
membership bases in Australia, the United Kingdom, and are roughly on a
par in Canada and New Zealand,17 in Germany and France—with the
exception of the leaders’ followers on Twitter—traditional party membership
still exceeds social media followings.
Insofar as platforms such as Facebook and Twitter cultivate greater links
between party supporters and individual politicians within the party, they
suggest that the process of organizational reform may also be dispersing—
with individuals, and particularly party leaders, possessing greater autonomy
and power (through social media platforms that require relatively little skill or
whose operation can be outsourced to the provider) to craft their own online
organizational links and structures.18 While the use of online platforms and
social media sites is commonly studied by communications scholars, as a
subset of party organization research these new infrastructures have only
been subject to limited scholarly analysis and deserve much greater attention
in the future. As a type of organizational reform, the mobilization of
supporters and the links cultivated through social media are a relatively
‘low cost’ activity—in that they can be implemented quickly by party
staffers, leaders, and parliamentarians, without the necessity of membership
consultation or approval. Yet in creating a more individualized and direct
channel of communication between parties, politicians, and the public, the
organizational consequences are potentially far greater than the ease of
reform would suggest.
REFORMING TO WIN: WHERE TO FROM HERE?
In moving beyond the well-established fact that political parties tend to

initiate organizational reforms after electoral losses, this chapter examined,
more closely, the reasons for doing so and the electoral benefits that reform
is believed to bring. Although party elites commonly believed that reform,
particularly reform intended to increase the size of the membership, would
pay electoral dividends, the empirical evidence was mixed. Given the diffi-
culty of establishing a ‘clear-cut’ relationship between reform and vote
share, the chapter also examined several other competitive rationales for
organizational change. Two of these, branding and mitigating the effect of
scandals, highlighted the importance of public communication, a party’s
image, and the process of reform as equally important to any actual struc-
tural outcomes.
Contagion also proved to be a significant motivator, with political
parties adopting what they regarded as ‘best practice’ initiatives—from
parties within the same system, from parties overseas, and from other
political organizations. Community organizing techniques and engage-
ment with social media were explored as areas of party organization
where these trends, particularly the dissemination of political practices,
are readily apparent. While Chapters 5 and 6 continue the exploration
of the organizational trajectory of party reform, the changing practices
articulated here support the perception that political parties are becoming
increasingly fluid and permeable organizations. In responding to the
competitive environment, however, the primary challenge for political
parties is to balance the trend to homogeneity with the need to maintain
organizational distinctiveness.
The digital technologies employed by the British and Australian political
parties have facilitated this transformation, with Facebook pages and the
campaign website templates provided by Nation Builder focused on activ-
ities that can be performed by supporters and interested citizens. For
example, the UK Labour Party has argued that its digital campaigning
‘provides so many opportunities for supporters to get involved. Whether
that’s donating online, signing up for emails or liking a Facebook status.
These actions all make a difference and they all make you a supporter of the
Labour Party’ (UK Labour Party 2013b: 32) (emphasis added). Although
Kreiss (2012: 26) has argued that the use of new media in partisan cam-
paigning has ‘seemingly not brought about fundamental changes in the
levers of accountability, forms of political representation, quality of demo-
cratic conversation, or distribution of power in the American polity’, in the
British and Australian contexts it has created more fluid and permeable
forms of partisan engagement, facilitating the autonomy of party leaders
74 Party Reform
and politicians, and contributed to creating uniformity across party web-
sites and online participatory experiences.
NOTES
1. State Director Ben Franklin, cited in ‘Nationals open Tamworth preselection vote
to public’, Australian, 28 June 2010.
2. Kirsty Needham, ‘Verity Firth wins community preselection for seat of Balmain’,
Sydney Morning Herald, 3 May 2014; Troy Bramston, ‘Community votes with
Labor members on preselections’, Australian, 31 March 2014.
3. Victorian ALP State Secretary and Campaign Director Nicholas Reece and Dean
Rizzetti (Campaign Field Officer), ‘US model can entice punters into politics’,
Age, 11 May 2010.
4. As at 31 December 2011, the membership of the party was 193,300 (UK Labour
Party 2012); in 2012 it was 187,537 (UK Labour Party 2013a); in 2013 it
was 189,531 (UK Labour Party 2014) and in 2014 it was 193,754
(UK Labour 2015a).
5. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 2012, p. 7.
6. ‘Christmas offer of 1p Labour membership brings in just 400 new recruits. Andy
Burnham delighted with that’, Guardian, 24 December 2010.
7. Results of the Balmain Community Preselection Survey, conducted online in July
2014 by the NSW Labor Party and provided to the author. N = 534. See further
Chapter 9.
8. An ‘anonymous Liberal Party source’, cited in Heath Aston and Stephanie Pea-
tling, ‘Liberals join the trend of picking by primaries’, Sun Herald, 23 October
2011, p. 11.
9. Victorian ALP State Secretary Nicholas Reece, cited in David Rood, ‘ALP to try
US-style polling’, Age, 9 February 2010.
10. Nicholas Reece and Dean Rizzetti, ‘US model can entice punters into politics’,
Age, 11 May 2010.
11. Former Labour leader Ed Miliband, cited in the Guardian, ‘Falkirk row: We have
very, very clear legal evidence, says Ed Miliband’, 8 November 2013.
12. It is interesting to compare the similarity of a speech delivered by Australian Labor
leader Bill Shorten, where he argued that to respond to allegations of corruption,
‘our best defence is to rebuild our party with a new, more open, democratic and
transparent model of membership’ (Shorten 2014).
13. Former Conservative Party Chairman Eric Pickles, cited in the Telegraph, ‘MPs’
expenses: Gosport voters to get open primary on replacing Peter Viggers’, 29
October 2009.
14. John Ruddick, ‘Labor is right, and we Liberals are wrong: Our members must
elect the leader’, Guardian, 18 February 2015.
15. Tim Harper, ‘Canada’s left importing U.S. campaign tactics’, Toronto Star, 25
November 2013.
16. Online platforms for political engagement are also discussed in Chapter 5.
17. Note, however, the strong Facebook presence of the Canadian Liberals, whose
‘likes’ exceed party membership numbers.
18. These trends also resonate with many of the debates surrounding the ‘personal-
ization’ of politics—see, for example, Balmas et al. (2014) and Karnoven (2010).
5
Systemic Pressures for Reform
As explored in Chapter 4, political parties face strong pressure to undertake

organizational reforms to ensure their competitiveness against challengers in
the electoral arena. To the extent that electoral success is a primary goal of the
organization, many political parties will pursue organizational reinvigoration
as a strategy to demonstrate their responsiveness to losses in popularity,
electoral defeats, and will implement campaigning and other organizational
practices that are seen to be innovative and successful in mobilizing both
supporters and voters. These strategies are typically adopted cyclically, and
are designed to ensure the short- to medium-term success of the party. As they
are tied to the notion of electoral competition, they do not necessarily affect
all political parties equally. Governing parties, for example, with a strong
record of electoral success will most likely continue along the same path rather
than deviate to experiment with new and untested organizational practices.
Yet these competitive drivers constitute only one element of the external
picture. In this chapter, I examine some of the drivers that are regarded as
shaping party reform at the level of the political system—emanating from
longer-term developments such as technological advances and institutional
changes—but also as a result of broader social and cultural shifts that chal-
lenge existing conventions, norms, and democratic practices. Unlike the
competitive pressures already discussed, these systemic shifts affect all polit-
ical parties within a system, and as illustrated throughout the chapter, also
present significant challenges for political parties operating within a variety of
political systems across the globe. The ‘universalization’ of many of these
trends is quite apparent. For example, changes to the norms and expectations
of the public surrounding political participation and good governance
threaten the legitimacy of all political parties, irrespective of their electoral
strength, and therefore represent some of the most important and pressing
catalysts for organizational reform in the modern era.
Changes in the political system affect both the general direction of party
reform and a party’s ability to successfully undertake it by shaping the
democratic norms that surround party functions and what is required of
political parties to attain legitimacy. In this sense, reforms can be seen as
a reflection and response to technological change and social developments,
such as the decline of broad-based party ideologies, falling memberships, and
Systemic Pressures for Reform 77
shifting modes of political participation. While outlining some of the most
salient shifts at the systemic level that might promote reform, the chapter
looks more specifically at the evidence from individual parties and political elites
as to their perceptions of these pressures. I argue that to the extent that reform can
be seen as part of a party’s attempt to adapt to changing political, social, and
technological circumstances, this relies heavily on what the key actors’ interpret-
ations of those changes and circumstances are. The chapter finds that the
dominant concern of parties is one of ‘opening up’ democracy and returning
power to the people, but that this is accompanied by a ‘build it and they will
come’ logic, which assumes the public will participate in a more inclusive process.
THE SYSTEMIC DRIVERS OF REFORM: THEORETICAL

PERSPECTIVES AND EXISTING SCHOLARSHIP
The political, cultural, and social environment within which political parties
exist is constantly changing, yet—as a moving target—the effect of these
changes on the nature of parties’ organizations and their decision-making
processes is quite difficult to evaluate. Political parties are generally regarded
as adaptive organizations—a trait that is evident in the way in which different
models of party development (for example, the cartel thesis, the electoral
professional party, and the catch-all party) theorize the nature of organiza-
tional change in response to advances in campaigning techniques, techno-
logical developments, increases in public funding, the encroachment of the
state upon party functions, and the decline of broad-based political ideologies.
These adaptations have been comprehensively covered in a wealth of existing
literature on party organizational change.
However, rather than assessing these broader organizational adaptations,
this chapter attempts to identify and analyse the impact of system-level factors
on political parties as mediating agents—that is, as organizations that link
citizens and the state. By its very nature, party organization scholarship takes
the party as the key unit of analysis and often downplays the interaction
between parties and individuals. Yet parties can be seen as responsive to both
changes in the external institutional environment and to citizens’ shifting
demands for participatory preferences. As Scarrow (1999: 344) argues, ‘par-
ties are also electoral competitors, with strong incentives to respond to
changing popular preferences, including preferences about modes of political
activity and organization. Parties’ responses to such shifts may include pro-
moting institutional reforms designed to appeal to, or to counteract, voters’
evolving participation preferences’. For example, the organizational reforms
undertaken by several of Germany’s political parties in the 1990s were
78 Party Reform
initiated as ‘part of self-proclaimed efforts to cater to changing patterns of
citizen participation’ (Scarrow 1999: 342).
On the other hand, however, they could also be regarded as seeking to
shape the political behaviour and democratic practices of individuals. As
Scarrow (1999: 342) observes, ‘because parties hold a central procedural
role in all electoral democracies, they are especially well placed to initiate or
block changes to the institutions that provide the setting, and the incentives,
for individual participation’. Hay (2007: 55) argues that ‘virtually no consid-
eration is given to a range of potential supply-side factors . . . changes in
the substantive character of the “goods” that politics offers to political “con-
sumers”’. Not only does supply designate the policies (or goods) presented to
the citizenry, it can also encapsulate the participatory opportunities on offer,
particularly if we conceptualize political actors as operating within a com-
petitive marketplace for participation (see also Faucher 2015b: 406–7; Bruter
and Harrison 2009, 2; Whiteley 2007). Linking this with the decline in party
membership, supply-side explanations indicate that unless they ‘drastically
change the experience of party membership in order to compete with more
attractive and associational free-time options’, political parties will be unable
to arrest the decline of membership (Scarrow 2015: 19).
What Are These Systemic Trends?

In their analysis of party change, Harmel and Janda (1994: 266) identify
‘external stimuli’ as a relevant factor in shaping party change. Defined as
‘numerous factors identified in the literature as important “environmental
changes” ’, Harmel and Janda (1994: 267) cite the following examples: ‘rele-
vant constitutional reforms, provision of public funding, birth of relevant new
parties and, of course, changes in the proportions of votes and seats received
by the party’. They conceive of such stimuli as ‘social, economic and political
changes and events that take place outside the observed party’ (Harmel and
Janda 1994: 267). While some of the external stimuli are specific to individual
parties, for example, changes in the level of support, others—such as consti-
tutional reforms and public funding—apply to all parties equally (Harmel and
Janda 1994: 267). The universal stimuli identified by these authors relate
primarily to the external institutional arena, and as they involve concrete
changes can be relatively easily identified from an empirical perspective.
While institutional changes do form an important part of the reform story,
broader social and cultural changes, which are perhaps less readily identifi-
able, should not be discounted. Following on from the framework established
in Chapter 2 that builds on the work of Barnea and Rahat (2007), this chapter
conceptualizes systemic pressures as those relating to changes in the norms
and conventions, and to existing patterns of democratic practice. Among
other things, they may arise from changes to public expectations, legitimacy
concerns, and more intangible factors such as shifting or developing norms of
democratization, personalization, and ‘Americanization’. In the first section
of the chapter I briefly canvass debates surrounding legitimacy, democratiza-
tion, personalization, and Americanization, before undertaking a more
detailed analysis of changes to political participation and public expectations.
Democratization, Personalization, and Americanization:

Symptom or Cause?
In studying organizational change in parties within the last half century,
scholars have pointed to an overarching trend of ‘democratization’, particu-
larly with respect to candidate-selection processes (Barnea and Rahat 2007:
381; Bille 2001; Scarrow et al. 2000). In her study of leadership-selection
change in the UK Labour Party and the French Socialists, Faucher (2015a:
809) argued that these recent reforms were ‘advocated in the name of “dem-
ocratisation” ’, where the new rules were designed to reflect the wider societal
conceptions of ‘proper, adequate, rational and necessary’ ways to behave.
Yet, what democratization actually means is not always apparent—both in
an objective sense and from the perspective of the parties themselves. Nor is it
clear whether the concept of ‘democratization’ within political parties should
be viewed as a cause or effect, or both. For many, the idea of democratization
is synonymous with increasing inclusiveness, but it has also been interpreted
as a reflection of the phenomenon of ‘Americanization’, of ‘social develop-
ments such as the liberalization and the personalization of politics, combined
with the decline of ideology and party identification’ (Barnea and Rahat 2007:
382). This has posed challenges for both parties and scholars in ‘pinning
down’ what these changes might be, and how they could potentially impact
upon the party organization. For example, referring to the Israeli case, Barnea
and Rahat (2007: 382) argue that ‘over the years, the normative standard has
risen and the methods that were once perceived as democratic and progressive
were later criticized for not being democratic enough’.
Therefore, while these concepts have been used both in scholarship and
party rhetoric to describe both the causes and effects of organizational
change, they have limited analytical utility in assisting comparative party
scholars to analyse the nature and trajectory of reform due to the ‘fuzziness’
of the concepts involved.
Concerns Regarding the Legitimacy of Political Parties

Even from their inception, political parties have not always been seen as the
most popular of political institutions. Indicators such as declining partisan
80 Party Reform
attachments, public confidence in parties, and the declining trends in party
membership (covered in Chapter 1) have all been used to support suggestions
that the role of political parties in modern democracies is in serious decline.1
For example, using survey evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral
Systems, Dalton and Weldon (2005: 934) found that whilst three quarters of
respondents felt that political parties were necessary for democracy, less than
one third thought that they cared what people thought. Political parties—
across European democracies—were regarded as a necessary evil: needed for
running elections and governments, but with less certainty that they would
represent popular interests (Dalton and Weldon 2005: 937).
While the ‘decline’ of political parties is a debate that is contested (see, for
example, Dalton et al. 2011: 9–14), addressing the perceived crisis of legitim-
acy is a strong motivating factor for reform. Organizational changes could be
seen as the solution—insofar as voters and members are more likely to be
drawn to, or persuaded by, political parties whose structure and organization
reflect the transparency and democratic norms that citizens have become
accustomed to in the context of the broader political system (Blondel 1978:
140; see also Meyer and Rowan 1977: 340). Shifting democratic norms not
only have the potential to shape parties’ behaviour, but also how their
successes are judged and evaluated (Faucher 2015b: 412). But how have
these democratic norms, particularly engagement with parties, changed?
This is the question to which the chapter now turns.
Changes to Public Expectations: An Individualized Polity?

One of the most prominent themes associated with contemporary social and
political change is that of ‘individualization’ (Faucher 2015b; Gauja 2015b).
As a form of behaviour, individualization captures the notion that citizens
seek to fulfill their own private desires rather than the common good. It has
been interpreted by those writing on political parties as a catalyst for party
decline, due to the ‘progressive weakening of those networks of organizations
and collective identities that formerly constituted the principal framework for
political involvement and participation, as well as the increasing demand
and search for new units of identification’ (Bartolini and Mair 2001: 333–4;
see also Faucher 2015b; Dalton et al. 2011: 12; Voerman and van Schuur
2011: 93). Driven by social changes such as increasing pressures on time,
money, and effort, a decline of working-class communities and trade union
membership, it has been asserted that people are less willing to participate
in collective forms of political activity (Pattie et al. 2004). Rather than
joining political parties, citizens have instead turned to other political
organizations to channel their participation (Whiteley 2007), or to direct
forms of political action.
For some, these changing patterns represent the decline of political partici-
pation and engagement in society (see, for example, Hibbing and Theiss-
Morse 2002; Putnam 2000), but for others (Dalton 2008; Bang 2003; Norris
2002; 2007; Inglehart 1997) they signify a diversification in citizenship norms
and political participation away from primarily duty-bound norms and
actions to more engaged and autonomous forms of political participation,
and to expanding political repertoires that are no longer focused on the formal
institutions of the state. The practical manifestation of this change can be
found in the rise of individualized or micro-political forms of participation,
such as donating money, signing a petition, or purchasing particular types of
goods ‘without the need to interact with other people’ (Pattie et al. 2004: 107).
Bennett and Segerberg (2011: 771) argue that an individual’s tendency to
engage in these actions is influenced by their relationship to his or her lifestyle,
which means that issues are both constructed and responded to in a person-
alized way. In contrast to dutiful citizens, who see elections, governments,
and formal political organizations at the core of democratic participation,
self-actualizing citizens have weaker allegiances to government, form loose
networks for social and political action, and focus on lifestyle and issue
politics. By consequence, individual political actions are less likely to involve
formal membership but rather a preference for joining selective actions and in
citizens’ ‘displaying their participation in these actions publicly’ (Bennett and
Segerberg 2011: 771), increasingly through the use of social media (Bennett
and Segerberg 2013; Bennett 2012).
The figures contained in Table 5.1 are a stark reminder of the insignificance
of party and partisan forms of participation for Australian citizens. In an
online Essential Media poll conducted in April 2014, respondents were asked
whether they would consider becoming a member of a political party. Only
15 per cent of respondents indicated that they would, and this was the highest
(19 per cent) amongst Greens voters. Men were twice as likely than women to
consider joining (20 per cent as compared to 10 per cent), and by age, younger
voters (under 30) were least likely to consider joining (81 per cent), compared
to those aged 31–50 (69 per cent) and voters over 50 years of age (71 per cent)
(Essential Media Communications 2014).
While surveys of party engagement with a level of detail comparable to the
Essential Poll are not available in other democracies, numerous cross-national
and individual country surveys tell a similar story. The 2014 survey of British
Social Attitudes, for example, reported that fewer than 1 per cent of the
population actively participate in a political party and only 5 per cent were
actively involved in a trade union, business, or professional association.
Individualized forms of political activity were more common, such as signing
a petition (67 per cent of respondents reported doing this in the last year),
boycotting or ‘buycotting’ products (36 per cent), and raising money for a
political cause (31 per cent) (Phillips and Simpson 2015: 5–6). According to
82 Party Reform
T A B L E 5 . 1 Political activity: Australia (percentage of respondents)
All voters ALP voters Lib/Nat Greens Other

voters voters voters
Currently a member of a political 2 1 2 1 1

party
Previously a member of a political 4 4 5 1 2
party
Campaigning work for a political 2 2 1 1 4
party or candidate—e.g.
letterboxing, door knocking,
phone canvassing
Handed out how-to-vote cards on 5 5 5 7 8
election day
Been to a candidates meeting 1 2 1 4 –
Attended a rally 4 3 3 11 7
Signed an online petition or taken 20 24 14 37 21
other online action
None of them 60 56 68 37 55
Don’t know 2 3 1 1 1
Source: Essential Media Communications (2014). N = 1,056
the 2013 General Social Survey, Canadian citizens also prefer these partici-
patory activities, as well as wearing badges and t-shirts in support of political
causes, to volunteering for political parties (Turcotte 2015: 16–17).2
There are two ways in which changes such as these might impact upon the
nature of party organizations, particularly as participatory arenas. The first is
the potential withdrawal of political parties from society (Mair 2005). Faced
with declining memberships, political parties might look elsewhere for
resources, policy input, and legitimacy. This is the response which has
received a significant degree of academic attention and is characterized by
the notion of a ‘hollowed-out’ political party—one with a greatly reduced
organizational structure in which party leaders communicate directly with the
electorate by utilizing mass communications technologies, resourced by the
state. Internal democracy is largely illusory, as the focus on largely inactive
and moderate individual members privileges the parliamentary party by
circumventing party activists and other centres of power within the party
such as national conferences and regional and local branches (Blyth and
Katz, 2005; see also Faucher-King and Le Galès 2010: 95). Decision making
and influence within the party becomes ever more centralized in the party in
public office and the leadership. As Katz (2001: 293) describes, it is a strategy
of ‘empowering while decapitating the membership’. In this mould, party
scholars have documented a greater move to individualization in membership
recruitment, candidate selections, and intra-party leadership elections associ-
ated with ‘democratizing’ initiatives such as party primaries (see, for example,
Cross and Blais 2012; Gauja 2012; Hazan and Rahat 2010; Faucher-King
2005: 201–11; Young and Cross 2002; Hopkin 2001; Seyd 1999).
The second option is that political parties change their internal structures
and processes to better reflect these patterns of participation. While the
organizational manifestation of both these adaptive paths may look similar,
the willingness of parties to meet new participatory preferences is an area that
is less studied, and it is an approach that puts the normative question of how
political parties ought to engage citizens temporarily to the side. If political
parties adapt or evolve to new institutional environments, it stands to reason
that they must also respond to a new type of politically active citizen. This
may require a radical rethinking of what we mean by the notion of a political
party as a mediating institution and where its organizational boundaries lie.
At the very least, a more nuanced account of what it means to be active
within, or engaged with a political party, is necessary—one that moves
beyond the notion of a formal member.
However, the task for political parties is not an easy one. Writing within
the context of online social movements, the observations of Bennett and
Segerberg are extremely relevant here:
organizers face two potentially contradictory challenges. On the one

hand, there is the task of engaging individualized citizens who spurn
conventional membership for the pursuit of personalized political action.
Since such citizens may be less receptive to unambiguous ideological or
organization-centred collective action frames, the question becomes how
to mobilize such citizens. On the other hand, organizations continue to
face the challenge of achieving conventional political goals, which
requires maintaining political capacity in areas such as mobilization and
agenda control. (Bennett and Segerberg 2011: 773–4)
In this chapter I look at the challenge of responding to systemic pressures for

reform in two ways. First, rather than treating these trends as objective
phenomena that exist endogenously, I specifically examine which of these
pressures are apparent to political parties, and how they are perceived by
party elites—particularly in terms of their potential impact on the party
organization. Second, I provide an analysis of how these perceptions, in
turn, shape what are considered to be appropriate organizational solutions
through an examination of the increasing use of supportership as an alternate
form of affiliation and opportunities for online engagement, thereby ‘opening
up’ the party.
To provide a clearer framework for analysing the systemic factors motiv-
ating party reform, I have adapted work by Bang (2011: 442), Bennett and
Segerberg (2011: 772), and Li and Marsh (2008: 251) in order to reconceptua-
lize how we might think about political participation and communication
within parties within a shifting participatory environment. The rhetoric and
84 Party Reform
activities associated with individualized forms of party politics would be
identified by a number of salient characteristics, including more personalized
forms of communication from the political party with potential participants.
Rather than appealing to broad ideological commitments and causes, the way
in which campaigns and participatory opportunities are presented will include
opportunities for customization and personal engagement with issues and
actions. By the same token, citizens are encouraged to suggest problems and
issues for resolution (without a clear or imposed definition by the party) in the
relative absence of ideological cues and bases for action. Party branding is
minimized and emphasis is placed upon the issues as a lived experience. Partici-
pation does not involve long-term commitment, but rather opportunities for ad
hoc engagement. In this way, political activity is constructed in party discourse as
fun and exciting, rather than appealing to an individual’s sense of civic duty.
PARTIES’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE BROADER

SYSTEMIC CONTEXT
I was the last of a generation of joiners. People don’t join organisations in

the way they used to. It’s affecting service clubs, affecting even volunteer
sporting organisations, churches . . . People just don’t join in the way they
used to now. There’s a whole lot of reasons for that, but—to some
degree—the phenomenon that I’m talking about with political parties
is a reflection of a different society where people don’t join. (Former
Australian Liberal prime minister John Howard, interview with author)
Recognition of a Changed Climate

One of the most prominent themes evident in the reviews published by
political parties and the discourse that surrounds announcements of party
reform initiatives is the recognition of the changed political and social climate
within which political parties now exist. For example, the review document
advocating for the introduction of open primaries within the French Social
Democrats pointed to the democratic crisis in France and Europe (exempli-
fied by low voting turnout) and argued that ‘our project is obsolete’ (Socialist
Party, France 2009: 3). The Australian Labor Party’s 2002 National Review
also exemplifies this sentiment. The preface to the review reads:
We deliver this report to you in a world—and an Australia—which, in
many ways, is unrecognisably different from the 1980s . . . We do not offer
value judgements about these facts. We simply make the point that when,
all around us, individuals and organisations have had to make adjust-
ments to cope with these new realities, it is futile for our Party to believe
that it too does not need to adapt itself so as to maximise its relevance and
attractiveness, in this significantly changed environment. (Hawke and
Wran 2002: 3)
Similarly, the German Social Democratic Party’s reform proposal, Party on

the Move, began with the following observation:
With the changes in our society, democracy is also changing. More and
more citizens want to participate in politics, and have a greater say. This
brings new life to our democratic system, while also posing a challenge to
the parties. If democracy and society are changing, then the parties too
must change. (SPD 2011: 1)
While these new realities present challenges for political parties, they are also
portrayed to present a series of opportunities. These are usually linked to a
process of modernization, or in the words of the NZ Labour Party, creating ‘a
future-fit 21st century organisation to drive change’ (NZ Labour Party 2012a;
2012b). In launching the ‘Reforming Labour to Win’ document to the UK
Labour annual conference in Liverpool in 2011, party elder Peter Hain
explained that ‘in an age of 24 hour news and Internet, politics may have
become more global and national, but it has also become more local, and
that’s where our opportunity lies as a party’ (Hain 2011b). As explored further
in Chapter 7, Hain’s speech to conference—the first at which Labour’s 2011
reform initiative was reported to party members and the broader public—
portrayed this climate as one in which political change needed ‘to be delivered
from below—at the grassroots of our movement—in every constituency
party’. This was seen to present a ‘challenge for each and every one of us—
to build a quite different type of party in tune with the new politics rather than
remaining with the old’ (Hain 2011b). For the French Socialists, the decline of
their traditional political project created the opportunity for a democratic
revolution with audacity and innovation (Socialist Party, France 2009: 3).
Shifting Participatory Demands

In order to maximize its attractiveness and relevance, the ALP National
Review argued that the party needed to ‘establish principles, practices, pro-
cedures and policies which resonate with the attitudes and aspirations of the
Australian people at the beginning of the twenty-first century’ (Hawke and
Wran 2002: 3). Party rhetoric and public comments made by leading party
figures stress that change is necessary, and illustrate some of the ways in which
political elites perceive shifting demands from political participation amongst
the public. As ALP Senator John Faulkner (2011) has argued, parties’
86 Party Reform
structures must reflect the ways in which citizens ‘today engage with politics
and community—not the way their great-grandparents did. Attendance of the
local branch is no longer a key indicator of an individual’s commitment or
contribution’ (emphasis added). In an address to the Chifley Research Centre,
Prime Minister Julia Gillard lauded the origins of the Labor Party as
‘unashamedly built with collective action as our foundation stone’. Yet at
the same time she warned that ‘today our ethos of collective action must
respond to individual needs and demands for choice and control . . . Some hold
that the historic structures of the Labor Party are sufficient to the complex and
personalised politics of today. I do not’ (Gillard 2011). Former Australian
Liberal Party prime minister, John Howard, reflected on these developments
in his autobiography: ‘In the past 40 years, both the ALP and the Liberal
Party have ceased to be mass political movements. Changed family lifestyles
work against meeting attendances during evenings and weekends. Today’s
generations are not the joiners of earlier years, and the impact of this goes
beyond political parties’ (Howard 2010: 656).
The second of the contemporary ALP reviews, authored after the party’s
narrow victory in the 2010 Australian federal election, specifically acknow-
ledged a number of broader social changes that posed a threat to the con-
tinued viability of the party. The authors of the report noted that:
Labor’s decline in membership reflects social changes at work in other

mature democracies. In some European states the once impregnable
social democratic base has been devoured by Green or left leaning parties
on the one hand and right-wing populist parties with a largely anti-
immigrant agenda, on the other. Underlying this has been a statistically
measured decline in employment in the manufacturing, mining and trans-
port sectors . . . Deeper cultural changes have also been at work. This is
reflected in declining membership of churches and community groups as well
as political parties. These changes are extensively documented and proceed
at a different pace in different societies. In other words, the problems faced
by Australian Labor are not unique. They are common to most traditional
political parties in the post-industrial era. (Bracks et al. 2011: 11)
The way in which the review describes the political context faced by the Labor
Party is interesting not only because it acknowledges the specific factors that
affect Labor’s long-term viability as a social democratic party, but also the
broader challenges faced by all political parties and indeed other participatory
organizations—albeit in a rather oblique way. Although the specific nature
of the changes is not expanded on in the 2010 review document, the architects
of reforms to intra-party processes are cognisant of what they believe to be
changing patterns of, and preferences for, political participation at play. The
NZ Labour 2012 organizational review suggested that in order to establish
itself as a modern party, Labour needed to ‘be a social movement for change’,
‘be easy to associate with’, and ‘connect its members with enjoyable, engaging
political activism’ (NZ Labour Party 2012a). Nicholas Reece, former state
secretary of the Victorian Branch of the ALP and Dean Rizzetti, a former
campaign field officer, described the trial of a primary for the selection of their
party’s parliamentary candidate as having found inspiration from the ‘under-
lying changes occurring in society that are having a profound effect on how
people engage in their community’, and attributed its claimed success as
‘being driven by some of the same factors that are behind the success of
these new forms of civic engagement’. Specifically, Reece and Rizzetti pointed
to the ‘lower barriers of entry in terms of the level of political commitment
required to engage in our political system’ and the fact that the process ‘gave
people an opportunity to engage in something in which there was a clear
outcome from their involvement’.3
One of the most considered (if not slightly patronising) examples of political
parties attempting to take stock of the nature of participatory changes in
society is provided by the German Social Democrats. In the party’s 2011
organizational review, Party on the Move, it noted that:
People’s expectations towards politics have changed. More and more
citizens are reluctant to dedicate themselves to long-term political activities;
they simply want to have a say when it comes to instant decisions . . . So
instead of trying to catch up with these changes in political attitudes, we
lead the way. We are concerned with concrete local issues and try to involve
as many citizens as possible. We are making it easier to come on board our
party and are establishing ourselves as a magnet for anyone wishing to
make a commitment to the social democratic cause. (SPD 2011: 4)
Similarly, the Collins Review noted:

A more consumerist public is today less tribal about politics and less
trusting of traditional institutions and elected representatives. Younger
people in particular are less inclined to vote or become members of
political parties. Many have an “a la carte” approach to politics, feeling
more comfortable supporting organisations on an issue by issue basis
rather than committing to membership of a political party with its
broader policy platform. (Collins 2014: 16)
Democratization and Restoring Legitimacy

Building on their perceptions of the nature of the changed political and social
climate, the ALP committed to pursuing ‘new and innovative measures
designed to foster greater participation and engagement of the Australian
population in the political process’ and to ‘reform’ and ‘modernize’ by embra-
cing online membership and opportunities for supporters to become involved
88 Party Reform
in policy development (Gillard 2011). Community pre-selections were
regarded as a ‘healthy way to restore trust in the political process’ (Firth
2014). Former UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has written of the need
to incorporate members of the public into the party’s decision-making
processes:
We must look to our own traditions as a community-based grassroots
party where the voices of individual members [and] trade unionists were
always valued. But we must also widen our horizons to our supporters
and the wider public. They must have their say in the future of our party
too. (UK Labour Party 2011b: 4)
In this discourse, reform, renewal, and modernization are entwined with a

concern to ‘open up’ the policy process to greater individual involvement both
from within and outside the party. The comments of the Belgian PS Secretary
highlight the very public way in which primaries for the selection of the party
leader were organized and advertised: ‘we wanted to show everyone that our
party was opening itself up . . . we decided to organise polling booths in every
local section . . . Everyone could see that social-democratic party activists
could elect their leader’ (cited in Wauters 2014: 70). Similarly, the German
Social Democrats stated in their organizational review: ‘we have always seen
ourselves as a democratic membership party with a program—and this we
want to retain, even in a changing society. This is why we are opening
ourselves up’ (SDP 2011: 2).
These motivations support the general trend that has been documented by
Hazan and Rahat (2010) and others that political parties are increasing the
inclusiveness of the range of selectors eligible to participate in candidate
selections. As discussed further in Chapter 6, the gradual adoption of primar-
ies outside the United States context is one of the most pervasive examples
of this, but as the analysis below shows, whilst many parties cite primaries
as an indicator of the way in which they are responding to the participatory
preferences of a changed citizenry, the idea of ‘opening up’, modernizing, and
democratizing the political party also extends to other party functions.
Susan Scarrow has analysed the organizational changes adopted by the two
major German political parties during the 1990s, the SPD and the CDU, in
order to ‘encourage specific types of political activity, and in hopes of pleasing
citizens who seemed increasingly distant from traditional, partisan, electoral
processes’ (Scarrow 1999: 345). She writes that the SPD and the CDU ‘began
changing their internal rules in ways explicitly aimed at making partisan
participation more appealing to those who appreciate the direct influence
offered by more “unconventional” political outlets’. Specifically, both parties
‘attempted to encourage party enrolment by giving members new opportun-
ities to select and constrain party leaders’. The SDP also introduced measures
to give party members a greater say in policy decisions (Scarrow 1999: 347–8).
These examples illustrate two distinctive reform strategies, or perhaps two
different styles of ‘democratization’—enhancing membership participation
and opening up the party to greater involvement from non-members. How-
ever, as Chapter 3 discussed, these two strategies may not necessarily be
compatible. Alternatively, reforms to open up the party may be taking greater
precedence than strengthening internal decision-making opportunities as pol-
itical parties face evidence of the declining importance of collective and
institutional attachments.
The concern for democratization as synonymous with ‘opening up’ party
institutions is one that appears to cut across party types—concerning parties
other than the social democrats. For the conservative agrarian party in
Australia, the Nationals, the introduction of primaries (termed community
pre-selections in Australia) has been ‘all about putting power back where it
belongs’, to ‘reform politics in New South Wales and restore democracy to the
community’,4 as well as ‘inspire young people to get involved in the process’
(Dezman 2014). The process was also portrayed as a direct response to
shifting trends of participation and the need to ensure that candidate selection
functioned as an inclusive—and legitimate—activity in the future. As State
Chairperson of the NSW Nationals, Christine Ferguson argued: ‘the reality is
that as the world changes, formal membership of political parties is in decline.
We need to make sure this does not mean fewer and fewer people dictate who
can be a member of parliament’.5
The Conservative Party in the United Kingdom presented their postal pri-
maries as a way of ‘opening up democracy’ (Conservative Party 2010) and later
advocated for the introduction of government-funded postal primaries as ‘in the
interests of opening up our democracy, making our parties more democratic,
consulting and getting more people involved in politics’ (HM Government
2010). The normative vision of democracy that accompanies the assumption
that power should be returned to the people is one that shifts the focus of
representation and accountability from the party to the community, and one in
which decision making should be as participatory and inclusive as possible.
THE CREATION OF SUPPORTERS’ NETWORKS
We want to empower people to engage with politics. This includes being

open towards those that want to be involved but without necessarily
becoming members. We are a springboard for ‘improvers’, even if these
might occasionally be more creative and unconventional then we our-
selves dare to be. Rather than patronizing or manipulating them, we listen
to what they say. (SPD 2011: 3)
90 Party Reform
An excellent practical illustration of an organizational reform that is designed
to respond to external pressures for change, in particular shifting participa-
tory preferences, is the creation of formal supporters’ networks. As at October
2015, supporters’ or friends’ networks have been established by the social
democratic parties in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and
Germany, as well as the UK Conservatives, the New Zealand National
Party, and the Canadian Liberals. Although relatively new, the study of
these groups is gaining increasing academic attention (see, for example,
Scarrow 2015; Gauja 2015a; Gauja and Jackson 2015; Mjelde 2015; Fisher
et al. 2014; Gauja 2013; Lees Marshment 2011: 108–9). These networks allow
citizens to ‘join’ the party in a reduced capacity free of charge or with a
donation of their choice. Becoming a friend or supporter of a political party
can also be seen as an expressive action (for example, supporters may publicize
this action on Facebook) and does not require any commitment on the part of
the individual, and ‘offer people a means of formalising their support for the
party without going so far as becoming full members’, such as in the case of
New Zealand National, ‘making a donation without the formality of member-
ship’ (Hain 2004: 16, see also UK Labour Party 2011c: 10; NZ National Party
2015). This builds on the perception, as expressed by former Australian Prime
Minister John Howard (p. 84) and the German Social Democrats’ Party
Executive, that it is the notion of membership that is problematic from the
individual’s perspective, rather than support for the party and its policies per se:
Many are reluctant to join our party although they share our views and
pursue the same goals. Even people who do not want to be members
nevertheless may want to declare their support for us or join forces with us
to achieve a specific goal—even if only short term. (Cited in Totz 2011: 6)
The goal of the Canadian Liberal Party in creating a network of registered

supporters was to reach out to ‘individuals who do not wish to become full
Members of the Party’, by creating a ‘new, more open and more flexible
framework for active engagement as a Liberal partisan’ (Liberal Party,
Canada 2011: 4). A similar appreciation of changing participatory trends
was noted by the ALP in its 2010 review, which recommended the establish-
ment of ‘approaches which enable our supporters to participate in some of the
Party activities they are most interested in, without having to formally become
a party member’. Specifically, the review noted three primary areas in which
this engagement could occur: ‘participating in values-based campaigns, hav-
ing a say on policy’, and ‘helping to select Labor’s local candidates’ (Bracks
et al. 2011: 22). Two political parties—the Australian Labor Party and the
German Social Democrats—emphasized that this participation and engage-
ment should occur on the supporter’s ‘own terms’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 23; Totz
2011: 6) as these individuals are ‘more passionate about a single-issue than an
overarching ideology’ (O’Neil and Watts 2015: 26–9).
From the party’s perspective, the primary motivation for the establishment
of these networks is to ‘reach out’ beyond the core membership, to create
a wider base of people willing to mobilize and campaign for the party, and
to ‘draw from experiences within the wider community when making local
policy decisions’ (UK Labour Party 2011c). As Ed Miliband poignantly
argued, ‘As we reshape our party for the future, we must always value the
role of party members. And I do. But valuing party members cannot be
an excuse for excluding the voice of the wider public’ (Miliband 2013). The
emphasis on accommodating diverse experiences in a more ad hoc manner is
consistent with the individualization thesis, yet at the same time supporters’
networks also serve as a chance to replace mass memberships with mass
networks of supporters in order to sustain the party both organizationally
and maintain its legitimacy in the eyes of the public: ‘Without them, Labor
has no future . . . We must include them in the development of our Party and
encourage their more active involvement in the Party. We should broaden our
policy processes to allow more voices to be heard’ (Faulkner 2011). Sup-
porters provide a readily accessible source of volunteer labour for election
campaigns, and a much larger base of citizens with which to communicate
with (Lees Marshment 2011: 109).
Scarrow (2015: 136–8) describes the three principal traits of these new
forms of affiliation as centralized, accessible, and digital. It is centralized
because these new categories of affiliation create a direct contact between
the individual and the central party organization, even when parties’ trad-
itional recruitment practices might be led at the branch level. Signing up as a
supporter will almost exclusively occur online at minimal cost, and with the
provision of an email address or engagement through social media, the
relationship is initiated and sustained digitally, though many political parties
have used their supporters’ list to actively recruit participants to more inten-
sive campaign work.
As previous research has indicated, the enthusiasm of the party leadership
for integrating non-members into party decision-making processes is not
necessarily shared by members. The tensions surrounding party supporters
are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 9, although previous studies have
indicated that although members welcome the general idea of a supporters’
network, they are much less willing to give supporters the right to participate
in intra-party decision-making processes (Gauja and Jackson 2015; Gauja
2013; Totz 2011).
What Is the Difference between a Supporter and a Member?

When the idea of a formal supporters’ network was first introduced in the UK
Labour Party, it was pitched to the public as a way of engaging with the party
92 Party Reform
on a more ad hoc basis, with minimal obligation. Supporters were able to dip
their ‘toe in the water without committing themselves fully’, and the formal
distinction between member and supporter was made clear:
The purpose of establishing a national Labour Supporters’ Network

would be to broaden the party’s base of supporters by providing people
with a new way to get involved . . . Certain important entitlements would
be reserved exclusively for party members—the right to vote in selection
meetings; the right to vote for the NEC, the party leader and in other
national party elections; the right to participate in votes at constituency
meetings; the right to attend party conference as delegates and the right to
stand as a Labour candidate. The existence of these members-only entitle-
ments would act as incentive for members of the supporters’ network who
want to become more involved to apply for membership of the party.
(Hain 2004: 18)
In this sense, the category of party supporter was designed as a potential

enticement to full membership. Some political parties that have constitution-
alized supporters alongside members provide for a reasonably clear demar-
cation of the two forms of affiliation, for example, the NZ National Party
(2013): ‘Any person shall be eligible to apply to become a supporter of the
party and in doing so generally express support for the philosophy and
objectives of the party. A supporter shall not have any of the rights of a
member of the party’. The 2009 conference resolution to establish an online
supporter category in the Australian Labor Party, for example, stipulated that
the supporter was not to be granted candidate-selection rights ‘but will be
fully involved in ALP policy deliberations’ (ALP 2009: 23).
Although it is defined in opposition to membership, what supportership
actually means, and involves, is quite vague. Taking the NZ Labour Party as
an example, a ‘registered supporter’ is defined as ‘a person who agrees to have
their name listed as such’. Registered supporters are entitled to ‘receive
communications and to attend Party meetings and functions, except when
they are held in committee and cannot be a member of another political party’
(NZ Labour Party 2014). While further detail as to the nature of closed party
meetings is not provided, both these provisions resemble those usually asso-
ciated with traditional party membership. A further example is provided by
the Italian Social Democratic Party (PD), which has provided for a ‘variable
linkage’ membership—recognizing the category of supporter: essentially an
‘elector who “recognizes” himself [or herself] in the political proposal of the
party, “supports” it at elections, and, above all, “accepts registration” in an
electoral register’ (Bordandini et al. 2008: 316–17). According to Sandri et al.
(2015a: 121), PD supporters enjoy a wide range of formal rights within the party,
including participation in primary elections, internal policy forums and referenda,
and local branch meetings (albeit without formal voting rights in the latter).
In Germany, the move to reach out to non-members in the SPD proved to
be controversial. Originally, party leader Sigmar Gabriel proposed a system
of open primaries that would have seen non-member involvement in the party
expanded to candidate and leadership selection. However, following harsh
criticism within the party that primaries would undervalue the point of
‘proper party membership’ and a mixed reception in the press, this suggestion
was retracted (Totz 2011: 6; Crespy 2013: 164). The compromise reached was
to focus non-member or supporter participation in policy-related activities
rather than include them in candidate, leadership, or other types of represen-
tational decision making within the party. In putting the reforms forward to
the November 2011 Party Conference, the Executive resolved that ‘structures
should be put in place to allow non-members to vote on specific issues;
supporter membership has been developed to this end which means that in
future those interested can become supporters of a certain working group or
topical forum’ (cited in Totz 2011: 6, emphasis added; see also SPD 2011: 7–8).
A similar method of engaging supporters in predominantly policy-related
activities has been proposed by Australian Labor parliamentarians Clare
O’Neil and Tim Watts in advocating for the establishment of ‘online policy
action caucuses’. Under this proposal, a special class of membership would be
created with a nominal fee to allow members of the general public to join these
policy groups rather than the party. Policy motions would be debated at
conference, and would allow
fellow travellers to determine the nature of their engagement with Labor,
enabling them to pursue a specific cause within the party without having
to make the full commitment to party membership. It would also enable
people to choose the means by which they engage with the party and other
members; if other single-issue groups are anything to go by, much of the
organising activity of these groups would occur online. (O’Neil and Watts
2015: 26–9)
However, further reforms to candidate and leadership selection in other

democracies suggest that the distinction between member and supporter is
becoming less clear in practice. In 2013 the Liberal Party in Canada allowed
its registered supporters to vote in the 2013 leadership contest. As a result of
the Collins Review (2014), UK Labour Party supporters were also given the
same opportunity in the party’s 2015 leadership-selection contest under a one-
member-one-vote system where a registered supporter’s vote carried equal
weight to that of an ordinary party member. The eventual scale of non-
member involvement in the leadership contest far outweighed what was
anticipated and approved by the Labour conference in September 2011,
although the direction of the reform was the same. Back in 2011, the Refound-
ing Labour document, approved by conference, stipulated that if the party
could recruit more than 50,000 supporters, this would trigger these supporters
94 Party Reform
being given 3 per cent of the electoral college in the vote for the party’s leader,
which could rise to 10 per cent depending on the number of supporters
recruited.6 In 2015, over 100,000 registered supporters participated in the
ballot, comprising a 25 per cent share of the total selectorate.
In Australia, the Labor Party has also involved its registered supporters in
candidate selections through the trial of open primaries for the selection of
parliamentary candidates in its state branches, a move that has been
endorsed by many within the party, including the powerful right faction
(see ALP National Right 2011: 17; Bracks et al. 2011: 22–3). Marketed as
‘community pre-selections’, voting in these primaries is a one-off event, with
supporters pre-registering online but with no further obligation to the party
(Gauja 2012). However, these developments suggest that if supporters are
also gradually given rights in leadership and candidate selections, then the
distinction may not be as clear-cut as previously anticipated.7 As supporters
are actively encouraged to contribute to policy debates, and as parties
move to more consultative forms of policy development, the difference
between members and supporters in this area of party activity seems even
smaller still.
POLICY DEVELOPMENT, ONLINE PARTICIPATION,

AND ISSUES-BASED ACTIVISM
An illustration of the way in which social media and online participation have
been treated rather flippantly by mainstream political parties is in the descrip-
tion of the online strategy adopted by a candidate in an Australian commu-
nity pre-selection trial. The candidate explained that he/she had ‘an
interactive website, a Facebook group which I’ve already got started and a
Twitter which I know that the young people are all into’,8 demonstrating
knowledge of all the stereotypes and limitations of online political communi-
cation and participation. While the candidate was ultimately unsuccessful,
perhaps more worrying was the fact that he/she was a party staffer.
In contrast to other political organizations such as interest groups, political
parties outside the United States have typically been slow in adopting online
technologies for communicating with members and facilitating participation
(see, for example, Cardenal 2013; Chen 2013: 26–8; Chadwick 2007). How-
ever, the increasing prevalence of digital media in creating new sites for political
expression seen, for example, in the development of party blogs and citizen-
initiated campaigns (Chen 2015; Gibson 2015; Gibson et al. 2013) means that
online participation should form a much greater part of party organizational
studies in the future. The recent UK Labour leadership-selection contest,
which attracted 344,000 votes online, was the largest online poll in the
country’s history.
As part of the broader recognition of a changed participatory climate,
political parties are rapidly appreciating the need to pay serious attention to
the possibilities of online participation, particularly as an avenue to engage
both members and non-members through issue-based policy-making initia-
tives and campaigns. For ‘rising star’ Australian Labor Party parliamentar-
ians Clare O’Neil and Tim Watts, ‘enabling online engagement’ is the most
basic way in which to make ‘Australia’s democratic institutions more respon-
sive to the ways in which citizens want to engage with them’ (O’Neil and
Watts 2015: 26). For the German Social Democrats, this involves the recog-
nition that these changing forms of organization and communication mean
that ‘it is not the party that decides how to address and organize people—we
leave the people to decide that for themselves’ (SPD 2011: 4).
The way in which the policy-development process has evolved in the UK
Labour Party since 2003 illustrates the increasing importance of online,
issues-based opportunities for political engagement, although similar initia-
tives have also been undertaken in Australia (see Gauja 2015b). Moving
further and further away from the branch-based model of policy development
and building on the perceived success of the predominantly offline policy
consultation exercises ‘The Big Conversation’ and ‘Let’s Talk’ (see Gauja
2015b; 2013), the party employed these techniques once again in its 2011
initiative, ‘Fresh Ideas’. Now out of government, the focus of the initiative
shifted away from commentary on set policies to seeking new policy ideas.
However, the party remained committed to reaching out beyond its trad-
itional boundaries to ordinary members of the public for policy input. The
party’s own published statistics highlight the ‘unprecedented’ level of activity
and demonstrate just how extensive this individualization has become. Once
policy positions would have been the product of the party conference; now
they have become the product of ‘4 million contacts with the public’, 6,000
people attending public consultation events, 2,000 written responses to the
policy review, and 16,000 people taking part in online activities via the
consultation website ‘Fresh Ideas’, contributing ‘thousands of ideas electron-
ically’ (UK Labour Party 2011d: 5).
In 2013 the UK Labour Party launched the online consultation initiative
‘Your Britain’ (<http://www.yourbritain.org.uk>), which was described as
Labour’s online policy hub: ‘Whether you’re a Labour Party member, a
trade union member, a representative of a voluntary organisation or business,
or none of the above, we want to hear your ideas on how the next Labour
Government can tackle the challenges that face Britain’ (UK Labour Party
2013c, emphasis added). Your Britain allowed citizens to engage with the
party on an individual basis, with the focus on communicating information
around issues rather than heavily branded principles or ideologies, ensuring
96 Party Reform
that ‘taking part in our policy development work has never been easier nor
our processes more open and accessible’ (UK Labour Party 2013d: 6). The
Labour Party logo featured only at the very bottom of the webpage, with lists
of issues (for example, young people and politics, the NHS and healthcare,
and the housing crisis) dominating the layout, along with the call to ‘tell us
what you think’ (UK Labour Party 2013c).
These broad policy-development initiatives also are also occurring at the
same time as more specific issue-oriented online campaigns are being used to
engage members, supporters, and voters through online platforms such
as Nation Builder (discussed in Chapter 4). According to the Liberal Demo-
crats, Nation Builder was used successfully in the Eastleigh by-election to
build candidate Mike Thornton’s campaign and to establish issue-based
sites around job creation (<http://www.amillionjobs.org>), taxation reform
(<http://www.fairertax.org>), and the European Union (<http://www.
whyiamin.org>), which ‘helped us blast through records on online fundrais-
ing, engaging voters and signing up supporters’ (Liberal Democrats 2013).
Key features of Nation Builder sites include the ability to link to social media,
to specific issue campaigns, to enable users to easily donate or volunteer, and
to create databases of user activity. Membership of the party is downplayed
and rather supporters and followers are invited to take immediate action,
through, for example, liking the campaign on social media, signing an online
petition, donating to the cause, or making phone calls. UK Conservative
Party conference delegates were encouraged to support the party’s comple-
mentary strategy of creating networks of supporters through issue campaigns
and ‘micro-websites’, such as the sites ‘For Hardworking People’ and ‘Protect-
ing Our Children’. Chairman Grant Schapps explained that such micro-sites
were valuable tools for harvesting emails and personal details for potential
Conservative voters. These Conservative campaign sites are characterized by
very limited party branding.
The use of online platforms in policy consultations such as Your Britain
responds to the perception that
To build a more responsive political organisation, we need to build
institutions which enable supporters to help realise the political outcomes
they are seeking in the way that they choose, while also retaining the
ability for the party to resolve conflicts between competing interests and
present a coherent agenda to the public. (O’Neil and Watts 2015: 26)
While there is ample promise in this statement, Faucher-King and Le Galès

(2010: 121) have described similar consultation initiatives within the UK
Labour Party as a perfect example of the individualization of political
relationships, replacing what would have once been a collective process of
decision making. Conducted online and soliciting opinions through submis-
sions, tweets, comments, and votes, individual views are aggregated by the
central party organization and reviewed by Labour’s Policy Commission.
Further evidence may be taken from those whose submissions are ‘shown to
be based on community consultation, or receive a high level of support on
Your Britain’ (UK Labour Party 2013c). Fresh Ideas and Your Britain in
particular take this process of individualization further still, soliciting ideas
and interpretations from the public, and allowing supporters and interested
citizens to construct the issues around their own lived experiences. Whether or
not these initiatives provide genuine consultation or merely a monologue in
disguise (Coleman 2004: 115) is a separate and highly contentious question,
but irrespective of this these examples indicate that the nature of party
organization and the way in which policy opinions are aggregated has funda-
mentally changed.
MEMBERS AND SUPPORTERS: THE PERMEABILITY

OF PARTY ORGANIZATIONS
In addressing conference delegates, party officials and leaders recognize that

‘membership is changing. We still need traditional membership, but we also
need people to support us in the wider sense’ (Grant Schapps, Conservative
Chairman). Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party conceptualize
membership as part of a journey of partisan participation, in which individ-
uals can also interact with the party through social media, donate, and
campaign. The Labour Party is committed to ‘improving the experience of
supporters online and to support them through their journey from supporter
to member to activist’ (UK Labour Party 2013b: 32). The percentage of
Conservative Party volunteers who are not party members is increasing,
prompting Feldman to argue that ‘we have to accept that traditional ways
that people interact with political parties have changed’. In turn, the organ-
izational structure of parties is evolving with these developments.
To the extent the participation in a partisan campaign constitutes mean-
ingful participation in party politics (see, for example, Kreiss 2014; Nielsen
2012: 8) the opportunity is open to all citizens—not just party members.
Hence the adoption of these organizing and campaigning techniques contrib-
utes to the blurring of party member/supporter distinctions (Gauja 2013; Katz
and Mair 2009; Bolleyer 2009) and runs in parallel with several other ‘inclu-
sive’ organizational initiatives within parties that include policy, candidate,
and leadership selection. As Ray Collins noted in his Interim Report for the
Labour Party: ‘in the last three years, Ed [Miliband] has already begun
turning that around. He has opened up our party to registered supporters,
our campaigns to local communities, and our policy making process to good
98 Party Reform
people with good ideas both inside and outside Labour’ (Collins 2013b: 2).
Alternatively, it could be argued that the notion of organizational member-
ship is expanding—redefined from formal member to campaign participant or
even message recipient (see, for example, Karpf 2012: 31). The implications of
these organizational changes are assessed in Chapter 9.
NOTES
1. See, for example, Bader (2014); Pemberton and Wickham-Jones (2013); Delwit
(2011); Hay (2007: 20–3); Bartolini and Mair (2001); Lawson and Merkl (1988).
2. The 2013 Canadian General Social Survey reported that 27 per cent of respondents
had signed a petition, 22 per cent had undertaken a boycott/buycott, 11 per cent had
worn a t-shirt or badge in support of a political cause, while only 2 per cent had
volunteered for a political party (Turcotte 2015: 17).
3. ‘US model can entice punters into politics’, Age, 11 May 2010.
4. Letter sent to Tamworth residents, ‘Be a part of history’, sent by Andrew Stoner in
May–June 2010.
5. Cited in Manning River Times, 20 January 2009.
6. Patrick Wintour, ‘Labour conference: Non-members get to vote in leadership
elections’, Guardian, 25 September 2011.
7. See Mjelde (2015) for a theoretical categorization of the different ways in which
parties permit non-member participation.
8. ABC Radio PM, 16 February 2010.
Part II
Party Reform in Practice

6
Comparative Patterns of Reform
Chapters 3–5 have been concerned with establishing the primary motivations
for party reform and trying to understand how political parties—and in
particular, party elites—perceive the pressures for renewal that come from
within the party, from the necessities of electoral competition, and finally
from social and cultural shifts occurring at the level of the political system.
This chapter steps back to take a look at where the reform initiatives under-
taken by our case study parties sit within a broader comparative context, by
examining how they relate to one another as well as comparing these trends to
existing research on similar developments in other democracies. It evaluates
party reforms in three ways: in terms of the function or decision-making
process to which the reform is targeted (policy development, candidate selec-
tion, leadership selection, etc.), the direction of the reform (does it create a
more inclusive process?), and the time at which the reform took place. The
chapter then analyses these characteristics in light of several factors that have
been identified as potential explanations for party change, including the type
and age of party, electoral performance, legislative position, and major per-
sonnel changes in order to identify when parties implement reforms, what they
reform, and how this varies over time and space. In particular, the discussion
in Chapter 2 identified two key expectations that are investigated: that estab-
lished democracies with similar problems of citizen disaffection and party
decline should experience similar trajectories of organizational reform, and
that the ideological disposition—or party family—to which an organization
belongs should shape the type of reform that it pursues.
MOST SIMILAR SYSTEMS: PATTERNS OF PARTY REFORM

IN AUSTRALIA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
The analysis of comparative patterns of party reform in this chapter begins

with a grouped comparison of the reform initiatives of all the major
political parties in Australia and the United Kingdom that have occurred
in the last decade (from 2006–15). It includes the Conservatives, Liberal
102 Party Reform
Democrats, and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, as well as the
Australian Labor Party, the National Party, and the Liberal Party of
Australia. For the Australian political parties, major reforms at the
regional (state level) are also included in the analysis, owing to the fact
that Australian political parties should be viewed as federated organiza-
tions, with considerable regional autonomy (see, for example, Sharman
2015). The federated nature of Australian party organizations, as well as
the relatively strong institutionalization of factional groupings within the
parties (the Labor Party in particular), has given the Australian major
parties a reputation of being particularly resistant to organizational change
(Barry 2015).
Nevertheless, in the last ten years, each one of the parties has pursued high-
profile organizational reforms covering a range of party functions, whether
initiated as single, ad hoc events or as the product of broader party organiza-
tional reviews. At the national level, the ALP has seen two major reform
initiatives: the 2010 National Review (Bracks et al. 2011), which was a large-
scale internal review commissioned by the Party Executive after the 2010
federal election, and reforms initiated to the leadership-selection process
after a period of leadership turmoil in the party (2010–13). It is worth noting
that although it is outside of the time frame of this chapter, the 2010 National
Review was preceded by the National Committee of Review Report 2002
(Hawke and Wran 2002), which had very similar terms of reference to the
2010 review. Both were charged with examining strategies to increase the
party’s vote at federal elections, but were also given the power to inquire into
the internal structures and processes of the party, including developing strat-
egies to increase and enhance participation. It was in part because the recom-
mendations of the 2002 review were not implemented in a timely way that the
latter review was commissioned (Bracks et al. 2011: 17). These two major
ALP reform initiatives have been complemented by a handful of ad hoc
federal reforms, such as the development of a supporters’ network and
policy-development initiatives, as well as the trial of semi-open primaries at
the regional level.
As Table 6.1 illustrates, party organizational reforms in the Australian
Liberal and National parties have been far less frequent, although a
number of potentially important innovations have been made. The most
notable of these was the first trial of an open primary in Australia,
conducted by the Nationals, as well as three separate Liberal Party reform
documents (two at regional and one at national level) that advocated for
more inclusive candidate-selection processes and greater involvement of
party members.
A similar distribution of reform activity, with the social democratic party
being more active in pursuing high-profile reform initiatives, is also evident in
Comparative Patterns of Reform 103
T A B L E 6 . 1 Party reform initiatives: Australia, 2005–15
Party Reform initiative/body Year Key organizational change proposals

responsible
Liberal Party Liberal Renewal 2008 Provide categories of involvement in the

(Victorian Division) party in addition to full membership,
e.g. supporters
Increased membership participation in
candidate selection
ALP National Conference 2009 Introduction of ‘online Labor supporter’
ALP Federal Executive 2010 Creation of ‘Labor Connect’ online
communication platform
Creation of the ‘Think Tank’ online policy
development function
ALP Victorian Branch 2010 Trial of semi-open primary
National Party NSW Division 2010 Trial of open primary ‘community
pre-selection’
Liberal Party Review of the 2010 Federal 2011 Closed primaries (plebiscites) for the
Election (Federal selection of lower house candidates in a
Executive) uniform process across states*
Conduct trial of primaries for federal
elections*
Role of Advisory Committee on Federal
Policy to be strengthened
ALP 2010 National Review 2011 Establishment of National Campaign
(National Conference) Organizing and Training Academy
Expand Labor Connect (online platform) as
a membership-organizing tool
Creation of the National Policy Forum
ALP NSW Branch 2012 Trial of semi-open primary for Sydney of city
mayor
ALP Parliamentary Caucus 2013 Party leader to be selected by members and
the parliamentary party (50/50)
ALP NSW Branch 2014 Community ‘pre-selections’ (semi-open
primaries) used in three seats
ALP Federal Executive 2014 Removal of requirement that members must
also be union members
State branches to allow members a role in
leadership selection
Continuation of use of community
pre-selections
Liberal Party Panel Report on 2014 Recommended the introduction of closed
Pre-selections (NSW primaries (plebiscites) for candidate
Division) selection for the lower house of
parliament*
ALP National Conference 2015 Review of the socialist objective
Increase to proportion of rank-and-file
membership at national conference
Amendment of gender quotas (50/50)
* Indicates reforms that were proposed but not fully implemented or adopted
104 Party Reform
T A B L E 6 . 2 Party reform initiatives: UK, 2005–15
Party Reform Year Key organizational change proposals

initiative/body
responsible
Conservatives 2006 Open constituency meetings (semi-open

primaries) and two postal primaries to
select candidates for 2010 general election
Labour National 2006 Let’s Talk policy consultation initiative: part
Executive online, involves supporters
Conservatives 2007 Open primary for the London mayoral
candidate
Liberal Democrats Federal 2008 Establishes supporters’ network
Executive
Conservatives 2009 Establishes a ‘Friends of the Conservatives’
network
Open postal primaries in the electorates of
Totnes and Gosport
Labour National 2009 Fresh Ideas policy consultation initiative:
Executive part online, involves general public
Labour Refounding 2011 Reintroduced the category of formal party
Labour supporter
Launch of ‘Your Britain’ policy consultation
Clause 1 redefined to highlight campaigning
and community organizing by CLPs
Conservatives 2013 Open constituency meetings to select
candidates for 2015 general election
Labour Building a One 2014 One-member-one-vote rules for leadership
Nation Labour elections: electoral college composed of
Party members, registered supporters, affiliated
supporters
Changed structure of union affiliation
Labour Building a One 2015 Selection of London mayoral candidate by
Nation Labour semi-open primary
Party
the United Kingdom (Table 6.2). Like Australia, there has been a distinct
concern for increasing the inclusiveness of candidate-selection methods
through the trial of semi-open and open primaries, and establishing sup-
porters’ networks. The Labour Party was the first to introduce the scheme
in 2006, which lasted in its first iteration until 2009 (Gauja 2013). It was
subsequently reintroduced as part of the Refounding Labour reform initiative
in 2011. Interestingly, although the Labour Party has developed more reform
initiatives over the last decade than the Conservatives, it has been the Con-
servatives that have led the way with the gradual implementation of open
primaries for candidate selection.
MOST SIMILAR PARTIES: PATTERNS OF REFORM IN SOCIAL
DEMOCRATIC PARTIES IN AUSTRALIA, GERMANY,
NEW ZEALAND, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
Another way in which to examine patterns of party reform in a broader

comparative context is to compare change in political parties of the same
party family. Given that the social democratic parties in Australia and the
United Kingdom have undertaken reform most frequently, it makes empirical
sense to use this party family as the focus of investigation, extending the
analysis further to also include the New Zealand Labour Party and the
German Social Democrats. Theoretically, given the importance of organiza-
tional democracy in the history of social democratic parties, we might also
expect reform activity (particularly democratization initiatives) to be more
common and sustained in these parties.
Table 6.3 summarizes the main reforms in the Australian Labor Party and
UK Labour chronologically, compared to those undertaken by the NZ
Labour Party and the German Social Democrats. To avoid unnecessary
replication between Tables 6.1 and 6.2, information has been truncated for
the period before 2011 and after 2013.
What Table 6.3 reveals is distinct similarities—within a relatively short
period of time—in both the direction of reforms and the party functions
targeted. Specifically, in all four parties policy-development processes have
been opened up to more participation (although in NZ Labour and the
German Social Democrats this process remains relatively in-house), and
registered supporters’ networks established. In three of the four political
parties leadership-selection processes have also been changed. However,
while experimentation with semi-open and open primaries is a feature of
social democratic parties in Australia and the United Kingdom, it has not
been implemented in Germany and New Zealand.
THE SUBSTANCE OF REFORMS: WHAT AREAS OF PARTY

ORGANIZATION DO THEY TARGET?
Chapter 2 noted that previous comparative studies of party organizational

change tend to look at change quite broadly—in terms of models of organ-
ization, of policy shifts, or of changes to political strategy (see, for example,
Harmel and Janda 1994). While this approach gives us a sense of the general
direction of organizational reform, it is also useful to look further into specific
types of organizational reform and how these changes relate to, or affect,
106 Party Reform
T A B L E 6 . 3 Social democratic party reform initiatives: Australia,
Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
Party Country Year Key organizational change proposals
Labour UK 2006–10 Policy-consultation initiatives ‘Let’s Talk’ and ‘Fresh

Ideas’ involving supporters and taking place online
ALP Australia 2009–10 Introduction of ‘online Labor supporter’, Labor
Connect, and the ‘Think Tank’ online policy-
development function
First trial of semi-open primary
ALP Australia 2011 Establishment of National Campaign Organizing and
Training Academy
Expand Labor Connect (online platform) as a
membership-organizing tool
Creation of the National Policy Forum
Labour UK 2011 Reintroduction of the category of formal party supporter
Launch of ‘Your Britain’ policy consultation
Clause 1 redefined to highlight campaigning and
community organizing by constituency Labour parties
SPD Germany 2011 Increased role of membership in policy development and
candidate selection
Creation of registered supporters’ category
Possibility of primaries inserted into Constitution
Commitment to online participation*
ALP Australia 2012 Semi-open primary for Sydney mayoral candidate
Labour New Zealand 2012 Introduction of registered supporters
Policy-development process redesigned to encourage
greater membership involvement
Party leader to be selected by members (40 per cent),
parliamentarians (40 per cent), and affiliated groups
(20 per cent)
ALP Australia 2013 Party leader to be selected by members and the
parliamentary party (50/50)
Labour UK 2014–15 One-member-one-vote rules for leadership elections:
electoral college composed of members, registered
supporters, affiliated supporters
Semi-open primary for London mayoral candidate
Changed structure of union affiliation
ALP Australia 2014–15 Removal of requirement that members must also be
union members
Review of the socialist objective
Increased proportion of rank and file at conference
Amendment of gender quotas
* Indicates reforms that were proposed but not fully implemented or adopted
particular party functions. In this analysis, two questions are relevant: (1)
what are the specific organizational functions targeted by party reform; and
(2) what is their effect on the nature of the decision-making processes associ-
ated with these functions?
Comparing party reform projects in Australia and the United Kingdom,
the main area of party organization that has been targeted has been the
selection of candidates for public office, which accounts for 38 per cent of
all the different reform proposals by the six major political parties. This is
followed by changes to membership criteria and types of membership, as well
as reforms directed at the policy process. These two areas—membership and
policy—account for around 19 and 16 per cent of reform initiatives, respect-
ively. While too much should not be inferred from the analysis with only a
limited number of reform proposals (thirty-seven in total across the two
democracies), what can be taken away from this brief snapshot is that political
parties appear to concentrate their reform efforts on candidate selection.
Candidate Selection
There are several possible explanations for this particular focus on candidate
selection. The frequency of reforms in this area might reflect the fact that
candidate selection is important: it is a high-stakes, high-profile activity, and a
function that political parties still have a monopoly over, even if some of the
other functions they perform have arguably diminished over the years. It can
be used to reach out to the community, but it can also be deployed as a reward
for membership. It is therefore crucial that parties get this process ‘right’.
Previous studies have also shown that there is no ‘best’ way of selecting
candidates for public office. The implementation of particular mechanisms
for candidate selection carries both intended and unintended consequences
that reflect different, and often conflicting, normative visions of representative
democracy (Cross 2008; Hazan and Rahat 2010: 173–4). Changes to, and
experimentation with, the process of candidate selection will therefore reflect
this broader normative contestation (see also Chapter 3).
More frequent reforms pertaining to candidate selection might also reflect a
number of practical considerations. The first is that as long as the reform is
labeled as an ‘experiment’ or a ‘trial’, it will most likely not require a consti-
tutional amendment even though it may create a substantive change in the
process. Free of rules-based administrative constraints, political parties are
free to experiment as much as they wish. Chapter 7 discusses this issue in more
detail—as a process where political parties may in fact create reforms by
‘stealth’. The second practical consideration is the fact that there are many
different representative arenas to which this experimentation can be applied:
national, subnational, and supra-national legislatures are often treated differ-
ently in terms of candidate-selection processes, and therefore create the
opportunity for more reforms.
In recent years there has been a significant increase in scholarly interest in
the implementation of ‘primaries’ within both European democracies (Sandri
108 Party Reform
et al. 2015b; Indridason and Kristinsson 2015a; 2015b) and more widely
across the globe (Kenig et al. 2015; Gauja 2012; Hazan and Rahat 2010).
The list of political parties having now used open or semi-open primaries for
the selection of candidates or party leaders is now quite extensive: including
the French Socialists (Faucher 2015a: 804), almost all of the Spanish political
parties (Barbera and Teruel 2015), the Israeli parties (Hazan and Rahat 2010),
the Italian Partito Democratico (Vassallo and Passarelli 2016; Sandri et al.
2014), and the Canadian Liberals (Cross 2014: 176).1
While Tables 6.1–6.3 certainly indicate that there is greater willingness to
entertain the idea of semi-open and open primaries, which constitute over half
of the reforms that pertain to candidate selection, to suggest that these two
methods are becoming the dominant mode of selection overstates their prom-
inence. While their selective use by political parties across the spectrum might
indicate that a normative shift is underway, as Chapters 3 and 5 argued,
because these reforms blur the boundaries of party and give non-members a
greater say, there is still significant internal contention surrounding their
wholesale implementation. In this sense, all three slices of the ‘Swiss cheese’
model, or the three layers (intra-party, party system, and competitive system)
have not yet aligned to produce widespread reform and the wholesale imple-
mentation of primaries. This contention is explored further in Chapter 9.
What is clear from the evidence presented, however, is that parties are
moving to more inclusive methods of candidate selection, confirming trends
reported elsewhere (Hazan and Rahat 2010: 92). Each of the reform initiatives
proposed by the parties, also including the NZ Labour Party and the German
Social Democrats (even though the latter is constrained by external party
laws)2 increased inclusiveness in some way: whether this was through an open
primary (38 per cent), a semi-open primary (19 per cent), or simply expanding
the say accorded to the membership (13 per cent). For open and semi-open
primaries this has resulted in greater numbers of citizens participating (see
Gauja 2012), but whether or not it has also increased party membership is not
as clear (see Chapter 4).
Reforming Party Membership

Almost 20 per cent of the reform initiatives across the parties surveyed
involved a substantive change to the notion of party membership. In all but
one case (the removal of the requirement in the Australian Labor Party that
party members also must belong to a union), the substance of the reforms
involved the creation of a new category of ‘registered supporter’ to sit along-
side ‘traditional’ financial membership. Whether implemented informally
(four of the seven instances) or by formal constitutional amendment (three
of the seven instances), the consequence is that registered supporters are now a
feature of five of the six Australian and UK parties covered in this book, as
well as in the German and New Zealand social democratic parties. Where
these trends sit in a broader comparative context is interesting. The creation of
supporters as a formal class of partisan affiliation certainly speaks to Susan
Scarrow’s (2015: 138–45) model of the multi-speed membership party, and of
the nineteen countries that she surveyed in 2011 Australia and the UK ranked
highest in their efforts to provide a range of affiliation and engagement
options. However, placing registered supporters within the new forms of
affiliation that Scarrow identifies is more difficult. As Chapter 5 illustrates,
they appear to be qualitatively different to a ‘light membership’, because the
notion of membership itself is eschewed, but are generally more formalized
than ‘cyber members’ or social media followers. This is important as it goes to
the general pervasiveness of the trend: only 13 per cent of the sample of parties
that Scarrow surveyed (fourteen of 119 parties in 2011) offered light member-
ship as an affiliation option. In contrast, 46 per cent of the seventy-seven
parties covered in a 2015 comparative study of party membership had estab-
lished formalized supporters’ networks (Gauja and van Haute 2015: 189–90).
Due to the relative infancy of these changes to the notion of membership it
is difficult to ascertain whether these inconsistent trends are the result of case
selection (a cluster of exceptional cases), definitional and conceptual vari-
ations, or the passage of time and the fact that developments in this area are
particularly fast moving (Scarrow 2015: 138). However, given the almost
universality of supporters’ networks in the parties studied here; as well as
examples from other political parties such as New Zealand’s National, the
Canadian Liberals, and several German, Dutch, and Spanish parties (see van
Haute and Gauja 2015), this is certainly an area of scholarly inquiry that
should be given greater attention in future studies.
Policy Development
A further 16 per cent of reform initiatives over the last decade in the Austra-
lian and UK major parties have concerned the policy-development process.
The majority of these reforms, as discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5, have
represented the creation of specific policy initiatives: Think Tanks (ALP) and
Let’s Talk, Fresh Ideas, and Your Britain (UK Labour), which consolidate
the process of ‘opening up’ the party to participation from non-members
through structured policy consultations. All of these consultations have fea-
tured a significant online component through which feedback and ideas from
individuals can be received and aggregated (Gauja 2015b; 2013: 89–116). Like
the experimentation with open and semi-open primaries, reform in this area
has been achieved just as much through changes to ‘everyday’ and executive
practice not requiring constitutional amendment, as it has through
110 Party Reform
substantive rule changes. Reforms undertaken in this way potentially present
a ‘lower-cost’ activity for parties seeking to rebrand themselves—as the need
for internal approval can be circumvented, while opportunities for public
engagement can be maximized.
Nevertheless, reforms to ‘traditional’ intra-party policy structures have also
featured alongside these lower-cost activities throughout the last decade of
party organizational reform. For example, drawing inspiration from the UK
Labour Party’s National Policy Forum, which was originally established by
UK Labour in 1997 as part of its Partnership in Power reforms, the Australian
Labor Party created its own version of the National Policy Forum at the 2011
National Conference. Consolidating representative structures within the
party rather than relying on direct modes of communication with members
and supporters, the purpose of the ALP’s National Policy Forum was to
provide a ‘direct link to grassroots policy development through directly
elected members’ (ALP National Right 2011: 8; see also Cross and Gauja
2014). New Zealand Labour’s 2012 organizational review also led to the
development of a similar (though smaller) representative structure for policy
development and oversight: the Policy Council (NZ Labour Party 2012b;
2012c).3 In its 2011 reforms, the German SPD lowered the membership thresh-
old for intra-party ballots from one third to 20 per cent of members, thereby
undertaking what Bukow (2012: 9) describes as a ‘re-traditionalisation’ of party
structures and of organizational self-understanding.
Leadership Selection
Bram Wauters (2014: 62) argues that although the democratization of
leadership-selection procedures varies across countries and parties, it never-
theless constitutes a ‘clear trend’. However, Pilet and Cross (2014), using
comparative data over five decades, are more muted in their assessment.
They argue that the selection of leaders through party conventions is still
used most frequently, and that while parties do adopt more inclusive methods
when they change their selection processes, ‘the image of a universal and even
irresistible evolution towards full member votes or even towards open pri-
maries is far from reality’ (Pilet and Cross 2014: 228). The empirical patterns
here indicate that like candidate selection, the general direction of reforms to
the leadership-selection process is increasing inclusivity, although the number
of actual reforms undertaken in this area is much smaller, comprising only
10 per cent of the number of reform initiatives across all parties surveyed.
The fact that there are relatively fewer reforms to leadership selection
probably stems from the fact that different parties start from different posi-
tions: that is, the British parties already began to ‘democratize’ their selection
processes in the 1980s (Cross and Blais 2010: 44–6). Although leadership-
selection reform may only be a small proportion of change overall, it none-
theless reflects three major events: the shift away from parliamentary parties
exclusively selecting the leader in both the Australian Labor Party and NZ
Labour, and a shift to the one-member-one-vote system in UK Labour, with
the inclusion of registered and affiliate supporters and the removal of the
union bloc vote. With the conservative parties in Australia and New Zealand
still being the outlying examples of parties selecting leaders only through their
parliamentary group, the three instances reported here support the suggestion
of a general trend towards the democratization of leadership-selection
methods in parliamentary democracies (Kenig et al. 2015; Pilet and Cross
2014; Kenig 2009: 437).
As with candidate selection, although the shift to primaries for selection of
the party leader is important from the perspective of norm creation, it should
not be overstated. In only one instance, the UK Labour reforms, could the
selection process be classified as a semi-open primary, with the selectorate
comprised of individual MPs, members, and supporters, without a weighted
component. Again, the reluctance to embrace opening up the party’s
leadership-selection process, as with candidate selection, reflects the conten-
tious politics that underlie these reforms (also see Chapter 9), despite the fact
that they are usually portrayed as universal democratizing initiatives.
REFORM DIFFUSION AND CONTAGION: THE TIMING

AND DISTRIBUTION OF REFORMS
Chapter 4 examined in some detail how contagion operated as a mechanism

through which to facilitate policy transfer and learning between political
parties. In particular, it showed how the positive experiences of other political
parties are cited and used to justify the substance and the timing of reform
initiatives, acting as an important motivator for change. Yet, the concept of
contagion and its effects have not been subject to a great deal of scholarship
and empirical analysis outside the realm of policy studies. In comparative
party scholarship it is most often used as a post facto explanation for patterns
of party change, rather than something that is hypothesized, at the outset, to
have a significant effect.4
In part, this reflects the mixed, and very limited, empirical evidence on the
impact of contagion that has been assembled so far. Single-country studies of
leadership-selection reform, for example, in Canada, Belgium, and Spain,
show that contagion—parties copying one another—is a persuasive explan-
ation in explaining the trends towards democratization in these countries
(Barbera and Teruel 2015; Pilet and Cross 2014; Wauters 2014). In Spain,
112 Party Reform
for example, where political parties enjoy a relatively high degree of regional
autonomy, contagion is ‘an incremental process with implementation at the
local level, and then filtering up to regional and national contests’ (Barbera
and Teruel 2015). Nevertheless, as Pilet and Cross (2014: 226) argue, conta-
gion cannot account for cases like Italy, Portugal, or Israel where only some
parties have increased the inclusiveness of their candidate-selection processes
whereas others have not (see also Sandri et al. 2014: 98).
There are also inherent challenges in operationalizing the concept of con-
tagion. In Chapter 4, three different strategies were suggested for determining
whether a process of contagion might have occurred: by inference, motiv-
ation, and personnel transfer/migration. Two of these methods, establishing
motivation and personnel transfer are better suited to a single-country case
study or a ‘small n’ approach due to the detailed and often restricted nature of
the material that is needed to assess these trends (for example, interviews, staff
lists, etc.). The motivational approach was utilized in Chapter 4 and a limited
analysis of personnel transfer is used in Chapter 8. Establishing contagion by
inference, however, is perhaps best suited to comparative studies with a larger
number of cases, where patterns in the timing, direction, and spatial distribu-
tion of reforms can be explored.
Unlike party change, which occurs on an almost continual basis, party
reform is a relatively rare event (see, for example, Chiru et al. 2015). Yet, as
the analysis of the major Australian and UK political parties reveals, the
number and timing of reform initiatives vary considerably between parties,
ranging from a party like the Nationals (Australia), which experimented once
with one open primary, to UK Labour, which undertook two major organ-
izational reviews during the same period (2006–15). Nonetheless, when we
compare the timing of reforms amongst our parties, some interesting patterns
emerge.
Looking within Australia and the United Kingdom as individual countries,
there is some evidence of contagion in the relatively close timing of the
adoption of certain reforms, but this does not extend to all types of reform,
or to all parties. Tables 6.4 and 6.5 present the timings of the first reform
initiative for four different types of reform: the introduction of registered
supporters’ networks, trials of open or semi-open primaries, changes to lead-
ership selection, and the implementation of policy forums. Here contagion, or
copying the practices of other parties, might be inferred from the clustering or
sequential adoption of reform initiatives.
In Australia, after the idea of registered supporters featured in the Victorian
Liberal Party’s Liberal Renewal reform initiative in 2008, the Australian
Labor Party adopted it the following year. Open and semi-open primaries
were both trialled by the Labor Party and the Nationals in 2010, and subse-
quently recommended to the Liberals by the Reith Report in the following
year. While the timing of these two reform types indicates that parties may
T A B L E 6 . 4 Australia: timing of reforms
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Supporters Libs ALP

Open/semi-open ALP Libs
primaries Nats
Leadership ALP
Policy forums ALP
T A B L E 6 . 5 UK: timing of reforms
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Supporters Lab Lib Cons Lab*

Dems
Open/semi-open primaries Cons Lab
Leadership Lab
Policy forums Lab
* Note that the Labour Party previously had a registered supporters’ scheme (the Labour Supporters’ Network
2006–9), which was reintroduced in 2011.
well have copied, or learned from each other, in the area of leadership
selection and the implementation of open policy forums the Labor Party
has stood alone.
In the UK, it is only in the establishment of registered supporters as a
category of affiliation that contagion seems to have played a part, with the
Labour Party having originally implemented the scheme in 2006, after which
it was picked up by the Liberal Democrats (2008), the Conservatives (2009),
and then reintroduced again by Labour in 2011. Interestingly, ten years
passed since the Conservatives first used open primary meetings to select
some of their parliamentary candidates until the idea of a semi-open primary
was rather grudgingly adopted by the Labour Party for the selection of its
London mayoral candidate. The analysis presented in Chapter 3 provides a
possible explanation for this: whilst the practices of other political parties
might facilitate party reform, internal contestation over the nature of the
reforms is a significant factor that political parties must also grapple with.
As suggested in Chapter 2, reforms are most likely to occur when motivations
at all three levels (intra-party, party system, and political system) align, and in
the absence of intra-party acquiescence, the reform agenda may stall.
Based on the timing of the reforms alone, evidence of contagion effects
across both countries is difficult to ascertain. Again, looking at the introduc-
tion of registered supporters, there was a clustering of activity across both
democracies from 2006 to 2009, with the UK Labour Party initiating the
process in 2006 (Gauja 2013: 108). However, whilst we also see the subsequent
114 Party Reform
trial of open and semi-open primaries adopted in Australia, this came four
years after the UK Conservatives had first used the method. A similar lag
occurred between the first use of policy consultations in the UK Labour Party
and their later adoption by the ALP.
The issue of timing is therefore a difficult one. Is there, using this method of
inference, a particular time period within which a reform might said to have
been copied by others, and hence contagion said to have occurred? The
example of leadership-selection reform is illustrative here and demonstrates
the need for a mixed-methods approach to analysing contagion. As explained
further in Chapter 8, proponents of leadership-selection reforms in both the
Australian and New Zealand social democratic parties cited the experience of
UK political parties, and in particular UK Labour, in extending their selec-
tion processes beyond the parliamentary party as both a reason for reform
and as an experience that could be learned from. Yet, the ‘democratization’ of
candidate selection in the UK Labour Party occurred thirty years earlier. If
we relied on the timing of reforms as inference of contagion, then this would
not be an example of such an event, but if motivational factors and the
movement of personnel from party to party are considered, then this would
be a good example of the transfer, or copying, of practices across political
parties. A final caveat regarding contagion should also be added: in the
absence of motivational evidence, it is difficult to distinguish contagion
from the effects of diffusion or convergence. Diffusion and convergence
present similar explanations for the transfer of practices or institutions, but
these concepts emphasize external constraints and pressures rather than the
primacy of actors within the organization (Marsh and Sharman 2009). While
contagion does certainly appear to play some part in organizational reform,
the process is difficult to identify and isolate, and is certainly an area of
academic inquiry that could be developed further in the future.
PARTY CHARACTERISTICS AND PARTY REFORM
Previous comparative studies of changes to leadership-selection procedures

suggest that reform is more common amongst newer and hence usually
smaller political parties (Chiru et al. 2015: 46; Pilet and Cross 2014: 226;
Cross and Blais 2012: 39). They have also shown that political parties of the
left will be more pre-disposed to undertaking reforms aimed at democratiza-
tion, or opening up the process (see, for example, Bukow 2013, cited in Spier
and Klein 2015: 89).5 The logic is that newer parties will embrace reforms as a
way of differentiating themselves from their competitors and that party type
matters, because as explained in Chapter 3, ideological and organizational
cultures play a significant role in shaping the trajectory of reform. Newer parties
benefit from the fact that party structures are more malleable, and are not as yet
highly institutionalized or regarded as part of the tradition of the party.
Furthermore, as Chiru et al. (2015: 33) argue, parties of a certain ideological
disposition (extreme right and authoritarian successor parties) might find it
easier to maintain centralized structures than parties of the left, or social
democratic parties, which face greater pressures to build democratic party
organizations, or to adapt existing structures to shifting participatory demands.
While the design of the research study presented here does not allow for an
analysis of the impact of newer party status—all six parties in Australia and
the United Kingdom are established political parties—some interesting obser-
vations can be made about the impact of party type. The first is that with the
exception of policy development, in which the two social democratic political
parties have clearly led the way in implementing more representative pro-
cesses and broader policy consultations, a broader range of political parties
(including conservative and liberal democratic) has undertaken reform initia-
tives designed to create new types of partisan affiliation, and to experiment
with open and semi-open primaries for candidate and leadership selection. In
the example of the implementation and trial of primaries for candidate
selection, the reforms were even led by conservative parties—by the National
Party in Australia and by the Conservatives in the UK. It therefore cannot be
concluded, in these two countries, that reform and renewal are the preserve of
the left. This may in part reflect the process involved: despite the accepted
logic that parties of the left are more amenable to reform, as this book has
argued—most reforms are contentious. Therefore, in political parties with
existing democratic decision-making structures, this may provide an add-
itional hurdle for many parties of the left.
Nevertheless, party family does appear to have an effect on patterns of
reform in the way in which it intersects with the mechanics of contagion. The
discussion of Chapter 4, for example, noted the propensity of political parties
to look to—and cite examples of—reforms undertaken in sister parties around
the world as a justification for their own organizational changes. Within the
group of four social democratic parties analysed here (Australia, Germany,
New Zealand, and the United Kingdom), there are several examples where
similar reforms have taken place in two or more of these parties. Between
2009 and 2012, registered supporters’ networks were established in all four
parties, within the space of twelve months from 2012 to 2013 both the
Australian Labor Party and NZ Labour had reformed their leadership-
selection processes, and three years after the Australian Labor Party staged
a semi-open primary for the selection of its Sydney mayoral candidate, the
UK Labour Party did the same for London.
116 Party Reform
LEADERSHIP CHANGE AND ELECTORAL PERFORMANCE
Drawing more broadly on the comparative research on party organizational

change, the two most important drivers of reform are said to be electoral
setbacks, which mean that reform is most likely to occur when a party is in
opposition, and a change of party leader (Chiru et al. 2015: 46–7; Pilet and
Cross 2014: 226; Cross and Blais 2012; Harmel et al. 1995). As the driving
theme of this book is to develop a framework for understanding the processes
and motivations for reform—that is, why change occurs rather than simply
when—the role of electoral setbacks (and the associated process of rebuilding
and rebranding) is approached from this perspective in Chapter 4. Similarly,
an explanation of why leadership change is important through an analysis of
the role and impact of individual party leaders is provided in Chapter 8. The
purpose of this section is simply to place the parties studied here within a
broader comparative context.
Of the thirty discrete party-reform initiatives adopted by Australian and
UK parties concerning membership, policy development, and candidate and
leadership selection, only seven (23 per cent) occurred while the party was in
government. Of these seven initiatives, four were policy consultations and one
was the establishment of the ALP supporters’ network. Only two concerned
candidate and leadership selection (the Conservatives’ use of open primaries
in the lead up to the 2015 general election in the UK and changes to the ALP
leadership). Hence the trends described here overwhelmingly confirm previ-
ous findings that suggest that party reforms happen when a party is in
opposition. The same is also true for the experiences of the NZ Labour
Party and the German SPD. As described in Chapter 4, the timing of the
major reform reviews undertaken by the parties also reflects the argument that
reform is more likely to occur after an electoral setback, though it may take
several years for recommendations to come to fruition. An alternate, but
complementary, logic is that political parties, whilst in government, have
relatively little time and concern for pursuing organizational reform. In the
words of the Secretary of the Queensland Branch of the Australian Labor
Party, Anthony Chisholm,
The truth is that being in government for so long at the state level
strangled the life out of the party. When you are in government, you
base every decision within the party on what is in the best interest of
maintaining government. The reality is that what is in the short-term
political interest of a Labor government is not always in the long-term
interests of the Labor Party . . . We won’t win back government unless the
party is in better shape.6
A similar perspective was provided by former conservative prime minister

John Howard, who saw that there was ‘less of an incentive’ for reform whilst
in government: ‘it’s very easy for people to say look, don’t rock the boat.
We’re in power. Things are going well’. However, Howard also acknowledged
that reform while in opposition also presented challenges, particularly for the
leader: ‘on the other hand, when you’re in government, the authority of the
party leader to bring about change is enormous. It’s harder in opposition,
because by definition, every opposition leader is a failure—because he’s still
an opposition leader’ (interview with author, 2015).
The only instance of reform reported here that appears to ‘buck the trend’
of the pattern of electoral defeat/opposition is the changes introduced to the
selection and removal of the Australian Labor Party leader in 2013 (Kefford
2014: 7). As described on p. 152, these changes were introduced by Kevin
Rudd shortly after replacing Julia Gillard as Labor leader and prime minister.
However, while the ALP might not have suffered an electoral defeat, opinion
polls at the time of the change indicated that the party was headed for a
massive defeat at the impending federal election (Barry 2015: 167). Electoral
considerations therefore still weighed heavily on the decision. In the context of
the leadership turmoil the party had faced, the act of ‘democratizing’ the
selection process in a very public way could be interpreted as a pre-emptive
rather than reactive way of mitigating an electoral setback. It also serves to
highlight the relationship between party reform and a new leader, which can
be seen in many of the other reform initiatives described here: for example, the
Refounding Labour project under Ed Miliband, the 2010 National Review
under Julia Gillard, the introduction of open primaries for the selection of
parliamentary candidates under David Cameron, NZ Labour Organisational
Review under David Shearer, and the SPD’s Party on the Move initiative
under Sigmar Gabriel. In each of these instances the reform project was
initiated less than twelve months after the change of leader.
CONCLUSIONS
Marking the transition from an examination of the motivations for party

reform to an analysis of the process of reform, the central aim of the chapter
was to document the major patterns of organizational change that have
occurred in our sample of parties, and to place these within a broader com-
parative context. While demonstrating that parties in the UK and Australia
have experienced similar trajectories of reform, the expectation that parties at
the left of the political spectrum should be more concerned with reforms that
promote organizational democracy was not clearly demonstrated. It showed
that the most common type of reform within all parties concerned candidate
selection, and provided further evidence to support the general trend that has
118 Party Reform
been noted in previous studies towards increasing the inclusiveness of the
selectorate. This was a trend also evident in the direction of leadership-
selection reform in the Australian and New Zealand social democratic parties,
though by no means were changes to leadership selection as frequent. The
chapter also noted the ubiquity of registered supporters’ networks in the case
under consideration, and the relatively high instances of reforms undertaken
without constitutional approval—either through experimentation or by execu-
tive changes to social media and outreach activities. The timing of reforms
provided only mixed evidence to support the contagion hypothesis, but con-
firmed the importance of electoral setbacks and time in opposition as import-
ant factors in the timing of when reforms are introduced.
NOTES
1. For a comparative list of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ primaries in use for leader, chief
executive, and legislative candidate elections as at December 2014, see Sandri and
Seddone (2015: 10).
2. According to German party laws, the formal selection of candidates for public
office, as well as the selection of the party leader resides with the party congress
(Spier and Klein 2015: 88–9; SPD 2011: 6).
3. New Zealand Labour’s Policy Council comprises fourteen members, representing
the rank-and-file membership, the parliamentary caucus, Maori organizations, the
Party president, and general secretary. Provision is also made for representation
from the Party’s Sector Councils (e.g. Women’s Council, Young Labour, etc.)
(Constitution and Rules 2014, Rules 180–4). This contrasts with the much larger
membership of the UK Labour National Policy Forum (194) and the Australian
Labor Party’s National Policy Forum (69) (see Gauja 2013: 61–2).
4. There are, of course, exceptions—see, for example, Wauters (2014); Cross and Blais
(2012).
5. However, Chiru et al. (2015: 47–8) found that ideology plays little role in
influencing a party’s propensity to change its leadership-selection rules. See also
Wauters (2014: 65), who charted similar trajectories of leadership-selection reform
across left, right, and centre Belgian parties.
6. Quoted in the Weekend Australian, 14–15 July 2012, p. 19.
7
The Process of Reform

When the Problem Becomes the Solution
Chapters 3 to 5 employed a three-level framework, looking at forces within

political parties, the competitive pressures between them, and the broader
systemic factors at play, in order to identify and analyse the main motivations
for party reform. However, as was flagged in the Introduction and has become
increasingly evident when looking at the actual examples of reform, the
demarcations between these three levels are not always clear. For example,
the aspiration of organizing to win, which might be considered a pressure
emanating from the competitive sphere of party politics, was often also
associated with the need to build party memberships and engage a broader
range of citizens in new and exciting ways.
In this chapter I undertake a systematic analysis of a sample of party review
documents to explore the ways in which motivating factors at each of these
three levels (intra-party, interparty, and system) are integrated and reconciled
in party rhetoric to essentially turn what could have been originally conceived
as a problematic exercise into a solution. In doing so the chapter shows how
some of the inevitable tensions associated with reform are mitigated in a
carefully constructed process that is designed to ensure that all motivating
pressures push in the same direction, and to achieve a consensus between the
relevant actors within the party. Returning to the Swiss cheese metaphor, it
explains how actors are able to manipulate the size of holes in each slice of
cheese (or the urgency of reform at each level) so that they align, to create the
trajectory for reform.
The first section of the chapter argues for the importance of analysing party
reforms not only as a mechanism to change rules, but also as a symbolic and
rhetorical exercise that carries a significant branding dimension. The second
section analyses party reviews as strategic documents that aspire to achieve
intra-party consensus through consultation, that reframe problems as solu-
tions, and that also speak to the public by telling a story of renewal, of
modernization, and of inclusiveness. The final section of the chapter turns
to the implementation of these reviews and other reform initiatives, examining
the range of procedural hurdles that are necessary to make organizational
change happen within a party.
120 Party Reform
TALKING ABOUT CHANGE
The idea that decline is inevitable actually directly threatens our success
at the ballot and our likelihood of remaining in power in the next
parliament . . . We need to change this because if we anticipate failure
then that’s what we’ll experience. (Liberal Democrats membership offi-
cer, interview with author)
As outlined in the introduction, this book takes a rather different approach to

existing studies of party organizational change by using analytical approaches
appropriated from constructivist and discursive institutionalism and focusing
specifically on the concept of reform. Viewed through such a lens, the process
of reform and the way in which changes are portrayed are just as important
topics of analysis as the changes themselves. Returning the heuristic of the
‘Swiss cheese’ model developed in Chapter 2, the first part of the book
(Chapters 3–5) analysed parties’ and key intra-party actors’ own perceptions
of their internal, competitive, and systemic political contexts in order to
identify the main motivations for change (or the holes in each slice of cheese).
Given that change is most likely to occur when all the holes in each of the
different slices align, this chapter is concerned with exploring the ways in
which political parties, and political actors, can manipulate the position or
diameter of these holes to ensure that the holes line up—or that motivations at
each of the three levels are consistent and push in the same direction.
In this process, norms and beliefs play an important role, as they can either
be deployed or constructed by actors to mobilize followers and develop
consensus with the organization (Hall 2010: 211). Hence universal concepts
such as ‘democratization’ and ‘modernization’ play a key part in reform
narratives because they are ostensibly based on ‘common knowledge’ and
‘shared understandings’. By pursuing an agenda of party reform, political
actors are inevitably engaged in a ‘process of political persuasion’ (Schmidt
2009: 532). Vivien Schmidt argues that ‘actors can gain power from their ideas
as they give power to those ideas’, and that
Discursive power comes from the ability of agents with good ideas to use
discourse effectively, whether to build a discursive coalition for reform
against entrenched interests in the coordinative policy sphere or to inform
and orientate the public in the communicative political sphere. Conveying
good policy ideas through a persuasive discourse helps political actors win
elections and gives policy actors a mandate to implement their ideas.
(Schmidt 2009: 533, cited in Lowndes and Roberts 2013: 101)
Although Schmidt’s analysis refers to events in international political econ-

omy, the argument has equal resonance for studies of change within political
parties. Several useful insights can also be drawn from the literature on
political marketing, which conceptualizes political parties as brands that
The Process of Reform 121
‘consumers’ choose from at an election, which represents the point of sale
(Smith and French 2009; Needham 2005: 346). As Lees-Marshment (2011:
45–6) argues, a party’s brand encompasses much more than just its policies: it
includes its organization, conferences, and the behaviour of its parliamentar-
ians, office holders, and members. Insofar as brand attachment is analogous
with partisanship, then the process of reform presents an opportunity to
present new values and attributes to members, supporters, and the public—
depending on how widely the reforms are publicized. If we accept the argu-
ment of governance scholars such as David Marsh and Paul Fawcett (2011:
524) as well as theorists such as Henrik Bang (2004) that politics and govern-
ance has moved into a period of ‘late modernity’, characterized by the
increasing importance of the discursive arena, then the role that branding
plays as the means by which political parties and networks of elites commu-
nicate their message to the public becomes increasingly significant.
Any successful process of party reform must therefore try to balance two
inter-related objectives: to develop consensus on the change(s) from stake-
holders within the party (members, factions, elites, etc.), and also to commu-
nicate changes to the broader public in such a way as to effectively ‘rebrand’
or reposition the party. As the chapter demonstrates, there are challenges in
achieving this balance. For example, Lees-Marshment argues that ‘changing
parties to suit the external market will usually encourage opposition from
members, because they think it threatens long-standing party beliefs’ (2011:
177). Apart from the nature of the organizational changes proposed, the
strategies that political parties can use to balance these imperatives include
consultation and strategic communication.
PARTY REVIEWS AS A SOURCE OF DATA
The primary source of data used to analyse the process of party reform is
internal party reviews. As Chapter 6 explained, organizational reform is not a
particularly frequent phenomenon, however, the last decade (2006–15) has
seen a clustering of major reviews—as opposed to ad hoc initiatives—among
social democratic parties in not only Australia and the United Kingdom, but
also Germany and New Zealand. Consequently, the analysis here will draw
on four corresponding review documents: the 2010 National Review (Austra-
lian Labor Party), Building a One Nation Labour Party: The Collins Review
into Labour Party Reform (UK Labour), Party on the Move: The SPD’s
Organizational Policy Program (German SPD), and Labour’s Organisational
Review 2012 Discussion Paper (NZ Labour). The main features of these
reviews are detailed in Table 7.1. Because the aim of the analysis is to better
122 Party Reform
T A B L E 7 . 1 Party organizational reviews
Review Party Publication Author(s) or review committee Release

date members
2010 National ALP (Australia) February Steve Bracks (ex-premier), John Public
Review 2011 Faulkner (MP), Bob Carr
(ex-premier)
Party on the SPD (Germany) September SPD Party Board Public
Move 2011
Labour’s New Zealand May 2012 Rick Barker (MP), Ruth Chapman Public
Organisational Labour (party activist and office holder),
Review Mark Hutchinson (organizational
analyst), Nanaia Mahuta (MP)
Building a One UK Labour February Ray Collins (Labour peer) Public
Nation Labour 2012
Party
understand the process of reform and how consensus and image is developed
through a largely inductive approach, focusing on four social democratic
parties is appropriate for several reasons. First, major party reviews in the
time period under consideration have simply been more common amongst
social democratic parties—enabling the assembly of a more comprehensive
body of evidence. Second, because of the traditional association between
social democratic organization and intra-party democracy, reforming these
parties inevitably means balancing a range of vocal internal party interests
(members, affiliated organizations and trade unions, etc.). Consequently,
conclusions drawn from the analysis are only directly applicable to the social
democratic parties under consideration, but some reflection is made on the
generalizability of the findings and several comparisons made to organiza-
tional reviews beyond the social democratic party family.
In 1994, Susan Scarrow argued that ‘changes in party perceptions are
difficult to recognize both because much party decision-making is diffuse,
and because parties are not introspective’. She also noted that ‘party strat-
egists seldom conduct systematic assessments of party organizational needs
and, even when they do so, seldom publicize their conclusions’ (Scarrow 1994:
58). In the past twenty years, review documents have become more common-
place, and when supplemented with other sources of data, such as media
reports and interviews, provide a stronger source of data with which to
evaluate the changing nature of elite perceptions. Not only can internal
party reviews be used to examine the process of reform, they also provide a
good—if not often underutilized—source of data on party organizations.
Particularly in contexts where access to the internal machinations of political
parties is tightly guarded, party reviews provide an important and often very
detailed source of information on the ‘state’ of the party organization, a
reflection of how the party perceives its strengths and weaknesses and its
future direction.
One might argue, however, that party reviews are simply public relations
exercises designed to diffuse criticism after an electoral defeat, in a way similar
to how governments set up public inquiries to deflect damage after a public
scandal (Barry 2015: 164). Working against this perception is the fact that
reviews are not always publicly released in a timely manner (if they are
released at all), often present findings deeply critical to the party, and
involve a substantial investment of time and organizational resources. Former
Australian Liberal Party politician Peter Reith, for example, revealed that he
had to ‘force the public release’ of his 2011 report.1 While reviews may deflect
criticism, recognition of what is wrong with the organizational structure of the
party and what could be done better is an important part of achieving
consensus.
As Chapter 6 notes, each of these reviews was commissioned within twelve
months of an electoral setback. Although the Australian Labor Party did not
suffer defeat at the 2010 federal election, it did reduce its primary vote share
and lose eleven seats in the House of Representatives, which meant that it
could only govern with the support of the Greens and the Independent (non-
party aligned) parliamentarians. Audience is also an important consideration.
While all of these reviews were prepared and circulated to an internal audience
(party members and conference delegates) in preparation for rule changes,
each review also made it into the public domain. All four reviews were reported
in mainstream media at the time at which they were announced and when the
final reports were released. Each of the reviews was authored by, or the
committees comprised of, prominent party politicians, either ‘statesmen’,
parliamentarians, or high-ranking party officials.2 The SPD and New Zealand
party review panels were also assisted by a broader group of advisers, which in
the case of New Zealand Labour included a former political director and
communications analyst and a technology businessman.3
PARTY REFORM AND CONSULTATION
Political parties in the Westminster democracies have routinely used consult-

ation exercises as political engagement strategies in the development of party
and governmental policy (Gauja 2013: 102–4). Although debate exists as to
the extent to which consultation fosters ‘genuine’ participation (see, for
example, Faucher-King and Le Galès 2010: 121; Coleman 2004), it is seen
as an increasingly important participatory tool amongst public policy and
124 Party Reform
communications scholars (see, for example, Coleman and Shane 2012). Much
of the credibility of ‘consultations’ and ‘conversations’, as practised by polit-
ical parties, depends on the meaningfulness and authenticity of the intentions
behind these exercises, as well as the intended audience (Coleman 2004: 115).
In the context of party reviews, consultation potentially operates as an
important source of legitimacy for any recommendations, demonstrating
that members’ concerns have been listened to. In analysing how consultation
with party members is used as a part of the process of organizational reform,
this section examines two aspects of the process: the extent of the consultation
and how members’ views are represented.
Extent of Consultation
The party reviews analysed differed somewhat in the extent to which members
were consulted in the deliberations of the committees, and how this was
highlighted in the reform documents. However, the fact that consultation
took place was a common theme amongst all four. This ranged from the
extensive and multi-faceted consultation exercises conducted by the Austra-
lian Labor Party and the German Social Democrats (Bracks et al. 2011; SPD
2011), to the NZ Labour Organisational Reform Committee’s more ad hoc
approach of consulting ‘widely with members’, talking to those outside the
party—both in New Zealand and overseas—as well as offering people the
opportunity to comment via an ‘online facility’ (NZ Labour Party 2012a: 3).
The Building a One Nation Labour Party review reflected a more individual-
ized approach to consultation, in which Ray Collins (the Labour Lords peer
charged with undertaking the review) ‘visited every region and nation, meet-
ing and talking to CLPs [Constituency Labour Parties], regional boards, trade
unions and socialist societies to listen to people’s views’ (Collins 2014: 5).
Depending on the party, review consultations were conducted through a
mix of interviews, surveys, forums, party meetings, and working groups, as
well as the solicitation of written submissions from interested groups and
individuals inside and outside the parties. While written submissions were
the most ubiquitous method of gathering feedback in the four reviews exam-
ined, the Australian Labor Party used its 2010 National Review to experiment
with online processes. In parallel to the party’s call for written submissions,
the 2010 review created an online ‘Think Tank’ area for both party members
and the public to ‘put forward their brief suggestions for Party reform’. In
what was essentially the cultivation of a process of consultation that was
highly individualized—relying on short statements from individual members
of the public—the volume of submissions was key to the legitimacy of the
exercise. The review noted that: ‘an extraordinary 3,500 members and sup-
porters chose to participate in the Review in this way. These short submissions
were then compiled into one document, with views highlighted and aggre-
gated. A number of recommendations for this report are directly drawn from
this consultative process’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 6).
The German SPD organizational reform consultation was specifically
designed to integrate all levels of the party into the exercise—beginning with
a survey of all SPD local and district associations—which was distributed
back to the party. Based on the results of the survey and the ensuing discus-
sion, the executive formulated a series of questions for reform and formed
intra-party working groups in order to discuss them and develop recom-
mendations. At this point, an advisory board was also created, consisting of
academics and ‘experts from other organisations, associations and enter-
prises’ (Totz 2011: 9), providing the opportunity for dialogue not only within
the party, but drawing from the experiences of other political organizations.4
This first stage of the review process ran for a little over a year (from March
2010 to April 2011) and was followed by a second stage in which the discus-
sions, views, and opinions from the various workshops and surveys were
formulated into policy proposals by the party’s general secretary and a
representative committee of all Land and district associations. A special
conference to discuss the proposals was also held, executive visits made to
the local and district associations, and further feedback was solicited, in what
was a very comprehensive process of consultation and advocating the message
of reform.
As Totz (2011: 9–10) argues, this consultation process was ‘completely
different’ to previous reform processes, which were initiated at the level of
the executive and then fed down through the party. By contrast, the SPD’s
2011 Party on the Move project was distinctly branded as a bottom-up
process, under the motto ‘the party first, then the committee’ (Totz 2011: 9),
through which the party, ‘for the first time in the history of the SPD . . . ques-
tioned all local branches and sub-districts about their working procedures and
their expectations’ (SPD 2011: 2). Importantly, irrespective of the changes
proposed, the process itself—as a consultative, bottom-up, and open forum—
was marketed as an integral part of the reforms. Jurgen Hitzges, head of the
‘Party Life’ department of the SPD Executive, argued that ‘given the
approach that has been taken, the process of party reform is already part of
party reform’ (cited in Totz 2011: 10). Sebastian Bukow, however, is more
critical of the way in which the SPD marketed the process versus the reality. In
his assessment, the reform process ‘was more or less the usual procedure:
working groups were formed, experts invited, papers and resolutions pre-
pared, discussed, adjusted and finally enacted’ (Bukow 2012: 7).
If we analyse party reviews as strategic exercises, then the disjuncture
between the way in which consultation is portrayed—and the reality of the
process—is not really surprising. The reviews described above, particularly
those of the ALP and the SPD, illustrate the way in which consultation is used
126 Party Reform
to bolster the legitimacy of the reform process, whether this is done through
an online consultation, intra-party meetings, surveys, etc. Although different
mechanisms for consultation exist, in all reviews, consultation has been
highlighted at the beginning of the review and used to frame the discussion
that follows. The ALP in particular took great pains in emphasizing the
quality of the submissions, the work put in by members, and the fact that
they were read and acknowledged. Over 800 written submissions were
received through the party review website, with the review noting ‘the many
hours of work that went into those submissions’ as well as the presentations
made by stakeholders at review forums and workshops (Bracks et al. 2011: 4).
Adopting a slightly different angle, the NZ Labour Party highlighted the
positive experience felt by members in being able to participate: ‘members
frequently commented that they valued the opportunity to have their say’ (NZ
Labour Party 2012a: 3).
How Are Party Members’ Views Represented?

One aspect of the reviews that is particularly interesting (and perhaps unex-
pected if we view these documents solely as a marketing exercise) is rather
than portray the political party as a vibrant organization, the reviews openly
(and prominently) acknowledge the disquiet of rank-and-file party members,
referring to some of the more sobering results of the consultation process. The
most prominent example of this is provided by the Australian Labor Party’s
2010 National Review, which highlights the extent of disaffection within the
party by quoting two full pages of verbatim examples of ‘what members and
supporters believe is wrong, and what needs to change’ (Bracks et al. 2011:
7–8). Each section of the report was headed with a quote, each highly critical
of the party organization. For example, the section titled ‘Growing the Labor
Party’ began with the statement from a member that ‘There is a huge rift, a
massive divide between rank and file members and the leadership who show
them very little respect’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 13).
This exclusion is felt in terms of the lack of opportunities for policy
development, participation in the selection of party personnel (including
candidates and leaders), patchy communication, the negative influence of
factions or unions, and the moribund activities of local branches. While
these key themes are evident across all the reports examined, the actual
evidence used by the party review committees to substantiate these claims
varies significantly. The German Social Democrats, for example, conducted a
survey of 9,000 local and 400 district party associations as part of the first
stage of their Party on the Move reform project. While around 44 per cent of
local associations participated in the survey, only an average of 9.3 members
participated in answering the survey in each local association. The SPD
Executive nonetheless regarded this depth and breadth of participation a
success (Totz 2011: 10–11). Two key themes emerged from the survey: that
party members wanted to be included more in political decision making,
particularly input on policy through membership surveys, and that they
were largely reluctant to open party decision making on candidate selection
and policy to non-members, though indicative surveys on major policy issues
were regarded by members surveyed as a positive development (Totz 2011;
Bukow 2012).
The three other review processes used qualitative evidence gathered from
working groups, interviews, and submissions. As an example, the 2010 ALP
National Review relied heavily on directly quoting members’ feedback to
highlight the extent of disaffection and to substantiate the need for change.
This included the following statements by party members:
• ‘Many branches feel very frustrated and ignored these days.’
• ‘The rank-and-file are given no voice in the party.’
• ‘Members have given up. They feel that their only function is to turn up on
polling day and spend a day in the sun handing out how to vote cards.
Members want to be involved at a local level at the bare minimum.’
• ‘We need to make our branches more relevant and factions less relevant.’
(Bracks et al. 2011: 7)
In each of these reports, members’ views are both aggregated and presented
unanimously—there is little suggestion of any substantial division on the
nature and cause of the problem, or on the direction for reform. The mem-
bership is referred to in calls for action as a coherent entity, for example, ‘there
is a clear view amongst candidates and ordinary party members that . . . ’, ‘it is
clear from the majority of feedback . . . ’ (Collins 2014: 31, 34), ‘contributors
wanted . . . ’ and ‘there was strong support for . . . ’ (NZ Labour 2012a: 8).
The 2010 ALP Review Committee went as far as to comment that it ‘was
struck with the consistency and the strength of the views put to it’ (Bracks
et al. 2011: 7). In contrast to dissatisfaction with several aspects of the party,
the reviews also contain statements and evidence of widespread support for
the reform process itself. For example, the fact that the ALP 2010 National
Review received the ‘highest number of submissions received by a national
review in the Party’s history’ was ostensibly a clear demonstration of ‘the
deep interest and concern our members and supporters have in the Party’s
future’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 6). Similarly, like the way in which the process of
reform in the German SPD was constructed as synonymous with the reforms
themselves, the UK Labour Party explicitly aimed to build support through
inclusion. In the Building a One Nation Labour Party Interim Report,
Ray Collins (2013b: 3) argued that ‘radical and sustainable reform can
only succeed with us working together. This is what it means to build a
movement’.
128 Party Reform
The extent to which members are consulted and how their views are
represented in internal reviews reflects the broader politics of the review
documents, and the audiences and constituencies to which they must appeal.
The reviews reflect two distinct ways of achieving consensus: through the
widespread use of consultation or deference to the wisdom and experience
of the authors of the report. In this way, the voice and role of members in the
review process may either be emphasized or muted. Nevertheless, irrespective
of whether or not members are consulted, their views are represented across
all reform documents in a consistent way. Dissatisfaction is widely acknow-
ledged rather than hidden, and several key themes emerge (lack of opportun-
ities in policy development, candidate selection, the problematic role of
factions, etc.), which define the nature of the problem to be addressed.
PARTY REVIEWS BEYOND THE SOCIAL

DEMOCRATIC PARTIES
Owing to the limited availability of systematic data, the previous analysis of

consultation and the representation of members’ views in party reform
documents and processes was limited to social democratic parties. How-
ever, there are several examples of contemporary party reviews in the
Australian Liberals (at both state and federal levels) that were not originally
intended for public release, but that were subsequently leaked to the media,
or obtained by the researcher through contacts in the individual parties,
which provide the basis for several interesting comparisons. In addition, the
2009 report of the Change Commission for the Canadian Liberals, Advan-
cing Change Together: A Time to Act, also serves as an additional useful
illustration of a review within the context of a party of the liberal family
(Liberal Party, Canada 2009).
Two of these reviews, the Canadian Liberals’ Change Commission report
and the 2008 Victorian (Australian) Liberal Party’s Liberal Renewal docu-
ment (the final report of the Party Futures Committee) closely resembled the
Australian and German social democratic party consultations in the breadth
and depth of individuals and groups consulted, as well as the frank way in
which their views were communicated and the types of concerns raised. The
foreword to the Victorian Liberal Renewal report, for example, noted that
‘our consultations have shown that members of the Party expect to be per-
sonally involved in the main activities of the Party, but that at present many
feel excluded from the kind of participation they want’ (Liberal Party,
Victoria 2008: iii). The party undertook what it claimed to be a ‘highly
consultative process over a period of more than six months’, during which
time it surveyed all financial members and those who had resigned or not
renewed their memberships in recent years. This survey data showed that
‘only 5 per cent of members who responded believed that their objectives in
becoming a party member were being fully met’ and that only 22 per cent were
satisfied with the opportunities they have to contribute to policy development
(Liberal Party, Victoria 2008: 16).
Like the Australian Labor Party, the Canadian Liberals’ Change Commis-
sion review emphasized the success of online town hall meetings and consult-
ation initiatives in achieving a wide variety of submissions from all corners of
the party, with a total of 2,056 responses received (Liberal Party, Canada
2009: 5). Quotes from members and participants in the consultation were used
extensively throughout the report, and certainly not all of them were positive.
For example, the report noted that ‘many members who communicated with
us do not feel that they are being provided with the opportunities that are their
right under the constitution. They have been disenfranchised’ (Liberal Party,
Canada 2009: 14).
The Victorian Liberal’s Futures Committee also held a range of workshops
with party members, branches conducted their own meetings to talk about the
reforms and fed feedback through to the Committee, and five focus groups
were held (two with members, one with former members, one with supporters,
and one with Liberal voters). These focus groups provided ‘interesting insights
into what people are or would be looking for out of their Party membership’
(Liberal Party, Victoria 2008: 7). According to the committee’s report, over
1,600 survey responses were received and 130 written submissions were lodged
in response to an interim discussion paper produced after the first round of
consultations. A detailed explanation of the consultation process was pro-
vided at the beginning of the review.
This is not to say that the consultation processes of conservative party
reviews in Australia always bear resemblance to their social democratic
counterparts. The 2014 NSW Liberal Party Review, conducted by former
prime minister John Howard (2014), sheds little light on the process of con-
sultation used, apart from two minor references to a ‘Party Reform’ survey,
which was conducted prior to the work of the Howard Committee, but not
substantially referenced in the committee’s findings (Howard 2014: 1, 3).5
Membership consultation was also not emphasized in the Reith Review of
the Liberal Party and the 2010 federal election, which relied instead on
discussions with elites, such as those involved with the federal and state
executives of the party, parliamentarians, candidates, etc. (Reith 2011: 5).6
References to what the membership think are almost entirely absent from the
Reith Report. In the section covering the introduction of intra-party plebis-
cites, for example, Reith (2011: 20–1) cites the writings of former prime
ministers Howard and Menzies, and refers to the activities and experiences
of ‘Divisions’, but makes no mention of the preferences of party members.
130 Party Reform
With a limited number of examples, care should be taken not to draw too
many generalizations from these comparisons. What is interesting, however,
is that no clear trends emerge—the Victorian Liberal Renewal report and the
Canadian Liberal’s Change Commission report were the culmination of a
large-scale consultative process that gave significant voice to the members,
where the Howard and Reith reviews were relatively closed and made little
attempt to consult with, or express the views of the wider membership. The
extent of consultation does not correspond neatly with whether the reviews
were released publicly or not. All three reviews were not written for public
release, though the Reith Review was leaked to the media almost immediately
after it was handed down.
What the comparisons between conservative and social democratic party
reform reviews do highlight, however, are the two main strategies deployed in
the crafting of reform processes and documents to achieve legitimacy and
foster consensus. The first strategy, as demonstrated by the social democratic
party reviews as well as the Canadian Liberals’ Change Commission and the
Australian Liberal Renewal reports, is an attempt to achieve consensus
through the integration of the membership and key party stakeholders
through a broadly consultative process. The second, as demonstrated by the
Reith (2011) and Howard (2014) reviews, is one in which the legitimacy of the
review document rests on the authority of the author(s)—in both cases ‘states-
men’ of the party (see further, Chapter 8).
REFRAMING THE DEBATE: WHEN THE PROBLEM

BECOMES THE SOLUTION
Consultations are one important way in which political parties can gather
support, particularly from within the party, to create a smoother—and argu-
ably more legitimate—process of reform. However, as argued throughout this
book, reform initiatives that are more likely to be successful are those in which
the main motivating factors at each of the three levels are able to be reconciled
to create the trajectory for change. In doing so, a political party can appeal to
both internal and external audiences, turning the need for organizational
reform into a ‘watershed event’, where proposed resolutions have the poten-
tial to ‘result in sweeping constitutional change and radical operational
modernization’ (Liberal Party, Canada 2011: 2). An analysis of a range of
party review documents reveals a number of different rhetorical strategies for
achieving reform by carefully articulating the problem, the nature of the
solution, and then the organizational response. The four strategies are: bring-
ing together the various motivations for reform, invoking the views of the
membership as a justification for reform, placing reforms in the context of a
party’s history and traditions, and deploying the rhetoric of modernization
and depicting reforms with urgency and excitement.
Bringing Together the Various Motivations for Reform

In asking why political parties undertake organizational reform, the first part of
this book articulated the main motivations for reform within the political
party (growing and strengthening membership, ideology, reducing the power
of factions and collective associations), as part of the electoral contest (gaining
electoral benefits, undertaking organizational branding, improving the qual-
ity of candidates, as a way to mitigate damage control, and copying the
successful behaviour of other political associations), and within the political
system (responding to shifting participatory demands and restoring the legit-
imacy of the organization).
In establishing the necessity of reform and bringing together intra-party
and systemic motivations, all reviews discussed the importance of member-
ship in the modern party organization, particularly noting the problem of
long-term decline. Competitive motivations were also added to the mix in
acknowledging the electoral benefits of membership. For example, the Aus-
tralian Labor Party argued in its most recent review that ‘growing and
rebuilding the Labor Party should not be seen as something divorced from
our electoral challenges. A strong, well-organised branch membership
undoubtedly contributes to electoral success’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 14). Simi-
larly, the 2012 New Zealand Labour Organisational Review established its
vision for the organizational reform process as leading to ‘an effective and
modernised Labour Party organisation—open, energized and connected with
our diverse communities, well resourced with money, members and sup-
porters, and organising effectively to win’ (NZ Labour Party 2012a: 3).
Invoking the Views of the Membership as a Justification for Reform

The first part of this chapter demonstrated the way in which consultations
with members are used to build consensus around reform proposals, and the
fact that political parties have not been shy in conveying the dissatisfaction of
their membership with various aspects of the party organization. Yet consult-
ation is not necessarily a prerequisite for the architects of party reviews to
invoke the views of the membership as justifications for reform. For example,
one of the most common statements emerging from the reviews—irrespective
of whether a widespread programme of consultation has taken place—is the
assertion that party members want, and need to be ‘listened to’ (see p. 127).
132 Party Reform
This perception translates into several common concrete organizational
reform proposals through a call for greater membership involvement in
several areas of internal party decision making, namely:
• The direct election of party officials (proposed by the Liberal Party, Victoria
2008; Reith 2011; Hawke and Wran 2002; Bracks et al. 2011; SPD 2011: 6).
• Voting rights at the party conference (Liberal), or to select delegates (Labor)
(Liberal Party, Victoria 2008; Hawke and Wran 2002; Bracks et al. 2011).
• Direct election of candidates for public office, including in some instances,
the party leader (Liberal Party, Victoria 2008; Howard 2014; Collins 2014).
• Greater participation in policy forums (Liberal Party, Victoria 2008;
Howard 2014; Bracks et al. 2011; SPD 2011: 6–7; NZ Labour Party 2012a:
7–8; UK Labour Party 2011a).
While each reform proposal reflects the history and structure of the parties as
well as the remit of the reviews, there are important similarities between the
parties in the overall agenda for reform. The first is the broad nature of the
proposals, which encompass many of the key arenas for decision making
(personnel selection, conference, and policy). The second is that each of
these proposals not only aims to increase the inclusiveness of decision making,
it does so by individualizing the process—most notably through the introduc-
tion of direct elections, membership meetings and plebiscites, and dispensing
with more representative and delegate-driven modes of intra-party democ-
racy. Third, improving the membership experience is used to justify the
particular reform in every single instance.
Reforming the policy process by extending the participation of the mem-
bership was a theme common to many of the reviews. The German SPD, for
example, resolved to lower the threshold for membership petitions (including
on matters of policy) and pledged a shift, ‘where the majority of the member-
ship favours this’, from delegate assemblies to general membership meetings
as the preferred decision-making forum (SPD 2011: 6). In justifying the
expansion and continuation of its online policy consultations, the UK Labour
Party noted that ‘members have expressed views that the policy making
process could be opened up by harnessing technology to allow for a more
inclusive and interactive discussion’ (UK Labour Party 2011a: 11). Arguing
for the revitalization of the policy committee in the Australian Liberal Party,
Reith (2011: 12) emphasized the link between membership expectations and
the need for structural change: ‘the party will not attract new members if
members do not have an opportunity to express their views. The membership
is entitled to know that their views are heard at the highest levels of the Party’.
The introduction of direct membership elections for party personnel
(whether this refers to parliamentary candidates, leaders, or office bearers)
speaks directly to the strategy of improving ‘substantially the value-
proposition for individual members’ (Liberal Party, Victoria 2008: iv).
In the Reith and Howard reports, for example, the particularly controversial
topic of plebiscites for candidate selection is reconciled not only with the
philosophy of the party and the traditions of prior leaders,7 but is also used
to depict what is seen as the modern role for members:
it is undeniably beneficial, as well as democratic, to involve all Party
members in the most important responsibility of choosing the Party’s
parliamentary candidates. The panel believes that the incentive of being
able to play a direct role in selecting a Liberal candidate is a powerful one
for any person contemplating joining the Party. (Howard 2014: 2)
The 2012 change to the New Zealand Labour Party leadership contest pro-
vides a final example of the way in which the views of members are used to
justify reform. The reform document that was taken to conference specifically
noted that: ‘there was strong support for more open and transparent processes
at all levels and for the privilege of membership to extend to greater involve-
ment in candidate and leadership selection processes’ (NZ Labour 2012a: 8).
Perhaps reflecting their nature as strategic documents that muster intra-party
support, it is interesting to note that although review committees consult with
outside interests, it is only the views of party members that are illuminated in
these reports. This strategy echoes the recommendations of the Canadian
Liberals’ Change Commission, which argued strongly that ‘the central object-
ive of reform should be to enhance the party’s capacity to perform its core
functions’ and that the key to doing that ‘is to put the sidelined membership of
the party back on centre ice’ (Liberal Party, Canada 2009: 17). Key to
achieving this is strategic communication: ‘members should hear recognition
of the difficulties facing the party and a powerful commitment to renewal or
reform. There is a need for inspiring language that will reassert the importance
of the membership. Likewise members need to hear an affirmation of foun-
dational values and a commitment to honour the constitution’ (Liberal Party
of Canada 2009: 17).
Placing Reforms in the Context of the Party’s History and Traditions

Looking specifically at the organizational reviews undertaken by the social
democratic and conservative parties in Australia reveals some interesting
differences in the way in which membership, and the role of party members,
in relation to the party organization, is discussed. These nuances highlight the
importance of framing the debate to resonate with the history and organiza-
tional ethos of the party. By directly linking the justification for the reform to
established party beliefs and traditions, the rhetoric employed here serves to
build internal support and mitigate opposition from members who might
otherwise think that the reforms threaten long-standing party beliefs.
134 Party Reform
In particular, there was a significant difference between the reviews in the
extent to which membership—as an asset to the party—was discussed. Not-
ably, the justification for maintaining a membership was much more detailed
in the Liberal Party documents. The Reith Report and the Liberal Renewal
Report, for example, both contained an entire section justifying a party
membership (Reith 2011: 28–9; Liberal Party, Victoria 2008: 1–2). The
Howard Report, in particular, criticized previous party executives for letting
the issue of membership slip off the agenda and noted that:
Mounting campaigns for party members, and continuing and systematic
monitoring of membership growth, and of the demography of member-
ship, must be regarded as a basic function of the organisation and State
Executive. It was of concern that the Secretariat could not provide a
trajectory of party membership stretching back for more than 5 years.
(Howard 2014: 6)
Maintaining a ‘broadly based membership’ was seen as necessary for several

reasons: to ensure the representativeness of parliamentary candidates and the
broader public appeal of the party’s policies (including policy ideas), to
provide resources to fund campaigns, as a source of campaigners and organ-
izational leaders, to provide ‘manpower on the ground and the capacity to get
our message out into the community’, to understand the communities the
party seeks to represent, and to guard against the possibility that the party
might be manipulated by narrow interest groups, in particular, factions
(Howard 2014: 6; Reith 2011: 28–9; Liberal Party, Victoria 2008: 1). Reflect-
ing on a recent debate to introduce targets for female candidates for public
office within the party, a former party office holder emphasized the import-
ance of tailoring the message of party reform to the audience. Like the issue of
membership more generally, the importance of gender representation was
advocated on the basis of needing to improve the ‘retail face’ of the party,
based on a strong electoral imperative. This focus on winning votes was
necessary because the notion of equality of outcome (quotas) ‘doesn’t reson-
ate with the membership, especially the active membership’.
By contrast, in the Labor reform documents, the importance of a party
membership is essentially assumed, as ‘Labor’s ability to form government
and implement its reform program has always been based on the strength
of its organisation’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 9). Rather, the justifications for
reform are based on an acknowledgement of ‘structural decline’, the need
to grow the party membership and to develop a ‘modern and meaningful
role for members’ (Bracks et al. 2011: 9, 12–13). Reflecting previous research
that highlights the different organizational ethos of social democratic and
conservative parties, the primary debate within the ALP rests on the main-
tenance of party democracy rather than ‘selling the case’ for an engaged
membership.8
Explicit attempts to link organizational reform with a party’s history and
the distinctive ways in which social democratic and conservative parties ‘sell’
reform and talk about their members are also observed in other parties outside
Australia. The German Social Democrats, for example, played down the
extent of their party’s reform program by noting that ‘we have always seen
ourselves as a democratic membership party with a program—and this we
want to retain, even in a changing society’ (SPD 2011: 2). The CDU, like the
Australian Liberal Party, argued forcefully for the benefits of membership
and to preserve these relatively newer structures (Mjelde 2013: 261). Another
example, which was discussed in Chapter 3, is the UK Labour Party’s Build-
ing a One Nation Labour Party review, which made important changes to the
relationship between the Labour Party and its affiliated unions, as well as
creating a one-member-one-vote system for the election of the Labour Party
leader. Like the SPD, the UK Labour Party explicitly linked systemic pres-
sures for change with the party’s historical development by providing a one-
page summary of major party reforms since 1981—portraying reform as a
‘normal’ event—and noting that ‘Ed Miliband is clear about the direction in
which he wishes the party to move. It is a direction of travel that builds on the
party’s historic foundations but responds to the world as it is today’ (Collins
2014: 18).
Deploying the Rhetoric of Modernization and Depicting Reforms

with Urgency and Excitement
The need to ‘modernize’ was used as a discursive tool by all political parties to
bring together these different motivations and stress the urgency of reform. In
addition to the examples from the Canadian Liberals and the New Zealand
Labour Party, the German SPD proclaimed in its reform document that ‘it
intends to be the most up-to-date party in Europe’ (SPD 2011: 18). In
delivering the Building a One Nation Labour Party Interim Report, Ray
Collins argued that:
for too long we have operated with structures that were laid down in a
different era. New technologies that were not available when we created
our old structures now offer opportunities for new forms of communica-
tion and community activism within our members, affiliates and sup-
porters. I hope that we can take this opportunity to build a truly 21st
century party. (Collins 2014: 3)
The rhetoric of modernization was also frequently coupled with the portrayal
of changes with a sense of immediacy and excitement. For the German SPD,
‘to be alive means to change’, while for the Liberals in Canada, ‘Our successes
have been characterized by our resolve to challenge assumptions, to be wary
136 Party Reform
of the status quo, and to act on our impulse that there is always a “better
way” ’ (Liberal Party, Canada 2006: 6). Similarly, Bill Shorten, leader of the
Australian Labor Party, argued in his speech on party reform that ‘for Labor
to build a modern, outward-looking, confident and democratic Australia, we
have to be a modern, outward-looking, confident and democratic party’
(Shorten 2014).
PATHWAYS TO REFORM
While party review documents can employ these various strategies to create
consensus and advertise an appetite for change that portrays reforms in a
positive light, there are particular areas where a consensus is extremely
difficult to achieve. The implementation of primaries is a good example of
this, which was flagged in Chapter 3 in the discussion of the tension between
growing and strengthening party membership. Originally proposed and advo-
cated by SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel, the implementation of primaries was
removed from the Party on the Move document after significant opposition to
the process was highlighted in the local and regional associational surveys
(Bukow 2012; Totz 2011). Proposals for primary elections also faced signifi-
cant criticism in the context of the Collins Review into the UK Labour Party
organization. Although a semi-open primary for the election of the London
mayoral candidate was proposed and approved by conference, the review
noted that submissions ‘have revealed differing views on the question of
primaries, but with a majority against the widespread use of this process’
(Collins 2014: 33, emphasis added). This final position advocated by the
review represented a significant change from the enthusiasm of Ed Miliband’s
speech in which he announced the review, in which primaries were put
forward as a potential ‘pioneering idea’ for the selection of parliamentarians
in the case of a retirement (Miliband 2013). Yet, the debate on primaries
within the party is not split randomly, but by organizational tactics. As one
former Labour staffer explained, the hard right and hard left of the party
(which both control the extra-parliamentary party) are both opposed to the
use of primaries. Given this balance of power, primaries will ‘need to be
rammed through by party elites’. The views of party members, elites, and
activists in these instances have therefore required some element of comprom-
ise or concession on the part of the party leadership.
Conversely—even in the context of reviews commissioned by parties and
authored by respected committees, resistance from the leadership can also
complicate the passage of reform. Irrespective of their origins, not all reviews
have been met with enthusiasm from the party leadership. Peter Reith, author
of the Liberal’s Review of the 2010 Federal Election, noted in his report that
‘the practice of not releasing reports because they contain uncomfortable
truths has not served our cause well’, and recommended that the Federal
Party ‘archive of all these reports and make them available to interested
members upon request. Federal Executive should also resolve now that all
future election reviews will be publicly released’ (Reith 2011: 10–11). In the
case of the most recent NSW Liberal Party review, media reports suggested
that the executive of the party reacted negatively to the document—‘judged by
the fact it did not release the Howard report that it received in June until this
month’, and that there was ‘little fanfare in the release’, which simply consti-
tuted ‘an attachment to a penultimate paragraph of a lengthy memo to
members by the state president’.9
Negotiating Traditional Party Structures

As they pertain to rules or constitutional changes, many reform initiatives
require approval from the party’s supreme decision-making body—the party
conference or congress. Depending on its composition and the reforms to be
enacted, this forum can potentially act as a brake to reform, as delegates or
representatives need to be convinced of the worth of the proposals, some of
which might conceivably reduce or curtail their power. In the majority of
reform initiatives analysed here, the party conference did not act as a signifi-
cant barrier, and in only one case where the review ended up before confer-
ence for approval—the ALP 2010 National Review—were several of the
major proposals defeated or put on hold.
This relative success at conference stems from a number of factors. The first
is that party reforms, by virtue of the way in which they have been defined in
this analysis, are well-publicized and significant events in the party, which
mean that they are more likely to have been proposed by leadership groups or
factions with existing support bases. The role of key actors in the process of
reform is examined in greater detail in Chapter 8. The second aspect of this
success is the way in which reforms have followed a lengthy, ostensibly
consultative process, which also functions as a campaign for creating publicity
for the reforms and seeking support for the recommendations. The extent of
consultation exercises was described earlier in the chapter (pp. 124–6), but it is
worth reinforcing here that reform campaigns deliberately seek to involve
different levels of the party, and may need to clear a series of administrative
hurdles within a party before the changes are ultimately presented to confer-
ence. A good example here is New Zealand Labour’s 2012 Organisational
Review, which lasted almost ten months, incorporating written and online
submissions, public meetings, discussions within regional conferences, and
deliberations within the NZ Council (the party’s executive body) before the
138 Party Reform
reforms were debated and passed at conference (NZ Labour Party 2012a;
2012b; 2012c).
However, the experience of the Australian Labor Party in implementing
the recommendations of the 2010 National Review provides an interesting
contrast. Although the review panel’s recommendations were handed down
in February 2011, the National President of the party conceded that the
National Executive had not done much to make key proposals, such as
reforms to the selection process for conference delegates, happen.
A subcommittee, chaired by Sam Dastyari, was set up, but it only met once.
A last-minute intervention by Prime Minister Julia Gillard was necessary to
have a plan for the implementations of the reforms in place in time to be voted
on at the party’s 2011 conference.10
While the reforms were debated at the 2011 conference, many—including
the selection of conference delegates—were referred back to committee, due
to factional opposition. Forty-two per cent of the recommendations were
adopted, 32 per cent partly agreed to and 8 per cent rejected outright. When
taking the floor to debate the changes, the national convener of the Labor
Renewal movement, Darcy Byrne, argued that ‘reforms are being smothered
here today and we all know why . . . There are too many faceless men at this
conference who’d rather maintain their control over a dying party’.11 The
National Right—the faction which had majority representation on the con-
ference floor—issued its own set of reform proposals based on the 2010
National Review that were subsequently adopted (ALP National Right
2011). These included reforms to the policy-development process, new mem-
bership targets, and supporting more issues-based activism, but did not adopt
the recommendation that the structure of the National Conference be
changed to enable the increased participation of rank-and-file members
through the direct election of a component of the National Conference
(Bracks et al. 2011: 18).
The factional balance within the Liberal Party of NSW is also said to be
responsible for the ‘watering’ down of the reforms suggested by the Howard
Review—specifically the move to rank-and-file selections for lower house
parliamentary candidates. Plebiscites are supported by the minority right
faction of the party, which claims that it will democratize the party by
reducing the influence of the State Executive. The left and centre-right fac-
tions, which control the State Executive, are opposed to the plan on the
grounds that it might lead to branch stacking. In a compromise reached
before the State Council in October 2015, the party committed to increasing
the number of members involved in pre-selection contests, and trialling six
plebiscites in Labor-held seats before the 2019 NSW state election.12
In both examples from the Australian Labor Party and the Australian
Liberals, the factional balance of power had a significant influence on the
passage of reforms. This influence, however, appears to be more nuanced than
previous accounts of organizational change have suggested. In each example,
factions have acted as a brake or a point of veto over reform initiatives rather
than as the source of their instigation. This may be because factions—in the
way that they are institutionalized within these parties—exercise their power
through control of formal voting bodies, such as executives and party confer-
ences. Contrary to Harmel and Janda’s (1994) suggestion, the passage of
reforms does not necessarily correspond with a change in dominant faction.
Indeed, as Bale (2012: 10) argues, there is theoretically no reason to assume
that change of faction is necessary for political parties to make organizational
changes. In the parties examined here, it is not factional change but it is the
very existence of a factional system for the distribution of intra-party power
that presents a significant barrier to reforms that aim to provide an alternative
distribution, such as plebiscites or changes to the allocation of conference
representation. Greater attention therefore needs to be paid in future research
to the process by which factions influence reform, irrespective of whether or
not they actually change.
Reforming through Experimentation

Mahoney and Thelen (2010: 7) have criticized institutionalist scholars for
placing too much emphasis on change that is discontinuous—where one set
of rules and institutions is removed by party actors and replaced by another in
what they describe as ‘moments of agency and choice’. This conception of
change corresponds with the implementation of reforms at party conferences,
where delegates replace one practice with another, or introduce entirely new
processes. Offering an alternative view, Mahoney and Thelen argue that insti-
tutional change can occur more gradually in a process whereby practices are
reinterpreted and new institutions layered on top of existing ones (2010: 15–18).
In the context of party reform, particularly those initiatives involving
changes that are more controversial and have less consensus amongst the
membership, for example, the introduction of primaries and the implementa-
tion of supporters’ networks, the concept of ‘experimentation’ and trialling
practices is a salient example of the ways in which political parties can achieve
reform through gradually changing practices and expectations, without
wholesale rule changes. The best example of this has been the trial of primar-
ies for candidate selection that has occurred in Australia and the United
Kingdom.13 Billed as ‘experiments’, isolated to particular constituencies,
primaries were implemented by the will of the party executive—with the
agreement of the local party—rather than requiring constitutional change.
In introducing the latest trial of plebiscites (closed primaries) within the New
South Wales Branch of the Liberal Party, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
(2015) assured the party conference that
140 Party Reform
We should never be afraid of testing new models for how we can make
ourselves more accountable to our members, to ensure all the many
thousands of Australians who work diligently and devotedly to serve
our party, have a strong sense of relevance and belonging. It seems to
me that the proposal to trial plebiscites for pre-selections in six seats in
New South Wales is a good formula to test a new approach to the process
of choosing our candidates. If it is judged ultimately to be the way of the
future, it will be a judgment reached on the basis of direct practical
experience. That is a very common-sense Liberal way of doing things . . .
we must be pragmatic and we must be united.
Unlike other organizational changes that result from the changing practices of
party officials, which often are not—either intentionally or unintentionally—
publicized, these experiments can nonetheless constitute extremely high-
profile activities that offer significant opportunities for public branding and
renewal. Turnbull’s speech, for example, although delivered to a party audi-
ence, was also covered by the national media. Although it is a direct and
practical approach to reform, over time and with repeated use primaries can
become self-evidently associated with democracy and participation (Faucher
2015a: 816).
Reforms that Don’t Require Membership or Party Approval: Kevin

Rudd’s Changes to the ALP Leadership-Selection Process
A further category of reform is those initiatives that do not require member-
ship or party approval, but which may simply be implemented by party
executives as part of a broad modernization process. The Canadian Liberal’s
Change Commission report provides an excellent example here. Of the forty-
seven recommendations for reform that were designed to rebuild the party
‘from the bottom up’, twenty-seven could be implemented almost immedi-
ately by resolution of the National Executive, and twenty in the medium–
longer term, requiring some consideration at the executive level on how to
take the proposal forward (Liberal Party, Canada 2009: 36–7). The types of
reform that could be implemented immediately were community-action ini-
tiatives, the establishment of town hall-style meetings in ridings, communica-
tion and campaigning improvements, as well as improvements to the party’s
governance structure. The creation of the ALP’s online supporter category
and associated policy consultation initiatives both in Australia and the UK
social democratic parties, as well as changes to communication and cam-
paigning strategies (see Chapter 4) were achieved largely through executive
initiative. In addition to the experimentation with primaries discussed above,
many of the modernizing reforms that have changed the character of these
parties as campaigning, representative, and policy organizations have been
publicized in high-profile reviews, but not all have required the approval of
the party membership or conference.
Perhaps the most significant reform to have occurred in the Australian
Labor Party in the last decade—changes that give party members a say in
the process of electing the leader—was also implemented without approval
from the conference. Shortly after he became party leader for the second time,
Kevin Rudd announced in July 2013 that members and parliamentarians
would both vote on the leader in the event of a spill, and that the votes
would be weighted equally. Subject to approval at a special meeting of the
parliamentary caucus, the proposal was made after ‘extensive discussion with
the leadership team and extensive discussion with the full ministry team’
(Rudd 2013a). According to Rudd, a change to the Caucus rules would be
sufficient for changing the process and the proposal need not go to a meeting
of the National Conference as ‘the Caucus is the master of its own destiny’
(Rudd 2013b). The process for pushing the changes through was criticized by
some within the party, including Vice President Tony Sheldon (also National
Secretary of the Transport Workers Union), who called on Rudd to allow a
plebiscite on the question, which would also include members, union affiliates,
and the parliamentary party in the decision-making process.14 The reforms
were officially adopted in a special meeting of the parliamentary party on
22 July 2013. The reform was carried on the voices and did not require a show
of hands or a formal vote.15
Because the changes to ALP leadership selection in July 2013 were made in
the context of persistent leadership instability, the removal of the party leader
was one of the most prominent and controversial aspects of the debate.
Previously, the party leader could be removed by a simple majority of the
caucus. Kevin Rudd’s original proposal for leadership-selection reform
retained this power exclusively for the federal caucus, and contemplated
that a party leader could only be removed and a new contest called in four
circumstances: an automatic spill would occur following a general election if
the party did not win government, if a leader resigned voluntarily, at the
request of a leader, or if at least 75 per cent of the parliamentary party signed a
petition that the leader had brought the party into disrepute.
Immediately concerns were voiced that the 75 per cent requirement was too
rigid and in practice meant that a leader could only be removed in the most
exceptional of circumstances. This would alter the balance of power between
the leader and the caucus, reducing accountability between periodic leader-
ship contests. Several days after the initial proposal was announced, Rudd
indicated that he would be willing to compromise on the 75 per cent threshold
for ALP leaders who were in opposition.16 At the special caucus meeting that
approved the rule changes, Rudd’s proposal was amended so that only a
petition of 75 per cent of the caucus could remove a leader in government
(the sitting prime minister), but an opposition leader could be removed with a
142 Party Reform
petition of 60 per cent of the caucus. However, even in its amended form, the
high threshold for removing the leader was controversial. Some within the
parliamentary party publicly spoke in support of the changes as they would
‘bring greater stability to the party by making it much more difficult to
remove a sitting leader’,17 and that it would provide closure for recent
destabilizing events: the reform ‘helps to ensure we put the last two years
behind us, where it’s been too easy . . . to tap a leader on the shoulder’.18
Speaking out against the changes, former prime minister Julia Gillard argued
that the
rules literally mean that a person could hang on as Labor leader and as
prime minister even if every member of cabinet, the body that be the most
powerful and collegiate in the country, has decided that person was no
longer capable of functioning as prime minister . . . Indeed, the new rules
represent exactly the wrong approach to address the so-called ‘revolving
door’ of the Labor leadership. These rules protect an unsupported, poorly
performing, incumbent rather than ensuring that the best person gets
chosen and supported for the best reasons. (Gillard 2013)
Despite these criticisms, the amended proposal passed through the caucus
relatively smoothly. This is surprising given the amount of power that the
parliamentary party ceded, but is largely explained by the timing and context
of the reform process. Considerations of the electoral damage caused by
leadership change within the party in recent years were of greater concern to
parliamentarians than the prospect of holding future leaders to account. Only
three months out from a general election the leadership change resulted in the
departure of half of the campaign team and ‘severely frustrated and derailed
important policy and messaging work’ (Garrett and Dick 2014: 7).
The changes also demonstrate how important organizational reforms can
be made with only the deliberations of a small number of party elites—in this
process, parliamentarians. It also demonstrates the complexity of the process
and the ambiguity surrounding the nature of these changes. In 2015, two years
after the initial change, the question of leadership selection was finally pre-
sented for debate and ratification at the ALP National Conference, where the
constitution was to be amended to retrospectively approve the changes imple-
mented by Kevin Rudd, changes that shaped the 2013 Labor leadership
contest between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese. However, the constitu-
tional amendment that conference agreed to merely codified the requirement
that the votes of the parliamentary party and the party membership be
weighted equally, and only in instances where the ‘rules of the FPLP [Federal
Parliamentary Labor Party] require the election of the Leader of the FPLP
to include a ballot of party members’ (Article 26). Hence while the
leadership reforms were heavily publicized as a watershed moment for the
party—and indeed the actual contest that took place was a significant change
to the process—the subsequent constitutional ratification essentially retained
the power of the parliamentary party to select the way in which its leader
is chosen.
CONCLUSION
The examples discussed in this chapter have pointed to two distinct trajector-
ies, or processes of party reform. The first, which is typically achieved through
a relatively lengthy process of party review, seeks to achieve broad consensus
within the party through consultation and debate, culminating in the ratifica-
tion of the document by a party conference or similar representative body.
Recent reforms such as Party on the Move (German SPD), Building a One
Nation Labour Party, and Refounding Labour (UK Labour) are examples of
this approach. The second trajectory is one in which reform is also highly
publicized, but for various reasons does not require the approval of the party
organization in order to proceed. The 2013 reform to the ALP leadership-
selection process is one example, as are the ‘trials’ of primaries that have been
conducted within various parties, and many recent campaigning and
community-organizing initiatives, which have been implemented via party
executives.
NOTES
1. Peter Reith, ‘Time for some revitalisation of the Liberal Party’, Sydney Morning
Herald, 28 September 2015.
2. The composition of review committees is discussed in further detail in Chapter 7.
3. New Zealand Herald, 28 February 2012.
4. See Chapter 3.
5. The survey was commissioned by the NSW Executive of the Liberal Party and
fielded to 11,000 party members between 19 December 2013 and 14 February 2014
(Liberal Party, NSW 2014). It was organized in a voluntary capacity by party
member and academic Denise Jepsen. It showed modest support for the
proposition that reforms be instituted to allow members to select the party
leader (52 per cent agreed or strongly agreed) (Liberal Party, NSW 2014: 17).
Support for shifting to a plebiscite of all local members was 47 per cent, the current
combined delegate system was 51 per cent, and moving to a system of primaries
had only 26 per cent (Liberal Party, NSW 2014: 18). There was strong support for
greater membership involvement in policy—83 per cent said that there should be
144 Party Reform
more effective structures to develop and test policy ideas than currently exist
(Liberal Party, NSW 2014: 23).
6. Peter Reith served as a senior minister in the Howard government from 1996 to
2001.
7. ‘They [plebiscites] better fulfill the concept pursued by Menzies to broaden the
base of the Party’ (Reith 2011: 21).
8. Contrast, for example, the words of Bracks et al. (2011: 13), ‘If we do not grow and
expand our membership, if instead membership continues to decline, then
discussions about “party democracy” become meaningless’, with those of
Howard (2014: 6): ‘It is the strong view of the Panel that energetic recruitment
of new members . . . is essential to the Party’s continuing health’.
9. Australian, 15 August 2014.
10. Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 2012.
11. Quoted in the Australian Financial Review, 9 December 2011, p. 9.
12. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 2015.
13. However, Sergiu Gherghina also notes that primaries in the Romanian PSD were
organized in a ‘relatively centralised setting’. The decision ‘was not immediately
included in the statute, but in a special regulation by the Executive Committee of
the party’ (Gherghina 2013: 190–1).
14. Cited in the Australian, 10 July, p. 1.
15. Australian, 23 July 2013, p. 1.
16. Australian, 12 July 2013, p. 8.
17. Parliamentarian Daryl Melham, Australian Associated Press, 9 July 2013.
18. Parliamentarian Stephen Jones, Illawarra Mercury, 10 July 2013, p. 2.
8
The Protagonists of Party Reform
Chapter 7 illustrated how political parties interpret and use the drivers for
change that were discussed in Chapters 3–5 to create a positive narrative for
party reform, as well as to rebrand the party organization through the rhetoric
of modernization. This chapter shifts the analysis from the institution of the
party as a whole, to an examination of who, or what, is driving and opposing
reform initiatives—both within and outside parties. In engaging with the
broader debate as to the role of structure and agency in creating party reform,
the chapter does not assume that parties are coherent or unitary entities, nor
does it assume that all agents of reform reside within the parties themselves.
Through an analysis of the genesis and authorship of reform documents
(including internal reviews, pamphlets, and speeches), who speaks to particu-
lar initiatives, and who proposes and votes for them, the chapter provides an
analysis of the range of actors involved in the reform process.
Although reform debates are often characterized as battles between intra-
party factions or battles between party elites and rank-and-file members, the
chapter argues that a more nuanced approach is required to reflect the reality
of reform with political parties. In doing so, it highlights the significance of
other actors that have not been accorded as much prominence in existing
accounts of party change, such as parliamentarians, party statesmen (often
retired), staffers who have held previous positions in parties overseas, internal
pressure groups, think tanks, and journalists. As illustrated in the specific
strategies adopted by these actors, the public domain is an increasingly
important arena for reform debates, complementing (and in some instances
replacing) traditional intra-party decision-making fora, such as conferences.
THE ‘RUMBLE’ FOR REFORM
One of the inescapable realities of party reform, and of institutional change

more generally, is the complexity of the process. While we know that
party change results from a combination of internal and external drivers,
these pressures can only be translated into reforms through the efforts of
146 Party Reform
key decision makers, ‘relevant party actors’ (Harmel 2002: 128), or as Harmel
and Janda (1994) describe them, ‘party operatives’. Rational choice accounts
of party change depict these actors (also defined as ‘politicians’, ‘elites’, or
dominant coalitions with control of party resources, see Panebianco 1988: 38)
as acting according to a series of ‘party goals’ or individual, self-interested
motivations that are established exogenously to the analysis (Quinn 2005;
Hall and Taylor 1996: 951). Furthermore, while much of the theoretical
debate in institutional analysis has moved beyond the notion of ‘winners
and losers’—which Mahoney and Thelen (2010: 22) argue is ‘often too simple
for real situations’—there is still a tendency to speak in terms of a zero sum
game when referring to party reform. Yet these rational choice accounts tell us
very little about the identities or types of actors involved in the reform process.
Who, or what, exactly is a party operative or an elite? By making the
assumption that relevant actors are those that have something to win or lose
from the outcome of reform, the universe of participants is significantly
narrowed, and excludes those who may not have any immediately apparent
stake in the issue.
Thinking more specifically about who is involved in the process of reform,
previous accounts of party change refer to several key groups or individuals.
Wauters (2014: 68), for example, suggests three alternate scenarios for
leadership-selection reform, each with a different primary protagonist. The
first sees party factions as the main actors, the second is a model where
‘grassroots members force the party elite to introduce a direct member vote’
and in the third model ‘it is the own will of the party elite to introduce [a]
direct member vote’. According to Wauters, ‘the Westminster parties studied
by Cross and Blais (2012) can all be situated in the second model. Party elites
only reluctantly introduce direct member votes, after increasing pressure from
the grassroots’ (2014: 69). Charting the progress of reforms in the Belgian
parties, he concludes that the passage of leadership reforms has passed differ-
ently to the Westminster parties: ‘the main difference lies in the fact that
Belgian parties are themselves taking the initiative to introduce direct member
votes in order to circumvent the powerful intermediate party organs’ (2014: 73)
(emphasis added).
Wauters’ categorization of leadership reforms in the Westminster democ-
racies as being driven by grassroots members is interesting as it stands
contrary to the expected role of members as depicted in both sociological
and historical institutional accounts of change. Rank-and-file members fea-
ture as potential agents for change, but their efforts to enact reform are
hampered by cumbersome existing party structures and are usually lost to
more powerful groups and individuals from within the organization: most
usually, factions and party leaders. Perhaps because of this lack of success,
relatively little has been said in other work on reform of the organizing
capacity of party members, although Harmel and Janda (1994) and Barnea
The Protagonists of Party Reform 147
and Rahat (2007) have noted that building a coalition of support is necessary
to overcome the organizational resistance that is common to large organiza-
tions such as political parties. Beyond forming part of this coalition, members
are accorded very limited agency in these accounts.
In contrast to the more indeterminate role of members, there is broad
consensus amongst scholars that party leaders are crucial agents in promoting
change. Leaders are responsible for interpreting election performance,
thereby reacting to external stimuli, and by virtue of their position and
personal characteristics are in a uniquely enhanced position to proactively
push for change (Harmel et al. 1995: 4–5, 18; Kefford 2014).
Previous research (particularly the work of Harmel et al. 1995; Harmel and
Janda 1994) has also acknowledged the role of factions in the reform process.
However, a thorough empirical study of these groups in the context of reform
has not yet been undertaken, due to two primary challenges: identifying
factions within parties and identifying changes in power dynamics (Harmel
et al. 1995: 8). Consequently, the role of factions tends to be theorized in a
rather abstract way: for example, ‘change of dominant faction within a party
is associated with party change’ (Harmel et al. 1995: 8). However, as Bale
(2012: 7) argues, ‘just because they are difficult to gauge . . . should not mean
we ignore factional shifts’. As was shown in Chapter 7, deploying the example
of Australia (where factions are particularly prominent within parties), these
groupings tend to provide support or resistance to an initiative rather than
instigate a particular reform themselves. Their power is manifest around
conferences and executives, where voting decisions need to be made. This
reflects the way in which factions are identified empirically, through measures
such as the number of parliamentarians affiliated to a particular faction, and
the voting strength of factions on intra-party decision-making bodies, such as
executives or congresses (Boucek 2012: 44–5).
Further illustrating the difficulty of identifying the relevant actors in party-
reform debates, Barnea and Rahat’s model for understanding candidate-
selection reform adds a fourth possibility (beyond members, leader, and
factions) and anticipates politicians as the primary agents of change. Motiv-
ated by ‘a calculated combination of their interests as team players (the party)
and as individual players within the party’, politicians aim to enhance (or
protect) their status in the intra-party hierarchy, and their image in the public
eye (Barnea and Rahat 2007: 378–9). Based on their analysis of the Israeli
case, Barnea and Rahat propose two alternate protagonists. The first, the
party in government, overlaps with other accounts of the importance of the
party leadership. Building on the work of Katz (2001), Barnea and Rahat
suggest that the party in government (or the leader and his/her allies) will push
for democratization (principally through membership votes) in order to
achieve policy autonomy from ideologically oriented activists. The second
group of protagonist politicians consists of ‘younger members’, who use
148 Party Reform
reform as a tool to oust veteran incumbents and apparatchiks (Barnea and
Rahat 2007: 386). It was this second group of protagonists—the younger
members—that drove candidate-selection reform in the Israeli political par-
ties in the second half of the twentieth century.
Given the sometimes overlapping, sometimes inconsistent accounts of the
primary actors in party reform, the aim of this chapter is to use an empirical
analysis of reform initiatives to better identify relevant actors in the reform
process, and the range of strategies available to them. Although the book
builds on the existing literature by examining leaders, members, and factions
(which were discussed in Chapter 7), the analysis is not limited to these
groups. Identifying actors relevant to the process of party reform on the
basis of a contest for power unnecessarily limits the search to within the
party organization, and renders it constrained by existing institutional
arrangements and power relationships. Chapter 7 demonstrated the way in
which discourses and ideas can be transmitted to a variety of audiences to
foster party reform. Building on this analysis, the work of other ‘creative
agents’ such as government spokespeople, spin doctors, and those involved in
conveying the message of change should not be discounted (Lowndes and
Roberts 2013: 101). By the same token, protagonists need not necessarily
come from within the party, particularly at a time when the boundaries
between intra- and extra-party decision making are becoming increasingly
blurred (Gauja 2015a; 2015b; Bolleyer 2009).
The chapter begins with an empirical analysis of the importance of the
leader, and then broadens this out to a larger category of individuals who
could be termed ‘party elites’. The chapter then examines the authority in the
reform process that is provided by party statesmen, and the role of members
and collective groupings, think tanks, and journalists in agitating for reform.
PARTY LEADERS
In examining some of the broader trends of party reform, Chapter 6 estab-

lished a link between the party leader and the timing of organizational
reforms. It noted, for example, that many of the major organizational reviews,
for example, UK Labour’s Refounding Labour, the Australian Labor Party’s
2010 Review and the German Social Democrat’s Party on the Move reform
initiative, were commissioned within twelve months of the election of a new
leader of the party. These findings were largely consistent with a substantial
body of literature that has indicated the importance of a change in leader in
accounting for patterns of organizational change, most of which is based on
an analysis of the timing of these events as the primary indicator of influence.1
But why is it that party leaders are able to influence reform agendas? And
how do they achieve this influence? For Harmel et al. (1995: 4, 6), much comes
down to individual attributes, though the constraints of party rules and
structures are acknowledged: ‘different leaders will assess things differently’
and have ‘different abilities with which to develop and implement changes
when they do want them’. However, as Kefford (2014: 2) points out, the
power of a party leader to implement change also comes by virtue of his or her
position, which is grounded in the broader structural and political context
of the party. As former Australian Liberal prime minister John Howard
suggested, when in government, ‘the authority of the party leader to bring
about change is enormous’ (interview with author, 2015). The power that this
position brings should not be underestimated, with a substantial scholarly
literature developing around the ‘presidentialization’ and ‘personalization’ of
parliamentary politics (see, for example, Passarelli 2015; Dowding 2013;
Karnoven 2010; Poguntke and Webb 2005). Although it is not universally
shared, the common thread of this literature is that party leaders are increas-
ing their authority in internal decision making, becoming more central in
election campaigns, and expanding their power as prime ministers. The
chapter now turns to an analysis of party reform documents, speeches, and
press releases to evaluate why and how party leaders are important figures in
the process of reform.
The Significance of Leaders: Establishing Agency

In moving away from establishing the importance of leadership on organiza-
tional change by examining the timing of reforms and their proximity
to leadership change, another way to evaluate the salience of leaders is to
examine how leaders describe themselves, and their role in the reform process.
What is common to many reform campaigns is the way in which leaders firmly
establish their agency in the process. For example, in claiming credit for past
reform, UK Labour leader Ed Miliband (2013) argued that ‘Since I became
Labour leader, we have opened up our policy making process and opened up
the party to registered supporters . . . But I want to go further’. Referring to the
Australian Labor Party’s 2010 National Review, Julia Gillard (2011) claimed:
‘on the day I ordered our review I was determined to create an opportunity for
reform which this great party would not squander’. Similarly, Australian
Labor leader Bill Shorten announced what appeared to amount to his plans
for the future of the party: ‘Today I wrote to George Wright, the National
Secretary of the Labor Party, outlining my priorities for rebuilding the party
and the immediate actions I want us to take’ (Shorten 2014). Shorten claimed
that his authority to pursue a campaign of reform was ‘driven by my mandate
as the first member-elected Leader of the Labor Party’ (Shorten 2014).
150 Party Reform
The Public Face of Party Reforms
As the most important public figure in a political party, the leader has
unparalleled opportunities to present reform initiatives to the public through
media appearances and speeches. Party members and supporters are not
privileged in this process, as the message is communicated directly to the
public, rather than being announced at conference or launched within party
forums. Examples of reform initiatives that have been launched in the public
domain include the 2014 UK Labour Building a One Nation Labour review
(the Collins Review), which was announced by Labour Leader Ed Miliband
at his speech ‘One Nation Politics’ presented at St Bride’s Foundation in
London (Miliband 2013), Australian Labor Leader Bill Shorten’s speech
‘Towards a Modern Labor Party’, delivered at a Per Capita (a progressive
think tank) forum in Melbourne (Shorten 2014), and Julia Gillard’s address to
the Chifley Research Centre in Canberra (Gillard 2011). The mainstream
media covered all these speeches.2
Talking about Change

By occupying the pre-eminent position as the public face of the party, and
having the opportunity to deliver speeches on party reforms to both the public
and audiences within the party, the leader plays a crucial role in talking about
change. As John Howard noted, as party leader and prime minister, ‘you
carry an enormous authority if you’re prepared to argue’ (interview with
author, 2015). In doing so, not only can a leader place reforms on the agenda
and emphasize their importance or necessity, a carefully crafted speech can
tie specific reforms into the broader aims of the political party (including
policy aspirations) and present a consistent rhetorical message that can tie
reform initiatives to the organizational trajectory of the party.3 Pemberton
and Wickham-Jones (2013: 4–5), for example, note the central role played by
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in advocating for a mass membership in the
UK Labour Party and tying this to a broader discourse of reform. While Ed
Miliband employed a similar strategy in linking party reform to a broader
political project—‘So I want to build a better Labour Party. A better politics
for Britain’—the organizational trajectory was quite different, moving from
mass memberships and collective identities, to understanding that ‘we live in a
world where individuals rightly demand a voice. Where parties need to reach
out far beyond their membership’ (Miliband 2013).
Representing the party as a whole, the leader has the ability to portray
the reforms as being for the benefit of the party rather than privileging only
one particular group, to present them with minimal internal contestation, and
to build consensus for the changes both within and outside the party.
Ed Miliband’s ‘St Bride’s Speech’ is illustrative once again in underplaying
the role of the leader:
All of our history shows that change does not come just from a few people
at the top. It comes when good people come together to demand change.
But to make that happen we need those people in our Party, and we need
to reach out to others outside our Party too. To genuinely build a
movement again. (Miliband 2013)
Therefore, in this instance we see reforms to the UK Labour Party—the trade

union link, as well as changes to the process of selecting the parliamentary
leader, framed by the leader as an inclusive modernization process, and
entirely consistent with building a ‘new politics’ in Britain. A similar emphasis
on inclusiveness is also apparent in the Shorten party reform speech: ‘for
Labor to rebuild, we need to involve more people in the work of rebuilding’
(Shorten 2014), as well as Julia Gillard’s (2011) take on the process of reform
within the Australian Labor Party. Referring to the impending 2011 National
Conference, Gillard argued in her speech:
so the debate can be a real one, and the openness genuine, I do want to put
forward my proposals for Party reform today. Not brought down from a
mountain and written in stone. But brought up from the members, in an
election review I initiated, in a process I began. (Gillard 2011)
While these speeches may not accurately reflect the actual process by which
reforms are conceived and adopted, and apart from containing a number of
internal inconsistencies, they nevertheless demonstrate the power of the leader
to be able to drive the reform agenda in the public eye, and convey it as a
strong modernizing and unifying force—consistent with the party’s political
project and policies.
Opportunities for Driving Change:

ALP Leadership Reforms as a Case Study
Previous work on candidate-selection reform has highlighted the top-down
nature of the process (Gauja 2012). It has even been reported that the final
decision to implement the UK Conservatives’ postal primary in Totnes ‘was
taken after David Cameron personally contacted the chairperson of the local
party to discuss the process’ (Williams and Paun 2011: 23). Perhaps the
best example of a reform initiative that can be used to illustrate the role of
the leader in pushing through organizational changes, as well as the importance
of contextual factors, is the change to the selection of the Australian Labor
Party leader in 2013 that was adopted during the leadership of Kevin Rudd. In
Chapter 7 this reform was cited as an example of a substantial change that did
152 Party Reform
not require the approval of the party organization and the members. Here it is
used as an example of just how significant—and overt—a leader can be (both in
terms of personality and office) in driving organizational reform.
Between June 2010 and July 2013 the Australian Labor Party experienced
unprecedented leadership instability. Kevin Rudd, who had won the federal
election for the ALP in 2007, was removed by the parliamentary caucus and
replaced by Julia Gillard. Although the method by which Rudd was removed
was not without precedent (Paul Keating replaced Bob Hawke in similar
circumstances in 1991), the decision was seen as motivated by factional
interests and proved to be deeply unpopular with party members and the
public. Immediately after her promotion to the leadership, Gillard announced
that a general election would be held in August, allowing her leadership and
government to be scrutinized by the public. The ALP managed a narrow
victory but had to form minority government with the support of the Greens
and Independents. During this time, Gillard’s leadership continued to suffer
from the crisis of legitimacy which arose as a result of the way in which she
first became prime minister, and this was further compounded by the difficul-
ties faced in a period of minority government. The party’s popularity
declined, and in February 2012 Rudd resigned from the Cabinet and chal-
lenged Gillard for the leadership. He lost this vote 71–31. However, this did
not resolve the leadership issue. In March 2013 former leader Simon Crean
called for Rudd to once again contest the leadership. Gillard initiated a spill
but Rudd backed down and she was re-elected unopposed. Polls continued to
fall and on 23 June 2013 Rudd once again challenged for the position. This
time Rudd was elected 57 votes to Gillard’s 45.
Once of the first policy announcements that Rudd made upon becoming
leader again in 2013 was to propose changes to the leadership-selection
process to allow the membership to vote for the party leader. Rudd made
three main arguments for the change: that ‘Australians demand to know that
the Prime Minister they elect is the Prime Minister they get’, to ‘give more
power to the everyday members of the Labor Party’, and to ‘ensure that power
will never again rest in the hands of a factional few’ (Rudd 2013a). These
motivations reflect both the personal circumstances of Rudd’s dismissal from
office in 2010 and the broader electoral damage caused by leadership instabil-
ity within the party. Although reforms were not undertaken in the aftermath
of an electoral defeat, they were certainly directed at avoiding one. According
to one party source, ‘the strategic objective was to kill dead the Coalition’s
attack line that the Labor Party has brought back Kevin Rudd for five
minutes and will get rid of him afterwards’.4 This fear was not unfounded—
an internal party report into the 2013 federal election campaign loss found
that ‘the decline in Labor’s vote that began in late 2009 and culminated on
7 September 2013 occurred against a backdrop of persistent and ultimately
debilitating leadership instability’ (Garrett and Dick 2014: 2).
The narrative was entirely consistent with the ideals of intra-party democ-
racy. However, in the Australian case the proposal did not flow from the
grassroots, nor was there any consultation with the extra-parliamentary
party in pushing the reforms through. As Kefford (2014: 6) argues, Rudd
‘attempted publicly to capitalise on the unpopularity of the structures of the
party, while privately attempting to exert authority over the process’. The idea
of reforming the leadership-selection process had been around within the
party since 2011 when NSW State Secretary Sam Dastyari—after visiting
the UK Labour Party at the time of Ed Miliband’s election—floated the idea
publicly just before the National Conference. Former campaign strategist
Bruce Hawker and parliamentarian Chris Bowen also called for reform
around this time, citing the experiences of Canada’s NDP, the US Democratic
Party, and UK Labour as examples that the ALP could emulate. The pro-
posal failed to make it onto the agenda at the National Conference in
December 2011, but Rudd was supportive at this juncture: ‘the core truth is
this; the centralised power of the factional leadership of the Australian Labor
Party is exercised to the exclusion of the 35,000 members who make up our
rank and file’.5 When directly asked whether he would consider reforms to the
selection process, Rudd replied: ‘I think there can be a national conversation
about that’ (Rudd 2011).
Deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop commented that Rudd’s proposals
needed to be seen in the context of his own history with the leadership: ‘his
attack on the factions is a reminder of how Julia Gillard took his job from
him’.6 Several Labor MPs also dismissed the claims: ‘He’s just trying to
overshadow conference . . . it’s all about Kevin, as it always was. He’s just
got to wake up and realise he’s not going to be leader again’; ‘A man who
didn’t even run what he was doing past the cabinet now wants to empower the
rank and file’.7 Some MPs were not particularly enamored by the suggestion
of members electing the party leader—for example, Claire Moore, Gary
Gray, and Brendon O’Connor—the latter who expressed his doubt because
‘I don’t think it worked for the [Australian] Democrats’.8
The example challenges the ‘usual’ trajectory of reform in a number of
important ways, which in this particular instance actually contributed to the
reform’s eventual adoption. The first was the fact that the Labor Party was in
government, which meant that the party acted to counter a potential electoral
defeat rather than react to one that had already happened. Importantly,
because Rudd was also prime minister at the time he proposed the reforms,
he was able to mobilize significant public support for reforms that were seen to
be in the broader public interest. In this particular scenario, party reform did
not just encompass leadership selection—it was also inevitably tied to the
‘revolving door of the prime ministership’. The second differentiating factor
was the organizational rules, which allowed the parliamentary party to deter-
mine the method of selection of its leader. This meant, technically, that the
154 Party Reform
reform initiative required no further approval than beyond the parliamen-
tary caucus. The speed and urgency within which the reform was enacted (in
the context of an impending election) also stifled opportunity for intra-party
deliberation and debate. The example therefore serves to illustrate that
while the party leader can be an extremely important force in the process
of reform, the extent of this power is highly contingent on political
circumstances and the institutional arrangements (rules and practices) of
the political party.
PARTY ELITES
In addition to the prominence of party leaders, the most frequently

mentioned type of actor in media reports and internal party-reform docu-
ments was the party ‘elite’—comprising specifically of parliamentarians,
parliamentary staffers, and party office holders (for example, secretaries
and executive office bearers). Their influence was observable in two main
ways: as commentators in the media (both traditional media and online
sources) on particular reform initiatives, and as writers and advocates
for reform.
Media Commentary
Party parliamentarians will often appear in the media providing commen-
tary on particular aspects of party reform. For example, several years before
Kevin Rudd introduced leadership-selection reform to the Australian Labor
Party, New South Wales parliamentarian (and now New South Wales
opposition leader) Luke Foley argued that people are demanding new
modes of participation, and ‘one way people ought to be able to participate
in the Labor Party of the future is to have a vote on who becomes the party
leader’. At the same time this was reinforced by General Secretary Sam
Dastyari, who argued that ‘if we want to be a serious mass-member organ-
isation in the 21st century, then you have to devolve key decision-making
and that includes a model where the rank-and-file get a say in the party
leader’.9 Where they are not cited directly, media accounts will often place
parliamentarians in ‘camps’ for or against particular reform initiatives,
attempting to measure the potential success of the proposed change on the
basis of the level of parliamentary support it receives—even though the
decision is technically an extra-parliamentary one.
Advocating for Reform
Examining the trajectory of candidate-selection reform in Australia and
the United Kingdom, Gauja (2012) found that parliamentarians played a
particularly important role in generating ideas for reform. Conservative
MP Andrew Tyrie was credited as the first to advocate primaries in the
UK in his pamphlet, Back from the Brink, published in 2001 (Gay and
Jones 2009: 4), although UK Labour MP Frank Field has also argued
strongly for widening the selectorate for choosing parliamentary candi-
dates throughout his career, extending this to primaries in a pamphlet he
published for the think tank Policy Exchange (Field 2008). In Australia,
Ken Coghill, a former Victorian Labor Party politician, penned the first
essay to argue for open primaries in Australia, Let the People Decide
(Coghill 2001). More recently, ALP parliamentarians Clare O’Neil and
Tim Watts proposed organizational reform to make the party more
responsive to what they described as ‘the ways in which citizens want to
engage with them’, including ‘harnessing a latent online political engage-
ment through facilitating issues-based organising through Online Policy
Action Caucuses’ (2015: 26–7). Both described as rising young stars,
O’Neil and Watts entered parliament in 2013 from backgrounds in cor-
porate management and law.
The process by which the trial of an open primary in the NSW National
Party was adopted illustrates the importance of party elites. The community
pre-selection trial was developed as a joint initiative between the campaign
director, communications director, and the parliamentary party leader and
parliamentarian, Trevor Khan. It was then pitched to the local branches.
Khan, explaining why the electorate of Tamworth was chosen to trial the
initiative and illustrating the top-down nature of the reforms, commented:
‘the reason we got it is that I’m the duty MLC [Member of the Legislative
Council] and I was fundamentally attracted by it and campaigned hard
for it, and luckily, the branches were attracted by it’ (author interview
with Trevor Khan, 22 June 2010). Khan also argued that the experience of
reform initiatives, such as primaries, had the potential to be shared amongst
parliamentary colleagues in particular contexts, challenging the perception
that parties’ competitive strategies are closely guarded. In an interview,
Khan noted:
I genuinely see the trial as being not only of benefit to my party but
well and truly beyond my party. I think it will have a very healthy
effect upon particularly the ALP in terms of what it does—and, look
because we’re in the upper house and we have a lot more relaxed
relationship with people on the other side there’s no doubt that there
is an interest there for those very reasons. They can see the potential
that the system has.
156 Party Reform
UK Labour parliamentarian Frank Field provides a similar account of
parliamentarians sharing reform ideas across party lines. Field recalls that
he thought about the idea of holding an experimental primary in his own seat,
but that ‘in discussing the idea with a colleague, who was then a vice Chair-
man of the Tory Party, I was told in no uncertain terms that it was a less than
sensible idea as I would walk the primary’. Subsequently, Field notes, that ‘it
was an idea that did surface, I am pleased to say, in Tory circles’ (Field 2008: 26).
Khan’s suggestion that there is cross-party parliamentary cooperation on
primaries as a reform issue is also reflected in the policy agenda that was
engineered by both the UK Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats for the
inclusion of 200 fully funded postal primaries as part of the 2010 ‘Programme
for Government’. Although the policy was never implemented, it does suggest
that as a professional class, parliamentarians may have a distinct interest in
organizational reforms that stretch beyond party lines, particularly when
public resources can be utilized to defray the costs to the party and candidate
(see Gauja 2012: 648).
One of the most notable traits of the way in which elites have advocated for
party reform is their willingness to go outside the party, putting their ideas on
the public record and hence reaching a wider audience. In some instances, this
could be a reaction to perceived inertia within the party organization. Fol-
lowing the release of the Howard Report into reform of the New South Wales
branch of the party organization, a newly elected parliamentarian, Eleni
Petinos, used her inaugural speech in the New South Wales Legislative
Assembly to advocate for party reform. Linking party organizational reform
to changing the broader political and parliamentary culture—particularly
surrounding the under-representation of women—she argued that ‘if we are
serious about seeing a change in our Parliament, it is time to embrace renewal
in our party . . . That is why I support the proposed Howard reform model for
the New South Wales Division of the Liberal Party and encourage party
reform to be at the forefront of our agenda moving forward’.10 Petinos also
proposed that the party adopt an ‘aspirational target’ of 30 per cent female
representation in the New South Wales parliament following the 2019 state
election.
Although parliamentarians play a particularly prominent role in the pro-
cess, the range of individuals who might be classified as elites is quite broad,
including individuals who are able to attract media attention because of their
profession or position. A judge and former ALP member Anthony Whitlam
took the opportunity at a 2008 graduation address at the Australian National
University to advocate for the introduction of primaries—arguing that
‘removing the party organisations and intermediaries in the selection of
party candidates would deepen community engagement in the political pro-
cess’ (17 July 2008). The dissemination of ideas to a younger generation is
also evident in the way in which Julian Leeser, Executive Director of the
Australian Liberal Party’s think tank, the Menzies’ Research Centre, advo-
cated for primaries in a speech to the Australian Liberal Students Federation
Conference in 2008. Led by a former president of the Australian Young
Liberals, the debate resurfaced online in the conservative blog, Menzies’
House, in 2010.
Staffers and Office Holders

As noted above, the genesis of the community pre-selection trial in the NSW
Nationals was the result of cooperation between the parliamentary party, the
campaign director, and the party’s communications director. Examples from
other political parties are also common, with Nick Reece—former secretary
of the Victorian Liberal Party and a senior adviser to former prime minister
Julia Gillard—indicating his role in the process of ‘encouraging’ local parties
to volunteer to hold a primary:
I’ve spent a bit of time meeting with ALP members in local branches out
in Kilsyth and I think it’s fair to say that they need a bit of convincing.
But they also recognised that the ALP needs to trial new things if we’re
to keep our organisation vibrant and relevant to ordinary members of
the public.11
Sam Dastyari, former secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Labor
Party, was the first to publicly propose that the parliamentary leader be
elected by the membership. Dastyari credited this idea to his experience
travelling to the UK Labour conference to see the election of Ed Miliband.
Dastyari argued that ‘it’s done in the UK, it’s done in France, it’s done in
Canada and the US’,12 also providing an example of how contagion effects
work in practice when they are transmitted through the experiences of party
staff. Staff exchanges are routine between the British and Australian Labour
parties, and with the US parties, which also act as an important means of
disseminating ‘best practice’ techniques for organizing and campaigning. The
ALP, for example, sent several staff and organizers to work on the UK 2015
general election, while UK Progress director, Richard Angel, came for the
2013 Australian federal election. To suggest that through this process reforms
are transmitted uncritically would be a mistake. For example, Australian
Labor Party organizers were not convinced of some of the practices of the
UK organization, labelling it as ‘resistant to change’ and ‘unreceptive to new
campaign technologies’. Although they saw the UK Labour leadership-
selection model as one for Australia, these staffers were less convinced of
the party’s campaign strategy.
In the examples above, party staff worked to establish organizational
reforms on the basis of their own initiative. The Liberal Party in Australia
158 Party Reform
went further to recommend that the federal executive should have the power
to propose a primary, acting on advice from the federal Staff Planning
Committee, with state directors playing a ‘key role in running the primary’
(Reith 2011: 22–3). These recommendations act to consolidate—at least in the
interim—the power to ‘experiment’ with such reforms within the executive
of the party and amongst senior party officials, rather than at the request of
the membership.
THE ‘STATESMAN’
One of the most notable characteristics of all these reviews is that they have
been conducted (and authored) by very senior figures within each of the
parties, which have served to (partially) depoliticize their findings. Announ-
cing the NSW Liberal Party Review to the Party’s State Council in November
2013, former prime minister Tony Abbott distanced himself from the reform
debate when he made the following remark: ‘I am so pleased and proud of the
willingness of our President . . . to put this whole question of preselection
reform and the democratisation of our Party into the hands of a group of
eminent Liberals’ (Abbott 2013). Taking great pains to highlight the contri-
bution of each individual, Abbott described the review panel in the following
terms, as:
some of the finest people our Party has ever produced. This process will be
guided by eminent people led by John Howard, assisted by the Hon.
David Kemp who has been so important in reforming our Party in
Victoria, assisted by Chris McDiven a former president of this division
and a former president of our party nationally, and assisted by someone
who has done more for our Party in NSW than just about anyone else, my
friend and colleague, Philip Ruddock. (Abbott 2013)
In almost all of the organizational reviews canvassed in Chapter 7, panel

members have previously served as premiers, prime ministers, ministers, or
party presidents, providing a degree of distance and a source of authority and
legitimacy for both the process and the subsequent recommendations for
reform. Statesmen such as John Howard have declared a long-standing
interest in the issue of reform, better placed to express their thoughts once
away from the parliamentary arena (Howard 2010). In certain circumstances,
they allow a party leader to remove himself/herself from the politics of the
debate, but still retain control over the direction of the reform process. When
asked how he became involved in the 2014 NSW Liberal Party review,
Howard answered:
I was asked by the then Prime Minister and Premier and State President to
chair the committee. I had advocated plebiscites when I wrote my auto-
biography. People were aware of that. I had been involved in a report on
these issues probably 20 years ago. I’ve been keen on them [plebiscites] for
a long time. I think Tony Abbott wanted me involved because he knew
my opinions. (interview with author, 2015)
The idea of the statesman fits with Hall’s suggestion that institutional change
depends upon successfully fostering a series of institutional beliefs, schemas
that describe how ‘the adoption of new institutions will affect the likelihood of
achieving various types of goals’. Confidence in these changes can be garnered
by ‘communities of relevant experts and prior experience’ (Hall 2010: 208), a
description that applies to the party statesmen entrusted to undertake import-
ant organizational reviews.
THE ROLE OF PARTY MEMBERS
As noted in the introduction to this chapter, party members are typically given
little attention in accounts of party change, predominantly because they are
either defined in rather vague terms—as party operatives—pitted against
other self-interested groups within the party, or because of the dominance of
elites in the process of reform, they have very limited agency. The prominence
of leaders and elites in reform debates does support the suggestion that
members have limited overt power in agitating for reform. However, as
discussed in Chapter 7, their role in the process of reform should not be
discounted. This role can be conceptualized in two ways: through the use of
members as a source of consultation in the process of undertaking, and
reporting on, internal organizational reviews. This consultation could take
place through, for example, membership surveys, soliciting written feedback
and focus groups. The second role lies in how the concept of membership—
and the rights and responsibilities associated with it—is invoked as a justifi-
cation for reform. In this way, an analysis of the role of party members in the
reform process can be extended to how membership is conceptualized by a
range of actors within the party, including how it reflects the nature of the
modern party organization.
The second reason why the role of members tends to be regarded as
marginal in studies of reform reflects the fact that ‘members’ can be concep-
tualized, and can organize, in a number of different ways. The efforts of the
rank-and-file can be individual, or more commonly and effectively, members
can organize in a collective way to agitate for change through intra-party
160 Party Reform
pressure groups. This section of the chapter provides a brief analysis of the
active role of party members in agitating for organizational reform, examin-
ing in particular the relationship of grassroots activists with the ‘official’
review process. Two contrasting cases are discussed: the work of intra-
party groups Local Labor and Open Labor in advocating for the imple-
mentation of the 2010 ALP National Review and the more disparate
activities of ‘pro-plebiscite’ activists in the NSW Liberal Party. However,
examples of similar pressure groups can be found in the UK with Labour
First and the Tory Reform group, although the activities of the latter
have become more subdued in the period since the Conservatives have
taken government. Progress, which describes itself as an independent
organization of over 2,000 UK Labour Party members, was a vocal
contributor to the Collins Review reform debate, consulting its member-
ship in the process of preparing a detailed submission to the review,
arguing strongly for the introduction of primaries for candidate selection
and all member votes, rather than electoral colleges, for internal party
positions (Progress 2013: 5).
Collective Action within the Australian Labor Party:

Local and Open Labor
Local Labor describes itself as a ‘national, grassroots political action com-
munity within the Australian Labor Party advocating and educating for party
reform and renewal’ (Local Labor 2015a). Founded in 2010 by former prime
ministerial adviser, Race Williams, the group was formed ahead of the 2011
ALP National Conference in order to specifically advocate for the reforms
recommended by the 2010 National Review. The group has chapters in three
of the largest Labor states in Australia (New South Wales, Victoria, and
Queensland) and a membership in excess of 2,300 individual party members
who have signed up as members of Local Labor’s Facebook group. The
continuing mission of Local Labor is to ‘restore the party as a potent political
force’, by democratizing ALP processes and governance, increasing diversity
in Labor membership and candidates, sustaining deep and genuine engage-
ment with local communities, empowering Labor members and improving the
member experience, and promoting and reflecting Labor values in policy
development (Local Labor 2015a).
The broad aims of Local Labor mirror the organizational reform agenda
advocated by both the 2002 and 2010 ALP National Reviews (Local Labor
2015b), reflecting the fact that the group was established to campaign for the
review reforms—rather than present a significant alternative or to argue
against them. Although there is scholarly debate surrounding the impact of
democratization initiatives on the voice of party members,13 Local Labor has
advocated for the basic principles of individualized participation in a way
similar to the emphasis placed on direct democracy by the party reviews.
Local Labor argues that:
The ALP is strongest when all of our members are well informed, equally
valued and genuinely encouraged to participate in party decision-making,
pre-selections and policy development. Labor governments have dedi-
cated themselves to the principle of one vote, one value and have built
and defended Australia’s transparent electoral system. The same must be
true of the ALP itself. (Local Labor 2015c)
In November 2013, Local Labor was joined by another grassroots organiza-

tion called ‘Open Labor’. Like Local Labor, Open Labor advocates for
democratic reform of the ALP, but is differentiated from the former group
with its broader focus on progressive policy issues and its engagement with the
wider community of Labor supporters and voters.14 Under a Joint Statement
of Cooperation, the two groups agreed that ‘while some of their priorities
differ, their broad goals to renew the Labor Party and its supporters around
Labor values and policies, and to empower Labor members to achieve party
reform, are complementary’. To that end, both groups ‘are committed to
cooperation, and we encourage both Local Labor and Open Labor members
to support the activities of both movements’.
Local Labor has used a combination of organizing strategies to agitate for
reform. It asked all members to actively campaign at branch level: by encour-
aging branch members to sign up to the Local Labor Facebook group (‘the
bosses will only take notice if the numbers are there’), by lobbying local
parliamentarians and state conference delegates (who in turn elect national
conference delegates) to support the recommendations of the review, and by
providing speakers to attend local branch meetings to discuss and debate the
review’s recommendations (Local Labor 2011). Motions for organizational
reform were placed on the agendas of State ALP conferences to push for
change at the subnational level and increase the visibility of the issue. Local
Labor and Open Labor both engaged in the new ALP leadership-selection
process run for the first time in September 2013, in which party members were
able to vote for the party leader. Both leadership candidates were asked to
complete a survey on their views of party reform and this was in turn
publicized widely within the party.
A number of external strategies, designed to gather the attention of the
media and the broader public, were also used to agitate for reform. This
included petitions to both the 2012 and 2015 national conferences, a Leaders’
Letter (signed by prominent Labor politicians and co-organized by Local and
Open Labor), which was presented to 2015 conference delegates, as well as a
dedicated Twitter hashtag: #puthelighton. These external strategies closely
mirrored the ‘Prime Time’ candidate-selection reform campaign that was
162 Party Reform
launched by the UK Labour pressure group, Progress, in 2009. This campaign
also included a launch statement that was signed by a number of prominent
Labour parliamentarians, including David Miliband.15
Although Local Labor is a community of grassroots ALP members, it has
always maintained a connection—and worked closely with—leaders and
elites in the party. Several of the patrons of Local Labor are high-profile
current and former politicians, including John Faulkner, Carmen Lawrence,
Peter Beattie, and Andrew Leigh. The party’s leadership has been a strategic
target for the lobbying efforts of this group, which in addition to lobbying
parliamentarians in their capacity as conference delegates has also lobbied
these individuals through representations to the party’s National Executive.
Far from being an instance where the reform agenda of party elites has been
pitted against the wishes of the grassroots, the work of rank-and-file organ-
izations within ALP illustrates a closer and more nuanced relationship
between members and party leaders in the process of reform.
Individual Efforts for Reform in the NSW Liberals

How political party members have contributed to recent calls for candidate-
selection reform within the NSW Liberal Party provides an interesting con-
trast to the collective and organized approach of groups such as Local and
Open Labor. While there are individual members committed to achieving party
reform, their role has been much more ad hoc—largely driven by individual
efforts in several different forums that ebb and flow. In contrast to the efforts of
party elites and parliamentarians, who benefit from existing intra-party and
public profiles, the challenge for ‘ordinary’ members in advocating for reform
is much greater, having to negotiate both intra-party processes, building
support for the initiative, and in some cases raising public awareness. The
most sustained of these efforts has been driven by former staffer John
Ruddick, who has campaigned to introduce plebiscites for the selection
of party officials, parliamentary candidates, and parliamentary leaders with
the aim of reducing factional influence within the party (Andrews 2011).
Active since 2010, Ruddick’s campaign began internally launching a ‘pro-
plebiscites’ reform group, a petition of grassroots members,16 and two unsuc-
cessful attempts to run for the NSW (2011) and federal (2014) presidencies of
the party on a pro-reform agenda. In 2013, Ruddick took the unprecedented
step of emailing all NSW party members about his reform agenda and then
appeared on a news and current affairs television programme, at which point
he was threatened with expulsion from the party.17 Although it was not
Ruddick’s initial intention to speak publicly, he argued that ‘we can continue
to fight in the party but unless the public knows about it and the media knows
about it, this is a fight that could go on for decades’ (Ruddick 2013). This
combination of public/private strategies shares similarities with those devel-
oped by Local Labor, but the collective ethos in the Liberal Party has not
proved as strong.
Despite the limited public support that the activities of Ruddick and other
likeminded individual members have managed to gain, the trajectory of the
official review process in the NSW Liberal Party suggests that this agitation
may have had an impact—at least in placing reform on the agenda. In 2013,
the ‘Pathway to Reform’ Committee was established to inquire into organ-
izational reform and the use of plebiscites in the NSW Liberal Party. The
committee’s work culminated in the release of the party members’ survey in
April 2014. The survey was not seen as decisive or particularly helpful: the
results showed an impasse amongst members as to their preferred method of
candidate selection, and was also the subject of accusations of manipulation
from both sides of the reform debate.18 With no natural consensus or action
likely as an outcome of the Pathway to Reform exercise, the NSW Executive
commissioned the Howard Review. As previously noted, the Howard Review
(2014) recommended that the party move to plebiscites for the selection of
their lower house candidates. In October 2015 the issue was debated at the
party’s annual state council meeting. However, prior to the meeting it became
apparent that a blanket move to adopt plebiscites would not get the support of
60 per cent of delegates that was required to achieve constitutional change
(NSW state director, interview with author). A ‘compromise model’ was
therefore adopted whereby plebiscites will be ‘trialled’ in six seats prior to
the 2019 state election and the number of branch members involved in most
metropolitan selections will be increased by 75 per cent.19
THINK TANKS AND PARTY FOUNDATIONS
Examining reform debates in Australia and the United Kingdom revealed

that think tanks have also played a role in the process of organizational
reform, although they have been generally overlooked in previous studies of
organizational change, where the analytic focus tends to reside within political
parties. For some time, however, scholars working within the field of public
policy have noted the significance and influence of these bodies, which derive
their authority and legitimacy by bringing expertise and research into policy
making (see, for example, Rich 2004; Stone and Denham 2004). Some think
tanks are aligned with particular political parties, such as the Menzies
Research Centre (Liberal Party of Australia) and the Chifley Research Centre
(ALP), while others are independent advocacy organizations (for example,
the Electoral Reform Society and the Institute for Government).
164 Party Reform
The work of think tanks is important in promoting party reform in several
respects. First, their activities provide outreach to the general public, as policy
documents and research papers are authored and marketed to reach not only
the parties, but also the media and citizens. In this way, think tanks aim to
influence ideas and norms surrounding particular practices. What think tanks
offer ‘is not simply neutral policy research and advice, but ideologically
driven, focused research that challenges and promotes the ideas that underpin
policy’ (Vromen and Hurley 2015: 174). The debate over party reform, and
the purported democratic values imbued in practices such as primaries and
‘opening up’ various aspects of party organizational life, is conducted in the
public area. While this strategy may lead to a change in party organization, as
Vromen and Hurley suggest, the strategic role of think tanks is to more
broadly influence public values and debate.
In the last decade, there have been several examples from both Australia
and the United Kingdom of a range of party-affiliated and independent think
tanks pursuing an organizational reform agenda. In Australia, Julian Leeser,
former Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre (aligned with the
Liberal Party), has been a vocal advocate of implementing open primaries as a
way of increasing equity and transparency in the political system, as well as
increasing community awareness of candidates (Leeser 2008). In August 2015,
this advocacy was taken one step further with the Menzies Research Centre,
which usually provides expert research on broader public policy issues such as
the economy, publishing a report on female under-representation in the party
(Carter and Flint 2015). Framing the issue in terms of electoral success and
advocating the implementation of targets for female representation, the report
argued that ‘we cannot place enough emphasis on how important it is for the
Liberal Party to change. We have lost ground to the Labor Party in terms of
the female vote. This may affect our chances of electoral success in the future’
(Carter and Flint 2015: 23). The issue of party reform, particularly in the
realm of community organizing, has also been pursued by the Australian
Labor Party-aligned Chifley Research Centre, albeit in more subtle ways. In
November 2013, the Chifley Research Centre organized a public conference,
Building a Progressive Australia, which brought together representatives from
the Labor Party, the union movement, and progressive advocacy organiza-
tions to discuss economic and social policy initiatives. However, the pro-
gramme also included numerous sessions and events designed to train party
activists and members of best practice organizing techniques, how better to
integrate party supporters into various policy networks, and discussed what
organizing, policy development, and membership practices could be adopted
from other political contexts (the United States and the Obama campaign)
and other political organizations.
In the UK, there has been a much richer history of think tanks taking an
interest in the organizational reform of political parties. For example, the
Electoral Reform Society and Policy Exchange have published reports—
written by the Times journalist, Peter Riddell (2003), and Labour MP
Frank Field (2008), respectively, suggesting the introduction of primaries as
a way of reviving British democracy and strengthening the legitimacy of
candidate selection. In 2003, the New Politics Network (now Unlock Dem-
ocracy) published a pamphlet with contributions from a number of prominent
authors on the ways in which political parties could open up their organiza-
tions, titled, Broadening Participation: Thinking beyond Party Membership.
This document specifically recommended the introduction of registered sup-
porters’ networks, with strategies to involve them in party activities and utilize
them as a source of policy ideas (Robinson 2003: 12; McNally 2003: 22). In
May 2009, the Times (with Riddell as Chief Political Commentator and
Assistant Editor) editorialized in favour of legislating to mandate primaries,
with the cost met by the public purse.20 Prior to this, the Riddell Report, The
Report of the Commission into Candidate Selection in the UK, represented the
findings of a cross-party commission convened by the Electoral Reform
Society, and argued strongly for party reform as a necessary pre-condition
to the continuing health of representative democracy, and for state and public
support to achieve this aim:
Political parties cannot be left to wither away. It is up to the parties to

justify their essential and powerful position by putting their own houses in
order and by reforming their structures and procedures to improve the
breadth and quality of candidates that they select. But it is also up to
opinion formers, the government and society in general to recognise and
support the role of parties within the political system in general. Conse-
quently reforming the procedures and operation of parties is central to the
functioning and health of our democracy. Making membership of parties
more attractive is a necessary pre-condition for improving and broadening
the selection of candidates. (Riddell 2003: 12, emphasis in original)
While the Electoral Reform Society is an ‘independent campaigning organ-

isation working to champion the rights of voters’ (ERS 2015), the position
taken in the report is, as illustrated above, sympathetic to the efforts of
political parties. What is, again, particularly significant about its work is the
intended reach of the report, which aims to increase public awareness (and
therefore pressure) on the need to reform, but in this instance, to frame the
debate as one of wider public significance, in which support from the state is
warranted: ‘We argue strongly that good practice deserves wider support and
recognition and that outside financial and practical support should be made
available to encourage it’ (Riddell 2003: 6).
In 2011, the Institute for Government published a lengthy report on can-
didate selection in the United Kingdom.21 The report, Party People, wel-
comed the trend towards trialling primaries for candidate selection, arguing
166 Party Reform
that ‘giving the public a role in candidate selection can enhance the legitimacy
of the process, raise the profile of individual candidates, and reduce disen-
gagement from the political system’ (Williams and Paun 2011: 6). In writing
the report, which discussed candidate selection in the three largest parties (the
Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats), the Institute for Gov-
ernment collaborated with several other think tanks, including Policy
Exchange, Progress, the Institute for Public Policy Research, and Centre
Forum. These groups organized fringe events at party conferences in 2011
to launch the report, which recommended that postal primaries be imple-
mented for some seats, most appropriately safe seats where the member is
retiring (Williams and Paun 2011: 7).
Despite the core aim of the Institute for Government being to promote
‘more effective government’ (IFG 2015), the report was not ‘typical work’ for
the organization. One of the report’s authors explained that it was heavily
driven by the former director of the institute and former Labour Party
politician, Andrew Adonis, who also obtained external funding from the
charitable organization the Joseph Rowntree Trust. There were varying levels
of cooperation amongst the parties in writing and researching the report, with
the Liberal Democrats being most willing to cooperate and Labour and the
Conservatives more reticent.
Interestingly, the experience surrounding the IFG report indicates that the
public demand for primaries and democratic reforms within political parties
should not be overstated, despite the efforts of individual protagonists in the
debate to bring greater attention to the efforts of rebuilding the parties. As one
of the authors argued, the report was not driven by the parties or the public, as
‘the public wouldn’t even know what a primary is’. In fact, the report was
originally going to be all about primaries, but this was dropped due to lack of
interest and instead a wider report on candidate-selection mechanisms and the
picture and direction of reform was produced.
CONCLUSION
The main argument of this chapter is that when we think about reform
debates, and who is driving the process, it is not simply a question of party
members versus elites. Moving beyond this dichotomy, the chapter has shown
that debates are played out in much wider circles—in the media, within think
tanks, and promulgated by those who have moved on from public life, or
occupy a backbench position, but still maintain an active interest in questions
of party organization. While the analysis in this chapter has supported previ-
ous accounts of the importance of the party leader in driving change, the way
he/she is able to do this is a crucial part of the explanation. Leaders occupy a
prominent position in the public eye, and are an authoritative force in the
party organization. Yet in the process of reform, these institutional features
are also mediated by personal characteristics and particular political cir-
cumstances. What was common across all of the main protagonists for
reform was a willingness to advocate for change not only within, but also
beyond the party organization, through media outlets and in various public
forums. It therefore appears that not only the substance of organizational
change, but also the process through which it is achieved, is now blurring
the distinction between the internal affairs of the party and what is in the
public domain.
NOTES
1. See, for example, Chiru et al. (2015: 47), Wauters (2014), and Barnea and Rahat
(2007: 387). Note, however, that Bille (1997) was unable to prove any correlation
between party leadership and organizational change in the Danish Social
Democrats. His findings demonstrated that the modest changes to the party that
occurred since 1960 ‘took place gradually, mostly in periods where the party
leadership was stable and under no pressure to change’ (1997: 388).
2. For example, the Sydney Morning Herald ran with the heading ‘Bill Shorten’s
plans to democratise Labor’ (14 April 2014), the Australian went with ‘Prime
Minister Julia Gillard outlines Labor Party vision’ (16 September 2011), and the
Guardian carried the heading ‘Ed Miliband’s plan to reform Labour’s link with the
unions’ (9 July 2013). All articles framed the party leader as the driving force
behind the reforms.
3. See Chapter 7.
4. Financial Review, 10 July 2013.
5. Quoted in the Sunday Telegraph, 27 November 2011.
6. Quoted in the Sunday Telegraph, 27 November 2011.
7. Quoted in the Australian, 28 November 2011, p. 4.
8. Australian, 29 November 2011, p. 2; Age, 2 December 2011, p. 2.
9. Quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 19–20 November 2011, p. 5.
10. Quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 2015. NSW Legislative Assembly
Hansard and Papers, Tuesday, 5 May 2015.
11. Nick Reece, PM ABC Radio, 16 February 2010. Interestingly, credit for the trial
was claimed by premier John Brumby: ‘It’s just a suggestion I’ve made that could
be considered, it’s a way of potentially breathing, I think, new life into democracy,
new life into politics’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 2009).
12. Quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 19–20 November 2011, pp. 4–5.
13. See, for example, the special issue of Party Politics on democratizing candidate
selection: 7(3) (2001).
168 Party Reform
14. Party reform is one of Open Labor’s projects, which also include new forms of
political organizing, economic policy, asylum seeker policy, and climate change
(Open Labor 2015).
15. An archived version of the statements of support for primaries and the range of
publications written in connection with the campaign can be found online: <http://
www.progressonline.org.uk/campaigns/prime-time/publications/> (accessed 29
October 2015).
16. Michael Baume, ‘Drowning in a sea of factional self-interests’, Spectator, 16
August 2014.
17. Gabrielle Chan, ‘Liberal party member threatened with suspension for NSW
reform crusade’, Guardian, 4 October 2013.
18. Christian Kerr, ‘Liberal survey on plebiscites “manipulated” ’, Australian, 3 April
2014.
19. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 2015, ABC News 7.30 Report, 26 October
2015.
20. ‘After the MPs’ expenses turmoil: Seven ways to bring about change’, Times, 21 May.
21. The Institute for Government describes itself as the ‘UK’s leading independent
charity and think tank promoting more effective government. We work with
political parties and senior civil servants, providing fresh thinking through
research, events and leadership development’ (IFG 2015).
9
The Challenges and Consequences

of Party Reform
This book began with the observation that although party change in of itself is
not a new phenomenon, the decline in party membership has become so
pervasive across advanced industrial democracies that is has created what
many parties now see as a critical juncture in their organizational trajectories:
they must either reform or perish. In the last decade, parties in Australia, the
United Kingdom, Germany, and New Zealand, among others, have under-
taken a flurry of high-profile public reform activities designed to increase
participation in, and engagement with, their organizations. While some of
these reforms seek to enhance the role of members in intra-party decision
making, many reforms also aim to extend participatory opportunities to those
traditionally defined as outside the party organization—for example, non-
members, voters, and partisan supporters.
Building on the evidence assembled as to how and why party reform occurs,
this chapter examines several of the possible consequences of such reforms,
and the challenges for party organizations moving into the future. After
providing a brief summary of the key findings of the research, the overall
trajectory of reform in relation to the role of political parties as participatory
and representative institutions in modern democracies is discussed. Several
main themes, or consequences, of reform are explored. The chapter analyses
some of the fundamental challenges and tensions that arise when more
inclusive modes of participation are mapped onto existing, and traditionally
relatively closed, party organizations—focusing specifically on supporters’
networks and community-organizing initiatives. The chapter then considers
whether party reforms have accurately responded to citizens’ contemporary
preferences for political participation. Finally, it examines the type of party
organization that is emerging as a result.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: WHY, AND HOW, DO POLITICAL

PARTIES UNDERTAKE ORGANIZATIONAL REFORM?
Utilizing the three-tiered framework outlined in Chapter 2, the primary goal

of the book was to better understand how parties’ perceptions of the
170 Party Reform
environment in which they operate motivate and shape the agenda for organ-
izational reform. Viewed as an outcome, the notion of reform is captured in
deliberate and public changes to a party’s structure and processes. How-
ever, as a process, reform offers the party an opportunity to ‘rebrand’ or
publicly alter its image, change relationships of power through cathartic
review exercises, and attempt to gain legitimacy by appealing to popular
democratic norms.
The central argument of the book is that the trajectory of reform can be
understood by using a two-step analytical process. The first step is to identify
the motivating factors for reform, at the level of the political party, the party
system, and the political system (Barnea and Rahat 2007). These pressures do
not exist in a vacuum, but rather are shaped by actors’ interpretations of the
nature and urgency of the situation. The second step is to examine the
interaction between the pressures at these various levels, in order to analyse
how they come together to create the conditions for reform to occur. Like the
holes in slices of Swiss cheese lining up together, the book argued that reform
is most likely to occur when there is a confluence and alignment of motiv-
ations at each of the three levels. Actors within the party, through the way in
which they understand and frame the necessity for reform, and the way in
which they speak about it publicly, have the ability to manipulate this align-
ment by stressing the importance of particular motivations, and emphasizing
the consistency of their motivations across each of the three levels.
The most important internal motivations for reform, as discussed in
Chapter 3, centred around both increasing and strengthening membership
through individualized affiliation and adopting more expansive notions of
membership, whilst at the same time diluting the influence of collective
groupings within parties—most notably factions and unions. Ideology and
organizational ethos were commonly used to provide support for reform
activities, by creating a discourse that suggested that organizational changes
were necessary because they either returned a party to its traditional roots, or
simply modernized structures that had always existed within the party.
Political parties also faced strong competitive pressures to reform. One of
the most common perceptions among party elites was that reform would
bring electoral dividends. Chapter 4 aimed, however, to establish the various
mechanisms behind this process—to understand how organizational changes
might translate into more votes. Again, building and sustaining a membership
base was seen as the key to success, as were the benefits of organizational
branding that reform initiatives could bring. Contagion, not only from other
political parties but also from other political associations, played a significant
role in bringing new forms of organizing to parties. This included embracing
social media and online platforms as sites for partisan participation.
Party reform was also seen as an appropriate way in which to address the
negative public perceptions caused by political scandals. It is interesting to
Challenges and Consequences of Party Reform 171
note, however, that in several instances where reform occurred ostensibly as a
response to scandal, for example, the UK Labour Party’s response to Falkirk
and the Belgian parties’ response to Agusta, the organizational solution far
outweighed the scope of the original problem. In both cases, changes to the
process of selecting the party leader were made in reaction to allegations of
branch stacking and bribery. Both these political circumstances offered par-
ties significant latitude to interpret the cause and severity of the problem in
order to offer an appropriate (and politically popular) response.
Changes at the system level, and their impact on political parties, are
important in several ways. They encompass shifts in political engagement
that necessitate adaptation from political parties. However, this adaptation
does not occur in isolation and requires both interpretation and response from
party elites. This interpretation, in turn, conditions the response that parties in
turn adopt. Chapter 5 portrayed parties’ perceptions of citizens as unwilling
joiners and preferring ad hoc and low-intensity participatory opportunities in
contrast to sustained engagement and ideological allegiance. The creation of
supporters’ networks and the increasing use of online forums for broad policy
consultation were provided as examples of organizational reform designed to
respond to this new type of politically active citizen. In many respects this
perception accurately reflects the findings of participation research; however,
questions remain over the appropriateness and popularity of the response
(discussed further below).
More general patterns of reform were explored in Chapter 6, which situated
the trajectory of change in the case study parties within a broader comparative
context by reference to existing empirical research. It also enabled an exam-
ination of several of the theoretical expectations set out in Chapter 2, namely
that similar patterns of reform were to be expected across both the UK
and Australia, as both democracies have experienced similar problems of
membership decline and citizen disaffection, and that parties of different
families—influenced by their diverse ideologies and organizational histories,
would differ in their reform trajectories. Indeed, the findings presented in
Chapter 2 indicated that parties in both these democracies were pursuing
similar reform agendas, characterized by a concern with increasing the inclu-
sivity of decision-making processes and adopting more expansive forms of
partisan affiliation. Even though the social democratic parties pursued reform
activities more frequently, the paired comparison found that all parties imple-
mented similar types of initiatives.
Within the broader sample of parties covered in the book, most reform
efforts were concentrated on candidate selection. Although the shift overall
was to adopt more inclusive selectorates, which is consistent with the findings
from existing comparative research, the move to adopt open and semi-open
primaries was not as pervasive as might otherwise be perceived from numerous
high-profile examples. Reforms to policy development and leadership-selection
172 Party Reform
processes were also characterized by efforts to increase inclusiveness, though
actual reform events were less frequent. The almost universal adoption of
supporters’ networks in the case study parties was contextualized within an
increasing international trend towards the implementation of this type and
other more porous modes of partisan affiliation. Tracking the timing of reforms
across parties and democracies provided substantial evidence for the claim that
reforms tend to happen when parties are in opposition, but only limited
evidence for the contagion hypothesis. This raises the question of what might
be considered an appropriate time frame for evaluating this effect, and the need
for a triangulation of methods (that include motivational evidence) in tracking
and understanding patterns of contagion.
Through an analysis of the strategic process of reform, Chapter 6 examined
the various ways in which party actors reconciled potentially competing
motivations through party reviews—so that the drivers within each of the
three levels all pushed in the same direction and created an unambiguous
trajectory for change. Several strategies for achieving consensus were can-
vassed: including acknowledging members’ disaffection, using consultations
as both a justification for reform and as cathartic process, actively situating
the reform agenda within a party’s history and traditions, deploying the
rhetoric of modernization, and depicting the reforms with a sense of urgency
and excitement. The analysis also revealed that in the process of creating
consensus, different parties will ‘sell’ the message of reform to their audiences
in divergent ways. For example, a clear difference could be observed between
the social democratic and conservative parties in Australia, with the latter
party much more concerned with highlighting the electoral benefits of party
membership. For the former, strengthening membership was linked to a
normative preference for particular models of organizational democracy.
Not all reforms, however, require the approval of the extra-parliamentary
party. Whilst some initiatives passed through representative bodies, such as
the party conference, other reforms (for example, changes to campaigning
and organizing practices) were implemented with the authority of the execu-
tive and/or the party leader. In other instances, more controversial reforms
such as open primaries were effectively adopted under the auspices of a ‘trial’
or ‘experiment’. Here the significance of the process lies not so much in
changes to formal rules, but in expectations for future practice that are created
by these high-profile events.
Chapter 8 examined the diverse range of actors that participate in the
process of reform, both within and outside the party. The importance of the
leader in the process of party reform was examined, not simply in terms of
individual leaders and leadership change, but also the means that enable a
leader to exert this authority. Beyond the party leader, several types of party
elites—most prominently parliamentarians, staffers, office holders, and
‘statesmen’—also play important roles in the advocacy and promotion of
change. The role of party members in agitating for change was also explored,
comparing collective to individual strategies for influence, and providing a
more nuanced account of the relationship between members and elites in the
process, which is not always oppositional. Finally, Chapter 8 noted the con-
tribution of think tanks, as external and ‘expert’ policy organizations, in
pushing particular reform agendas, such as the introduction of primaries in
the United Kingdom.
In mapping the activities of a diverse range of actors in the reform process,
one of the most interesting findings that emerged was the tendency for reform
debates to be conducted increasingly in the public eye rather than just within
the parties themselves. This, as demonstrated in the examples of the ALP
leadership-selection change and the advocacy work undertaken by think
tanks on candidate selection in the UK context, reveals how debates sur-
rounding the broader public interest can also be used to resolve intra-party
matters, and in this way further consolidate the blurring of the boundaries of
the party.
Although complex and inherently contested, by employing the framework
presented in Chapter 2, the book attempted to explain how political parties in
a range of contemporary democracies have drawn on a series of motivating
factors, and through high-profile public campaigns have used both the rhet-
oric and the strategic processes (for example, internal reviews) associated with
reform to alter the nature of their organizations, and the way in which they
mediate between citizens and the state. As explained at the outset, the book
was concerned with examining the contemporary era, and only in a limited
range of parties and democracies. Readers were encouraged therefore to draw
many of their own comparisons with parties in other systems and in different
eras. However, insofar as we see commonalities in citizens’ participatory
preferences and their expectations of parties across democracies, then—
provided that political parties see sufficient electoral and organizational bene-
fits in reform exercises—we would expect these patterns of reform to have
resonance across the globe. In an era of political engagement arguably char-
acterized by the rise of individualized forms of action, citizens’ changing
expectations of democracy therefore mean that the trajectory of reform
today would probably look quite distinct from previous historical periods.
Different constellations of actors and the various ways in which parties are
organized would of course influence the process by which reform takes place,
but what is particularly notable about the contemporary era is the increasing
permeability of organizational boundaries. This refers not only to parties, nor
just to the outcomes produced by reform, but particularly to the very public
way in which reform is debated, driven in part by new media and techno-
logical environments. It goes without saying, however, that these reflections
need to be tested empirically, and such a longitudinal examination might
usefully form the basis of future research.
174 Party Reform
RECONCILING TENSIONS: MAPPING NEW PROCESSES
ONTO EXISTING STRUCTURES
Several of the reform agendas examined in this book have highlighted

attempts by political parties to expand participation beyond the traditional
boundaries of the party by opening up intra-party decision making to non-
members and by loosening forms of official party affiliation. At the same time,
however, some parties have also put in place initiatives designed to strengthen
membership participation and make membership more meaningful. In exam-
ining these motivations, I argued in Chapter 3 that these two strategies have
the potential to conflict, even though they are often intertwined in party
discourse and reform agendas. Three different examples of organizational
reforms with this potential effect were discussed throughout the book: the
introduction of open and semi-open primaries, the creation of supporters’
networks, and more open and inclusive opportunities for policy development.
While the examples differ, the basic problem remains the same: how can these
new processes be mapped onto, or reconciled with existing party structures?
Chapters 3 and 5 canvassed several different practical ways in which
political parties can do this. This might include, for example, weighting the
respective votes of members and non-members in open and semi-open
primaries—a feature of the Australian Labor Party ‘community pre-
selections’—to ensure that members’ votes will always be ‘worth more’ than
non-member participants (see p. 38). Another solution might be to demarcate
the difference between, and the respective rights of, party members and
supporters, apportioning more influence to the former category of individuals.
Both the Canadian Liberals and the New Zealand Labour Party have
attempted this approach in the way in which they have constitutionalized
this new form of affiliation. In the New Zealand Labour Party, for example, a
registered supporter is ‘able to receive communications and to attend Party
meetings and functions, except when they are in committee’.1 Nevertheless,
the success of this measure as a balancing exercise depends on how important
various rights and decision-making processes within the party are to members
and supporters, as well as how these constitutional provisions are interpreted.
To date, a handful of surveys have looked at party members’ attitudes to
the creation of supporters’ networks. These surveys provide a valuable source
of information on the potential organizational effect of these initiatives. The
first of these surveys was commissioned in 2006 by the UK Labour Party
advocacy group, the ‘LabOur Commission’,2 and conducted by the market
research company YouGov (Gauja 2013: 107–9). It was fielded to party
members in June 2006, shortly after an announcement at the Labour Spring
Conference that the party would be creating a supporters’ network. Although
a majority of members (51 per cent) thought that the creation of the
T A B L E 9 . 1 UK Labour members’ attitudes to supporters’ participatory rights
(percentage of respondents)
All Very or fairly Slightly left Centre or

members left of centre of centre right of centre
Supporters should be able to 25 19 31 22

participate in policy making
Supporters should have a share 11 11 11 13
in deciding policy
Supporters should play a role in 9 6 9 16
choosing candidates
Supporters should be able to 9 7 7 17
vote in leadership elections
Supporters should not have any 54 63 50 46
of these rights
Don’t know 10 8 9 9
Source: LabOur Commission, ‘Survey of party members current and lapsed, 1–6 June 2006’, reported in Gauja
(2013: 109). N = 670 (current members only).
supporters’ network was a good way of drawing people into the party, a
sizeable minority (32 per cent) felt that the supporters’ network was a prece-
dent that might undermine the point of party membership. This reticence
carried through to members’ opinions of the rights that supporters should
carry within the organization (Table 9.1).
Over half the members surveyed felt that supporters should not have any
rights at all—a sentiment that was most pronounced amongst the party’s
activist left. Of the different activities canvassed, members were most willing
to cede some power over policy development, but were strongly opposed to
non-members playing a role in candidate and leadership selection. These
findings are particularly interesting in hindsight given that by virtue of the
2014 Building a One Nation Labour Party reforms, registered supporters now
have an equal say to party members in selecting the parliamentary leader
(discussed further below).
Similar attitudes to party supporters were also held by members of the
German Social Democratic Party in a survey administered to local and dis-
trict/sub-district associations in 2009 as part of the party’s organizational
reform process. In response to the question ‘should these forms of participation
also be opened up to non-members?’ (reported in Totz 2011: 12), the majority
of respondent groups were happy to see supporters surveyed on substantive
policy propositions, but were reluctant to grant them formal decision-making
powers on policy issues and in the selection of candidates (Table 9.2).
Although it is not one of the party types covered in this book, it is also
interesting to note that a 2012 survey of Australian Greens party members
found very similar attitudes to the integration of non-member participants.
176 Party Reform
T A B L E 9 . 2 German Social Democrats’ associational attitudes
to non-member participation (percentage of respondents)
Form of involvement Yes No
Surveys on substantive positions 82 17

Decision making on substantive positions 11 88
Selection of candidates for public office 30 69
Source: Totz (2011: 12). The percentages reported here are an average of the local and district/sub-district
associational results reported by Totz. N = approximately 3,960 local associations and 224 district/sub-district
associations (Totz 2011: 10–11).
Whilst 77 per cent of members felt that a supporters’ network was a good
way of drawing people into the party, the majority of members disagreed with
the propositions that supporters should have a role in deciding policy (62
per cent), choosing candidates (71 per cent), or participating in the selection of
the party leader (75 per cent) (Gauja and Jackson 2015: 15).
The evidence presented here indicates a strong reluctance, on the part of party
members, to cede decision-making influence to a larger group of partisan
supporters. Whilst members welcome the idea of supporters’ networks in prin-
ciple, there is a real possibility that the creation of these looser forms of affiliation
may further reduce financial membership, particularly if participation in import-
ant activities such as leadership selection is the prerogative of both groups. In
this scenario, supporters may supplant members as the party ‘base’ of the future.
Adapting the principles of community organizing is another prominent way
in which political parties in Australia and the United Kingdom have attempted
to strike a balance between member and non-member participation. Although
these are not necessarily new techniques (see Scarrow 1994), they have been the
subject of intense and renewed interest following the perceived mobilization
and fundraising success of the Obama presidential campaign in the US.
Community-organizing initiatives are characterized by their focus on local
communities and issues. In the United Kingdom, for example, the UK Labour
Party had advocated these initiatives as examples of ‘best practice’ amongst its
local groups. The Folkestone local branch led one of these local campaigns
against parking charges in the town centre. Starting with an online petition, the
campaign spread to an offline petition in the high street that collected 2,000
signatures, progressed to a series of community meetings, and culminated in a
local council referendum. Lauded by the party, the campaign was able to
successfully reinvigorate the local branch, as members
had a focus. Each week we would get ready to give a speech at a meeting,
or prepare for a radio interview, or print more posters for the campaign . . .
We found a new energy in the local party, with new members taking the
lead in campaigns and long standing members finding a new lease of life.
(UK Labour Party 2013e)
Not only was participation within the party renewed at the local level, but the
campaign also succeeded in bringing the Labour Party into the public view
and integrating supporters as ‘for the first time, we became part of the
community and built bridges with other groups that were working for the
best interests of the town’ (UK Labour Party 2013e).
Translating this model of organizing and participation to a national scale,
in the context of election campaigning, has proved to be less successful
for the UK Labour Party. One of the fundamental tensions inherent in the
community-organizing model of partisan politics is between the decentraliza-
tion and autonomy of decision making practised by volunteers and local
groups and the desire of the party organization to maintain control of groups,
processes, and policy agendas. As Schutz and Sandy (2011: 22) argue,
Organizing is not about doing for others. Instead, organizers are supposed
to work with people to produce social change. A key tenet of organizing is
that those affected by a particular social problem are usually best equipped
to figure out what changes are most likely to make a real difference.
However, as Nielsen notes, ‘campaign assemblages are trying to have it both

ways: to mobilize the masses associated with membership-based associations
while retaining the centralized control characteristic of management domin-
ated advocacy groups’ (Nielsen 2012: 187). This tension was clearly evident
in the community-organizing session led by Arnie Graf at the Labour Party
conference. Once questions were solicited from the floor, a number of party
members complained of the disjoint between community-organizing training,
strategies at the local level, and the priorities of the central party office.
Despite instructions to forge community links and campaigns, a party mem-
ber from the North London CLP spoke of interventions from central office
aimed at ‘blocking efforts to organise’. Those canvassing were restricted to
asking three questions of electors, and to work from centrally generated
lists—volunteers were directed not to talk to non-Labour voters and could
not target constituents aged between eighteen and twenty-four. Similarly, a
councillor from the local government area of Barking spoke of the ‘mixed
messages from Movement for Change’ and the Central Labour Party about
the nature of activism within the party. The discussion was promptly shut
down by a staffer from Campaign Central Office who deferred questions to a
private meeting at the end of the session. These events (which happened
behind closed doors at the party conference) illustrate not only the ongoing
coordination issues when staffers and volunteers ‘have divergent ideas of how
campaigns should be run and varying commitments and goals’ (Kreiss 2012:
11), but also the inherent contradictions between the principles of community
organizing and partisan politics.
The ability of a political party to successfully reconcile new forms of
decision making and organizing with existing party structures also relates to
178 Party Reform
the process of change. One strategy—as discussed in Chapter 7—is to build
consensus through party reviews, which operate as persuasive mechanisms to
initiate and implement reforms. The significant time and resources expended
by many parties (particularly the social democrats in Australia, Germany,
New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) in conducting these high-profile
exercises is testament to their strategic importance in acknowledging prob-
lems, balancing competing motivations, and manufacturing organizational
consistency in change, with the ultimate intention of presenting a persuasive
public argument for reform. Because reform is a contested process, tensions
over the future direction and organization of the party inevitably surface—for
example, the debate over the introduction of primaries for candidate selection
in the German Social Democrats and the UK Labour Party. In both these
cases, reforms were modified: primaries were dropped from the agenda in the
SPD and were ‘relegated’ to the selection of the London mayoral candidate in
the Labour Party.
However, as Chapter 7 argued, many reform initiatives take place ‘by
stealth’, or without the direct agreement of the organizational bulk of the
party—the rank-and-file membership. In some instances, such as changes to
the Australian Labor Party leadership process made in 2013, this might reflect
the power of a party leader to push a particular political agenda. In other
cases, change may be the product of what new institutionalist scholars
describe as institutional ‘layering’ or ‘displacement’ (Lowndes and Roberts
2013: 128–9). Substantive reforms can be created through changes to every-
day practice that do not require the approval of the party organization, such
as changes to campaigning techniques, social media outreach activities, and policy
consultation initiatives. Similarly, reform can be achieved through the continued
use of ‘trials’ and ‘experiments’, particularly when either the ubiquity or publicity
attached to these initiatives begins to shift public expectations and democratic
norms. Because these latter processes create organizational changes with fewer
opportunities for consultation and building consensus, the risk of membership
disaffection is greater. For example, this effect has been documented in the
‘elite driven introduction of party primaries’ in the Romanian PSD, which,
due in part to flawed implementation, failed to realize any of the initial
incentives and consequently ‘the party received no political benefits’ from
the exercise (Gherghina 2013: 191).
NEW FORMS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
Chapter 5 analysed parties’ and party elites’ perceptions of the changing

nature of the political landscape, particularly how citizens wanted to
participate in politics. The architect of UK Labour’s Refounding Labour
reforms, parliamentarian Peter Hain, argued that ‘people are engaging in
politics in entirely new ways from when I first became active in the anti-
apartheid movement over forty years ago or joined the Labour Party over
thirty years ago’ (UK Labour 2011b). The picture painted of the modern
political participant—and hence a potential partisan—was someone who was
time poor, reluctant to join a political organization, most likely to engage with
political issues that affected his/her lifestyle than respond to ideological and
collective identities. Therefore, as Faucher (2015b: 421) argues, many of the
initiatives introduced by parties to respond to membership decline and these
changing participatory preferences assume that the problem lies in the cost to
benefit ratio for individuals, and ‘that the solution lies in lowering barriers to
individual participation’. In evaluating the consequences of these reforms for
both parties and representative democracy more generally, two questions
arise. First, are these organizational changes an accurate response to changing
norms of political participation? The second question, which is of a more
normative character, is whether these reforms are an appropriate response to
changing norms of political participation?
To evaluate the accuracy of parties’ organizational responses consideration
needs to be given to the relationship between reforms and participatory
preferences. As Chapter 5 argued, reform initiatives have been modelled on
party elites’ perceptions of new politically engaged citizens, with the logic that
once new opportunities for political participation are offered, citizens will
return to the party fold. But has this actually happened?
The discussion in Chapter 4 offered some empirical examples that indicate
that reform strategies may be working. Since their respective reforms to the
leadership-selection process, membership of both the Australian and UK
Labour parties has risen. The ALP community pre-selection in the outer
Sydney seat of Campbelltown was credited with tripling branch membership.
In both parties, local community-organizing initiatives have seen some suc-
cess in revitalizing local party organizations. On the other hand, however, the
electoral dividends of the primaries used by the Conservatives in the lead up to
the 2015 general election were only marginal, and membership in the German
Social Democratic Party continues to decline.
In the Australian context, a survey of voters’ attitudes to partisan engage-
ment conducted in 2012 provides some more systematic evidence of the
relationship between organizational change and community expectations.
Fielded to a representative sample of over 1,200 Australian voters, the survey
was designed by the author and administered by the market research company
Newspoll through an online panel. Designed to reflect the views of the general
population on the possibilities provided by party organizational reform, the
survey asked respondents to indicate whether or not they might consider
engaging in a number of party-related activities in the future.
180 Party Reform
T A B L E 9 . 3 Australians’ likelihood of engaging in party-related activities
in the future (percentage of respondents)
Participatory activity Likely Unlikely Can’t say
Join or be a member of a political party 9 81 10

Participate in a community pre-selection to select a party’s 17 71 12
candidate for parliament
Register as a supporter of a political party 18 70 12
Sign up to receive information from a political party by 21 69 10
email or text message
Post an idea or comment on a political party website 29 58 13
Attend a forum on policy issues that mattered to you 33 53 14
Answer a survey or questionnaire from a political party 64 25 10
about issues that mattered to you
N = 1230
The results of the survey are presented in Table 9.3 and the items have been
tabled in an inverse relationship to the popularity of the response. Because the
survey asked participants about their likely—rather than actual—political
behaviour, overall rates of participation are likely to be marginally inflated.
However, a number of interesting trends emerge amongst the various engage-
ment items. Unsurprisingly, joining a party is the least popular method of
engagement among respondents, with only 9 per cent indicating that they
would be likely to do so in the future. By contrast, respondents were twice
as likely to register as a supporter, although the total percentage was still only
18 per cent. A majority of survey respondents (64 per cent) were likely to
engage in only one partisan activity in the future—answering a survey from a
political party about issues that mattered to them. General interest in partici-
pating in primaries (17 per cent) and receiving information from a party
(21 per cent) was also low. Around one third of survey participants expressed
interest in engaging with parties by posting a comment on a party website
(29 per cent) and attending a policy forum (33 per cent).
Some internal polling data from the Australian Labor Party examining the
benefits of the ‘community pre-selection’ trials it held in 2014 is also worth
reporting here. Surveys were administered to those who had voted in two of the
five trial seats—Newtown and Balmain, which are both Sydney inner-city
electorates.3 Because the survey was designed primarily for internal party
assessments and as a way to ‘touch base’ with participants, most questions
have limited scholarly utility. Nevertheless, two questions asked, ‘Why did you
vote?’ and ‘How might you be involved in the future’, provide further inter-
esting insights into the relationship between organizational reforms and innov-
ations within political parties and the participatory preferences of citizens.
The motivations for voting in a community pre-selection are reported in
Table 9.4. The first point to note is the relative insignificance of policy issues
T A B L E 9 . 4 Reasons for voting in the ALP ‘community pre-selection’ (percentage of respondents)
Reason for voting Newtown Balmain
To have a say about the local Labor Party 71 58

Out of a sense of community responsibility 43 45
I supported one of the candidates in particular 23 38
I care about an issue discussed in the pre-selection 6 8
Someone I know asked me to vote 8 2
N = 117 (Newtown) and 527 (Balmain)
T A B L E 9 . 5 ALP ‘community pre-selection’: respondents’ future involvement

in the party (percentage of respondents)
Future involvement Newtown Balmain
Vote in community pre-selections in the future 90 92

Contribute to Labor’s policy around issues I care about 49 39
Campaign with Labor around issues I care about 15 13
Volunteer in Labor’s election campaign 13 9
Join the Labor Party 6 8
N = 119 (Newtown) and 534 (Balmain)
for participants in both electorates, which is interesting because it stands in

contrast to the greater level of interest in policy matters that was expressed by
voters in the survey above. The second interesting trend is the relative import-
ance of ‘having a say in the local party’, which 71 per cent of respondents
reported as being a reason for voting in Newtown community pre-selection
and 58 per cent in the Balmain pre-selection. The difference between the two
electorates can be attributed to the fact that the candidates’ mobilization
initiatives mattered much more in Balmain, which was seen as a more com-
petitive race between two candidates with strong local profiles (a former
parliamentarian and a local mayor). In Balmain, 38 per cent of electors
voted in the pre-selection contest because they supported one of the candi-
dates, whereas only 23 per cent did so in Newtown.
How does participation in a community pre-selection translate into future
partisan engagement? While over 90 per cent of participants indicated that
they would vote in a community pre-selection again in the future, respondents
indicated a varying level of interest in engaging in other partisan activities
(Table 9.5). Consistent with the survey above, only an average of 7 per cent of
respondents indicated that they would consider joining the party. Conse-
quently, as a mechanism of recruitment—a potential benefit referred to by
many parties in their justifications for introducing primaries—these contests
appear to be a relatively blunt tool. Only a small minority indicated they
182 Party Reform
would campaign with the party, and the percentage indicating their willing-
ness to undertake issues-based campaigning was only marginally higher.
A sizeable minority of respondents, however, indicated that they would be
willing to engage with the party around policy issues.
The surveys indicate that as a mechanism of membership recruitment,
organizational reforms that offer non-members a greater say in intra-party
affairs, such as primaries, are not a particularly strong tool for membership
recruitment (an effect hoped for by many parties). Those participating in
party primaries are also not necessarily those who would undertake issue-
based campaigns. By the same token, those voters who express interest in
engaging with the party on policy issues via ballots or consultations are less
enthusiastic about participating in primaries or becoming an information
recipient. These trends hint at the diversity of participatory preferences, and
that there is no supply-driven ‘one size fits all’ model of partisan participation.
Parties might therefore need to adopt a range of diversified strategies to
promote engagement of different types of citizens in different arenas.
Perhaps most concerning is the relatively small proportion of voters
engaging with these new participatory initiatives, which brings into question
the viability of the ‘party brand’. Even though reform initiatives such as
supporters’ networks and more inclusive policy consultations appear to tap
into public demand, there is no guarantee that even if implemented they
will attract significantly higher rates of partisan participation, or translate
from one aspect of party activity to another. Nonetheless, to evaluate the
success of reform at the aggregate level—by concentrating simply on rates of
participation—can overshadow many of the benefits that have been achieved
within particular party branches at the local level.
THE PARTIES OF THE FUTURE?
The relationship between political parties and their members and sup-
porters, as well as the relationship between the demands for political
participation and the opportunities provided, are both symbiotic. As Fau-
cher (2015b: 413) has argued, in many cases the two cannot be separated,
as ‘when parties have focused on recruiting a specific type of member they
have actually contributed to transform what party membership meant’.
This observation raises the second of the two questions posed at the
beginning of the previous section—notwithstanding the accuracy of parties’
organizational reform processes, are they appropriate? And what kind of
party will they produce in the future? What do they say of the future
of party democracy?
One point of contention, which is perhaps the most prominent debate in
party organizational scholarship, is whether reforms that seek to ‘democra-
tize’ the party—most frequently through ballots and other variants of indi-
vidualized direct democracy—appear to enfranchise, but at the same time
disempower, committed party members and activists (see, for example, Katz
2001: 293). Although the logic is persuasive—enrolling and providing
decision-making rights to moderate and ‘marginally committed’ members or
supporters might drown out the voice of the activists (Katz and Mair 2009:
759; see also Barnea and Rahat 2007: 386), the argument—insofar as it hinges
on motivation—is difficult to empirically prove and in recent years the debate
has reached somewhat of a stalemate.
Moving beyond this particular ‘conspiratorial’ construction of the debate
on the impact of reform, perhaps the most fundamental question that we as
party scholars need to grapple with is whether these recent reforms, which
ostensibly seek to strengthen the representative and participatory link
between citizens and the state, might actually damage party democracy. The
book has highlighted many of the theoretical and empirical tensions that are
associated with an increasingly open party organization, but at its heart the
debate revolves around the inherently normative—and contested—notions of
what ‘party democracy’ is, and what it ought to look like.
One of the most prominent themes that has emerged throughout the book is
the reluctance of political parties, in the way in which they describe and justify
their reforms, to depart from the modern party as anything but a membership
organization. At the same time, however, the concept of membership itself has
also been evolving in several important ways, which all tend to blur the
distinction, in practice, of the boundaries of the party organization—through
the introduction of alternate forms of affiliation (such as supporters), granting
decision-making rights to non-members, policy consultations with the
broader public, and the appropriation of issues, rather than ideologically
based community politics campaigns. In this way, political parties can still
maintain their status as ‘membership organizations’, and benefit from the
legitimacy and resource benefits that accrue from a base of supporters, but the
nature of the organizational link that members create changes as a result. As
Bimber et al. (2012: 6) have suggested, ‘organizations in civil society are not
dying wholesale or becoming obsolete’. While they struggle to adapt, the end
result ‘will not be the end of the organization in civic life but rather its
transformation, especially with respect to the meaning and role of citizens
and the forms of their involvement’.
Chapter 5 placed these developments in the broader context of a more
individualized society. As illustrated by the survey evidence presented in the
previous section, whilst a significant minority of citizens indicate that they
will engage with political parties through new channels of participation in
the future, there is no guarantee that the party supporter will become a
184 Party Reform
sustained—or an active—follower in the future. Indeed, the very nature of the
reforms to decision-making processes around key party functions presume
that individuals will ‘dip in’ and ‘dip out’ of engagement as it suits them. On
the one hand, these new individualized links and intermittent participatory
practices are not so different from patterns of membership participation that
have characterized political parties in the past (Scarrow 2015: 209). Com-
parative studies have shown that the majority of party members are, for the
most part, inactive. This has remained a relatively constant trend even after
party members have demanded, and been given, greater participatory oppor-
tunities (Gauja and van Haute 2015: 197). Further, recent work comparing
the political activities and socio-economic profiles of party members and
supporters has suggested these two groups are actually quite similar (Gauja
and Jackson 2015). In practice, therefore, a party comprised of supporter-
members rather than member-supporters may not look all that different from
the status quo.
On the other hand, however, Faucher (2015b: 421) warns that ‘when parties
focus on issues at the expense of building a collective identity, they may
inadvertently contribute to the very problem they seek to solve: demobilisa-
tion’. Indeed, the rise of new political parties on the far left and right of the
political spectrum and the mass mobilization of citizens in democracies such
as Greece and Spain in response to the global economic crisis and migration
flows have demonstrated the continuing importance of class, inequality, and
economic cleavages. For social democratic parties in particular, the strategy
of dismantling collective identities and affiliation to concentrate on individ-
ual, issues-based engagement may have underestimated the continuing rele-
vance of these issues—and in the process left a large group of disaffected
citizens by the wayside.
To provide some final thoughts on these issues and on the consequences of
party reform, it seems appropriate to return to the reforms of the UK Labour
Party leadership-selection process that were developed and advocated by Ray
Collins and Ed Miliband in 2013–14, and introduced in Chapter 1 of this
book. Two key messages were delivered when the reforms were announced:
‘parties need to reach out far beyond their membership’ and the ‘need to
change the party so that we are in a better position to change the country’ (see
p. 2). Were these reforms successful in achieving these goals? Were they able
to reconcile the demand for new participatory opportunities with existing
party structures?
The new process for selecting the party leader was used for the first time
following the resignation of Ed Miliband in May 2015, after the party’s
general election defeat. Four candidates contested the leadership position:
Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper, and ‘dark horse’ candidate,
Jeremy Corbyn. Overall, 422,664 people voted in the Labour leadership
election, comprising of 245,520 members, 105,598 registered supporters, and
71,546 trade union affiliates. Corbyn was elected with 60 per cent of the
overall vote. As a measure of attracting support for the party, increasing
membership, and by implication responding to a desire for new opportunities
for partisan engagement, the reforms appear at face value to have been highly
successful. At the end of December 2013, the party’s membership stood at
190,000. In October 2015, financial membership was over 360,000.4
The leadership contest also provides several insights into the consequences
of ‘reaching out beyond the membership’. The process attracted significant
controversy when Telegraph readers were encouraged to join the Labour
Party as registered supporters to vote for Corbyn, in order to ‘consign Labour
to electoral oblivion’.5 Amongst allegations of ‘entryism’, several high-profile
Labour figures, such as Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and David Miliband
intervened during the contest to urge voters not to vote for Corbyn.6 Editori-
alizing in the Observer, Tony Blair commented that ‘the Corbyn thing is part
of a trend . . . There is a politics of parallel reality going on, in which reason is
an irritation, evidence a distraction, emotional impact is king and the only
thing that counts is feeling good about it all’.7
In light of the influx of members and supporters to the UK Labour Party,
there was significant conjecture during the campaign, and debate has ensued
after the contest, as to whether Corbyn actually represents the party’s support
base, or is the choice of a vocal minority of activists. Corbyn is regarded by
many senior political figures as a radical democratic socialist, holding policy
ideas that are dangerous for the party and for Britain as a whole. Others see
the election of Corbyn as a breath of fresh air, and a real shift in engaging
people in party politics. It has been described as ‘a democratic explosion
unprecedented in British politics’, and a ‘spontaneous campaign that erupted
out of nowhere, powered by grassroots volunteers across the country’.8 Ray
Collins’ suggestion at the 2013 Labour Party conference—that we need to
change the party ‘so that we are in a better position to change the country’—
has particular resonance here, though perhaps not in the way that the archi-
tects of the reforms intended.
A survey of eligible voters conducted in the month before the contest for the
Labour leadership closed indicated that the highest level of support for
Corbyn was amongst affiliated union members, followed by registered sup-
porters and then party members. Amongst the membership, those most likely
to vote for Corbyn were members who had signed up after the 2015 general
election, compared to those individuals who had become a member before Ed
Miliband’s time as leader (YouGov 2015).9 In the final poll, support for
Corbyn was highest amongst registered supporters (84 per cent), followed
by trade union supporters (58 per cent), and finally party members (50 per
cent) (UK Labour Party 2015b). Together, what these voting patterns suggest
is that the outcome of the contest was influenced in large part by those who
joined in the months leading up to the vote (either as members or supporters),
186 Party Reform
rather than by long-standing party members. However, it does not necessarily
follow that activists were disenfranchised as a result, or that the outcome
produced an ‘unrepresentative’ or ‘undemocratic’ result. In the week follow-
ing Corbyn’s election, a further 50,000 people joined the Labour Party.10
What is does indicate, however, is that even within individualized party
structures, groups can still find ways to mobilize collectively to achieve
influence but that they must work creatively to reach larger numbers of
citizens. If the Labour leadership’s intention was to silence activists in a sea
of ‘moderate’ voices by opening up and democratizing the party, they may
have received more than they bargained for.
One of the fundamental questions that was posed at the outset of the book
was whether, in a climate of membership decline, party reforms are designed
to reinvigorate the normative ideals of the mass party model of representa-
tion, or whether the breakdown of membership (coupled with social change)
has created a climate conducive to reforms that might fundamentally alter the
way in which parties connect citizens and the state. While the UK Labour
leadership example and many others discussed throughout the book suggest
that parties continue to hedge their bets by appealing to both traditional
organizational structures and new participatory processes, once reforms that
seek to ‘open up’ the party in various ways have been implemented, it is very
hard to turn back. At the same time, as party reforms aim to respond to a new
breed of political citizen, the high-profile campaigns associated with primar-
ies, policy consultations, supporters’ networks, etc. work to potentially create
a new set of normative ideals and change citizens’ expectations of how they
might associate with parties. The consequences of party reform therefore
extend well beyond the parameters associated with traditional accounts of
party change.
NOTES
1. New Zealand Labour Party Constitution, Rule 11 (amended by conference in

2012).
2. The LabOur Commission described itself as a ‘self-selected, but broadly
representative group of experienced Labour Party members’, reviewing issues of
concern to party members and examining intra-party organizational processes
(LabOur Commission 2007: 5–6).
3. Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch), Results of the Newtown and Balmain
Community Pre-Selection Surveys. These internal documents were obtained from
the party and are on file with the author.
4. Jon Stone, ‘More people have joined Labour since Jeremy Corbyn became leader
than are in UKIP’, Independent, 5 October 2015.
5. Toby Young, ‘Why Tories should join Labour and back Jeremy Corbyn’, Daily
Telegraph, 17 June 2015.
6. BBC News, ‘Labour leadership: Gordon Brown says party must be credible’,
16 August 2015; Rowena Mason, ‘David Miliband: Electing Jeremy Corbyn
risks creating one-party Tory state’, Guardian, 17 August 2015.
7. Tony Blair, ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s politics are fantasy—just like Alice in Wonderland’,
Guardian, 30 August 2015.
8. Seumas Milne, ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s surge can be at the heart of a winning coalition’,
Guardian, 20 August 2015; ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s victory has already transformed
politics’, Guardian, 17 September 2015.
9. The survey was conducted between 6–10 August 2015 and fielded to 1,411 eligible
voters in the Labour leadership contest. Excluding ‘don’t knows’ and ‘wouldn’t
votes’, the sample size was 1,240 (YouGov 2015).
10. Jon Stone, ‘More people have joined Labour since Jeremy Corbyn became leader
than are in UKIP’, Independent, 5 October 2015.
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Index
Numbers in italics refer to Figures and Tables
Abbott, Tony 158, 159 National Committee of Review Report

Adonis, Andrew 166 (2002) 34, 44–5, 51
Albanese, Anthony 142 National Conferences 1, 69, 70, 110
Alinsky, Saul 69 online organization, use of 70, 92
Amnesty International 64 trade union reform campaign in 1–2
Angel, Richard 157 training sessions in 69
Appleton, Andrew 6, 17, 18 2011 recruitment drive 37
Australia: National Policy Forum (2014) 34,
Essential Media participation survey 106, 110
(2014) 81, 82 membership strategy in 34
party organizational reform in 4, National Reviews 68, 84–5, 102, 103,
35–6, 50, 68, 102, 112, 116 117, 160
advertising/branding in 58, 59 community organizing model 68
contagion effects in 112–13 supporter’s participation 90
key reforms 103 National Review 2010 analysis 121,
online media, use of 70, 71, 73–4 122, 124–5, 137, 138, 148,
primaries, gains/losses data 53 149, 160
role of factions in 43–5, 102 conference reaction 137
see also under names of individual disaffection, evidence in 126, 127
parties factional opposition to 138
2010 federal elections 43, 102, 123 grassroots activism 160
2013 federal election 157 members submissions in 126
voters’ attitudes survey (2012) 179–80 membership importance in 134
participation analysis of 180 online consultation in 124–5, 140
see also under names of parties recommendations, implementation
Australian Green Party 54, 56, 123, 152, of 138, 160
175, 176 policy development in 95, 106, 109,
supporters’ network survey 175, 176 114, 140, 157
Australian Labor Party (ALP): grassroots activism 161
collective action in 160–2 Labor Connect initiative 103, 106
Local Labor group 160–1, 162, 163 offline consultation 95
Open Labor group 160, 161, 162, ‘Think Tank’ online
168 n.14 consultation 106, 109, 124
community pre-selection initiative 52, UK Labour relations 157
54, 56, 58, 88, 94, 103, 174, 179, reform analysis 1, 20, 21, 34, 35, 37,
180–2 53, 90, 102, 103, 106, 115, 131
as recruitment mechanism 181–2 community pre-selection 52, 54, 56,
voting motivations survey 180–1 58, 88, 94, 103, 174, 179, 180–1
204 Index
Australian Labor Party (ALP): (cont.) membership of 31, 32, 35–6
democratization reform 35, 87–8, 117 leadership selection 35
electoral factors in 117, 131 strengthening of 35–6
factions, influence of 43, 44–5, 102, value and role of 32, 35, 162–3
152, 153 Pathway to Reform committee 163
individualization, effect on 95 Party Futures review 35–6, 128, 129
leader’s role in 151–2 member views in 129
leadership selection 45–6, 55, 56–7, 61, reform analysis 20, 21, 35, 58, 66, 102,
62, 65, 102, 106, 111, 115, 116, 103, 112, 138, 163–4
141–3, 152–4, 157, 161, 173, 178, 179 candidate-selection changes 36, 38,
member participation 34, 37, 46, 55, 43, 44, 102
56, 87, 102, 103, 134, 160–2 collective action in 163
membership growth 34, 37, 54, 55, contagion effects in 66
56–7, 179 factions, role in 43–4, 138, 162
modernization rhetoric in 136, 151 female representation 164
new realities, effect on 85–6, 87–8 membership role in 162–3
online organization 70, 87–8, 92, 93, organizational ethos in 40
103, 106, 140 primaries debate in 44, 103, 139–40,
organizational ethos 40, 41 157–8, 160, 162, 163
party branding/publicity 58, 59 timing of reforms in 51, 112, 113
primaries, electoral effects of 53, Reith Report (2011) 43, 66, 112, 123,
54–5, 59 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136–7, 158
supporter category 92, 93, 94, 102, and membership preferences
108, 116 129, 132
timing of reforms 51, 52, 113 modern role of members in 133, 134
union power 45–6, 56 public release of 123, 130, 136–7
voting intentions, effect on 57 2014 NSW Party (Howard)
without conference Review 129, 133, 134, 137, 138,
approval 139–41 156, 158–9, 163
Sydney mayor election 66, 115 factional changes to 138
semi-open primary in 103, 104, 115 modern role of members in 133
2013 leadership selection reform 61, plebiscites debate in 163
62, 117, 141–3, 151–3, 178 Young Liberals 157
context of instability in 141, 142, 152 Australian National Party 21, 36, 41–2, 58
electoral damage 142, 153 coalition government 21
leader driven 152–4, 178 open-primary trial 38, 41–2, 52,
threshold level controversy in 141–2 103, 155
2015 implementation of 142, 143 organizational ethos, use for 42
Australian Liberal Party: reform analysis 20, 36, 41–2, 65, 102,
coalition history of 21 103, 112, 113, 115
establishment of 40 candidate-selection primaries 36,
Liberal Renewal (Victoria 2008) 112, 42, 56, 58, 65, 66, 89, 102, 157
128–9, 130, 132, 134 contagion effects in 65, 67
consensus attempt in 130 membership increase 56
direct membership elections 132 party branding 58
members’ satisfaction in 128–9 Avaaz 64
Index 205
Bale, Tim 6, 8, 15, 16, 22, 28, 139, 147 and leadership selection 35, 66, 111
Bang, Henrik 121 online media, use of 70, 71
Barnea, Shlomit 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 22, 24 candidate selection 6, 8, 37, 41, 57,
n.3, 29, 42, 48 n.1, 50, 61, 78, 79, 59–60, 97, 107–9, 110, 171
146–8, 167 n.1, 170, 183 contagion effects 112
Beattie, Peter 162 democratization trend 79, 89
Belgium: mixed electoral colleges, use of 38
Flemish Christian Democrats 47 motivation for change in 9, 11, 17,
Flemish Liberals and Democrats 29, 117
(VLD) 65 democratization climate 11
Parti Socialiste (PS) 57–8, 62–3, 88 publicity, use of in 57–8
party reform in 47, 52, 62–3, 65, 88, reform of 8, 9, 35, 60, 88, 107–9, 117,
111, 146 147, 151, 171
party initiative in 146 inclusive methods 108, 118, 171
political scandals, effect on 62–3, 171 party characteristics 115
Bell, Stephen 14–15 party freedom in 107
Bennett, W. Lance 81, 83 politicians, role in 147
Bille, Lars 17, 39, 167 n.1 primaries, introduction of 27, 29,
Bimber, Bruce 64, 183 60, 88, 107–8, 115, 139, 171
Bird, Jeremy 68 representational arenas in 107
Bishop, Julie 153 representativeness, issue of 59–60
Blair, Tony 150, 185 competence 60
Blais, André 6, 29, 39, 47, 50, 52, 67, 83, see also under individual parties
114, 116, 146 cartel parties 2, 16, 30, 31, 77
Bowen, Chris 153 catch-all parties 2, 16, 77
branding (party) 19, 20, 45, 50, 57–9, 60, Centre Forum 166
73, 110, 119, 120–1, 131, Chifley Research Centre 69, 163, 164
140, 170 Building a Progressive Australia 164
partisanship effect 121 Chiru, Mihail 50, 112, 114, 115, 116,
Brown, Gordon 150, 185 118 n.5
Brumby, John 167 n.11 Chisholm, Anthony 116
Bukow, Sebastian 125 Coghill, Ken 155
Burnham, Andy 184 Collins, Ray 1–2, 5, 32–3, 38, 39, 40, 41,
Butler, Mark 1 97, 122, 124, 127, 135, 184, 185
Byrne, Darcy 138 see also under UK Labour Party
Comparative Study of Electoral
Cambadélis, Jean-Christophe 71 Systems 80
Cameron, David 66, 71, 72, 117, 151 contagion effects 23, 50, 52, 63–72, 73,
Canada: 111–14, 118, 157, 170, 172
Conservative Party 66 community organizing
General Social Survey (2013) 98 n.2 processes 67–9, 70, 73
Liberals, see Liberal Party of Canada comparative analysis of 111–12
New Democratic Party (NDP) 47, 153 identification of 64–5, 112, 114, 172
union power, reform in 47 negative contagion 67
participation, political in 82 online organization 69–72, 73
party organizational reform in 4, 52, 66 timing of reforms 112–14, 118, 172
206 Index
Cooper, Yvette 184 faction identification 147
Corbyn, Jeremy 2, 33, 55, 71, 184–6 research challenges 147
Crean, Simon 152 veto/brake by 139
Cross, William 6, 15, 35, 38, 39, 47, 50, use of primaries 43, 44
52, 67, 83, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, Farron, Tim 71
114, 116, 146 Faucher, Florence 8, 15, 23–4, 37, 46, 55,
78, 79, 80, 108, 140, 179, 182, 184
Dalton, Russell J. 80, 81 Faucher-King, Florence 68, 82, 83,
Dastyari, Sam 138, 153, 154, 157 96, 123
democratization 5, 9, 10, 11, 31, 79, Faulkner, John 85–6, 122, 162
89, 183 Fawcett, Paul 121
concept/use of term 79 Feldman, Andrew 97
Americanization in 79 Ferguson, Christine 89
party reform 5, 10, 48, 79, 89 Field, Frank 155, 156, 164
candidate/leadership selection 11, Firth, Verity 52, 58, 58
31, 79, 110, 111 Foley, Luke 154
future challenges 182–7 France:
left parties 114 online media, parties, use of 70, 71
‘opening up’ party 89 Parti Socialiste 20, 46, 59
styles of 89 democratization, effect on 79, 85
Denmark 22 factional divisions in 46
Deschouwer, Kris 15 membership recruitment 46
Dezman, Greg 42, 56, 58, 66, 67, 89 primaries, introduction of 46, 59,
diffusion, see contagion effects 84, 108
reform in 20, 46, 65, 79, 84, 85
electoral competition 9, 50, 59, 77
party reform 50–1, 59, 76, 101 Gabriel, Sigmar 51, 71, 93, 117, 136
digital technologies, effect on 73–4 Gamba, Giorgia 69
electoral defeat, role in 50, 51 Germany 22
power dynamics, change in 50 CDU 31, 55, 88, 135
electoral professional party 77 party organizational reform in 4, 31,
Electoral Reform Society 163, 165 77–8, 88
Essential Media Communications 57, and citizen participation 78, 87, 88
81, 82 online media, use of 70, 71
European Consortium for Political Social Democratic Party, see Social
Research (ECPR) 2–3 Democratic Party (SPD)
Germany
Facebook: GetUp 64
political parties, use of 70–2, 73, 94 Gherghina, Sergiu 57, 60, 61, 144
grassroots groups 160, 161 n.13, 178
supporters’ networks 90 Gillard, Julia 37, 86, 117, 138, 142, 149,
factionalism: 150, 151, 152, 153, 157
branch stacking/stripping 44–5, 61, 171 Graf, Arnie 69, 177
candidate selection 45 Gray, Gary 153
driver for party reform 10, 13, 28, Greece 184
43–7, 50, 131, 138–9, 145, 146, 147 Greenpeace 64
Index 207
Hain, Peter 85, 179 Kemp, David 158
Hall, Peter A. 13, 120, 146, 159 Kendall, Liz 184
Harmel, Robert 4, 6–7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, Kenig, Ofer 29, 35, 108, 111
17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 28, 50, 65, 78, Key, John 71
105, 139, 146, 147 Khan, Trevor 41, 42, 58, 155, 156
Harper, Stephen 66, 71, 72
Hawke, Bob 152 Labour Party New Zealand 20, 51, 60,
Hawker, Bruce 153 65, 66, 86–7, 105, 106, 108, 115,
Hay, Colin 78 116, 133
Hazan, Rueven Y. 6, 29, 49 n.8, 83, 88, membership reform 34, 36, 37,
100, 107, 108 106, 174
Hitzges, Jurgen 125 Organizational Reform
Howard, John 32, 36, 43, 44, 45, 60, 84, Committee 124
86, 90, 116–17, 129–30, 133, 149, Organizational Review (2012) 51, 60,
150, 158 85, 86–7, 110, 117, 121, 122, 123,
Hurley, Patrick 164 124, 126, 131, 135, 137–8
conference approval 137–8
individualization 80–3, 183–4 consultation process 124, 137–8
party decline 80, 83, 183–4 membership participation 126, 133
party response to 83, 85–7, 183–4 reform motivations 131, 133, 135
see also participation, political Policy Council (2012) 110
Institute for Government (UK) 163, registered supporters in 92, 105,
165–6, 168 n.21 106, 174
Party People report (2011) 165–6 Lawrence, Carmen 162
Institute for Public Policy Research leaders (party):
(UK) 166 party reform role 146, 147, 148–54,
Ireland 52 166–7, 172
Israel 35, 79, 108, 112 after leadership change 7, 8, 10, 28,
party reform protagonists 147, 148 29, 116, 117, 148–9
Italy 65 consistent message by 150–1
candidate-selection reform in 112 credit taken for 149
Social Democratic Party (PD) 39–40, drivers of change 151–4, 166–7
65, 92 framing process 151
‘open party’ ethos in 40 media advantage 150
‘variable linkage’ membership in 92 resistance to reform 136–7
see also leadership selection
Janda, Kenneth 4, 6–7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, leadership selection 6, 8, 110–11
18, 19, 21, 22, 28, 50, 65, 78, 105, democratization trend 31, 79, 110, 111
139, 146, 147 membership involvement 35, 97, 110
Japan 35 party reform/change 8, 10, 17, 28, 29,
Johnson, Boris 65 30–2, 35, 39, 55, 117, 146, 171–2
Joseph Rowntree Trust 166 comparative studies of 114–15
Joyce, Barnaby 71 contagion effects in 111–12, 114
increasing inclusivity in 110
Keating, Paul 152 member recruitment 55
Kefford, Glenn 35, 117, 147, 149, 153 newer parties 39, 114
208 Index
leadership selection (cont.) Miliband, Ed 2, 33, 34, 37, 61–2, 88, 91,
party characteristics 115 97–8, 135, 136, 149, 150–1, 153,
percentage of reforms in 110–11 157, 184, 185
primaries, introduction of 27, 39, Moore, Claire 153
65, 105 MoveOn 64
contagion effects in 65, 66 Mulcair, Tom 71
social democratic parties 105–6
see also under individual parties Nation Builder 70, 73, 96
Lees-Marshment, Jennifer 90, 91, 121 issue campaigning, use of 96
Leeser, Julian 156–7 New Policy Network, see Unlock
Le Galès, Patrick 82, 96, 123 Democracy
Leigh, Andrew 162 New Zealand:
Liberal Party of Canada 21, 128, 129, Labour Party, see Labour Party New
130, 174 Zealand
Advancing Change Together (Liberals National Party 34, 39
2009) 68, 128, 129, 130, 133 supporters’ networks 90, 92, 109
grassroots strengthening in 36 party organizational reform 4, 52, 66
member involvement increase online media, use of 70, 71
in 133 Newspoll 179–80
members’ views in 129, 130 Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis 97, 177
need to modernize discourse
in 135–6 Obama, Barack 68, 69, 164, 176
recommendations, implementation O’Connor, Brendan 153
of 140 O’Neil, Clare 93, 95
Red Ribbon Task Force (2005) 51 online campaigning 64, 70, 96
reform in 20, 34, 36, 39, 68, 108 micro-sites, use in 96
social media, use by 75 n.17 party leader popularity 71, 72, 73–4
supporters’ networks, creation of single-issue campaigns 96
90, 109 social networking sites, use in 70–2,
A Time to Act report 36 73, 96, 118
Little, Andrew 71 see also Facebook; Twitter
London Citizens 68 online community organization 69, 176
Lowndes, Vivien 14, 120, 148, 178 advocacy groups 64
party supporters’ networks 90, 96
McDiven, Chris 158 social movements 83
McNicol, Iain 67 online policy consultation 95–7, 124
Mahoney, James 16, 139, 146 see also under UK Labour Party
Marsh, David 63, 83, 114, 121
Menzies, Robert 40, 129 Panebianco, Angelo 11, 16, 17, 18, 21,
Menzies’ Research Centre 157, 163, 164 39, 146
female representation work 164 participation, political 30, 76–98, 169,
Merkel, Angela 71, 72 170–1, 173, 178–9, 182–6
Messina, Jim 69 arenas, change in 82, 83–4, 90–7,
Michels, Robert 2, 22 173, 174
iron law of oligarchy 2 party challenges/
Miliband, David 162, 185 opportunities 85–8, 169, 174
Index 209
supporters’ networks, creation of definition/concept 159, 183
90–4, 97, 108–9, 169, 171, 172, 174 in grass roots organizations 160
cross-national surveys 81 disempowerment of 183
individualization, effect on 80–3, 84, intra-party democracy 32, 35, 37,
91, 95, 173, 183–4 169, 183
democratizing initiatives 82–3, party centralization effect 82
84–5, 87–8, 89, 183 party conceptualization of 159–60
discourse/rhetoric changes in 83, 88 party reform effects 4, 31, 32–7, 55,
issue engagement 83, 87 134, 159–63, 169, 174, 182–4, 186
online consultation initiatives 96–7 consultation, role in 159
micro-forms of 81 growth incentives 27, 32–5, 37–8,
online engagement in 81, 83, 87–8, 91, 42, 47, 55, 73, 170, 172
93, 94–5, 170, 171, 173 individualization 82–3, 183–4
party blogs 94 member/supporter targeting 34
policy consultation 95–6 primaries use 182
social media use 81, 83, 91, 94, 97, supporters’ networks, creation
170, 178 of 90–4, 173, 174–6, 186
see also online campaigning; online party reform role 4, 5, 7, 14, 17, 19, 32,
community organization 37–8, 159–63, 173, 183–6
parties, challenges to 85–8, 169, 174, grassroots organizations 146,
182–6 160–2
diversified strategies, use in 182 increased participation 32,
future of party democracy 182–6 35–6, 169
member disempowerment 183 supporters, differences with 91–2, 93,
partisanship decline 79–80, 81 97, 108–9, 174, 175, 183–4
primaries reforms, effect on 182 blurring of 97, 183
parties, confidence/decline in 30, 80–1, future changes 176, 183–4
82, 101, 182–6 value/role of 30–1, 36–7, 48, 55
electoral turnout, effect on 84 strengthening of 32, 35–6, 48
‘hollowed-out’ notion 30, 82 tension with supporters 91, 183
legitimacy concerns 79–80, 91 party organizational change:
party centralization, effect on 82 concept/definition 15, 16–19
see also party membership developmental/evolutionary models
shifting modes of 77–8 in 16
younger voters 87 intentional change 18, 19
see also democratization; reform, distinction with 15, 18–19
individualization; party symbolic change 17–18, 19, 20
membership see also party reform
party membership: discourse/rhetoric, use in 5, 13, 14, 15,
change in meaning 4, 108, 183–6 27, 173
decline in 3–4, 5, 21, 30, 31, 76, actors’ reality perceptions 15
78, 80, 82, 86, 89, 169, constructivist analysis in 14–15,
179, 186 18, 120
legitimacy, effect on 4, 30, 76, 183 narrative construction in 14, 18
party activism 183–4 drivers/incentives for 7–13, 23, 27–48,
party functions effect 3–4, 30 116, 145–6, 170
210 Index
party organizational change: (cont.) and inclusiveness 77, 79, 88, 89, 101,
electoral success/setbacks 7, 8, 10, 108, 119, 171
11, 23, 50, 116–17 and ‘opening up’ party 29, 44, 45,
internal and external types 7–13, 23, 47–8, 77, 83, 89, 109, 114, 164
28–48, 78, 130, 145 see also democratization
leadership change 7, 8, 10, 28, 29, discourse/framing 5, 35, 52, 88, 119,
116, 117, 148–9 120, 133, 170
party legitimacy 80, 170 modernization 5, 41, 42, 88, 119,
scandals, role in 11, 50 120, 135, 145
see also under party reform; process of persuasion 120
leadership selection prominent themes 50
research on 2–5, 6–15, 139 see also democratization
catalysts/motivations for 7–8, distinction with party change 15,
11–15, 23 18–19, 20, 112
genesis of change analysis 15, 18 timing of reforms 112
Harmel and Janda model 22 electoral benefits of 51–7, 60, 63–4, 73,
institutionalist approach 13, 14, 20, 131, 170, 172
139, 146 elites assessment 52, 54, 101
meaning/scope interpretation 15–18 membership increase 55–6
multi-level framework for 7–13, 14, primaries gains/losses data 53–4, 56
16, 19 representativeness increase 60–1
speed of change analysis 15, 16, 17 scandal management 61–3, 73,
subject of change analysis 15, 16–17 170–1
substance of change analysis 15, elites, role in 146, 147, 154–7, 172
17–18 media commentators 154, 156
‘Swiss cheese’ model 12–13, 15, 20, writers/advocates of reform 154–7
41, 108, 119, 120, 170 experimentation or trials 139–40,
thick-descriptive accounts 6 172, 178
see also rational choice theory faction influence, see factionalism
party reform: financial outlay 58
contagion/diffusion effects, see ideological/historical factors 27,
contagion effects 39–42, 47, 76, 77, 101, 115,
constructivist institutionalist analysis 133–5, 170
of 20–3, 50, 120 organizational ethos 39–42, 133, 170
case selection in 20–2, 101 leaders’ role, see leaders (party)
comparative design in 20–2, 101–2, membership role, see under party
105, 173 membership
data used in 22, 121–2 and party characteristics 114–15
methodology used in 22, 50 ideological disposition, role in 115
consultation exercises, use for 123 party reviews, use for, see party review
membership involvement 124 analysis
source for legitimacy 124 primaries, introduction of, see primary
online consultation 95–7 elections
see also party review analysis as a process 19, 20, 27–8, 122, 170
definition/notion 19, 170 staffers/office holders role 157–8, 172
democratic motivations in 77–8, 89, think tanks/foundations role
131, 147, 170, 183 163–6, 173
Index 211
timing of 50–2, 65, 112–14, 116, 172 modernization need 135–6, 145, 172
contagion effects 112–14, 118, 172 motivations 130, 131
electoral factors 50, 51–2, 73, party history/tradition 133–5, 172
116–17, 118 statesmen/senior party figures
leadership change 116, 117, 148–9 role 158–9, 172
opposition parties 116–17, 118, 172 Pemberton, Hugh 150
power dynamics, change in 50 personalization of politics 9, 10, 75 n.18,
see also electoral competition 79, 86, 149
party review analysis 121–44, 172, 178 Petinos, Eleni 156
conference/congress approval 137, Pilet, Jean-Benoit 110, 111, 112,
143, 172 114, 116
factors for success 137 Policy Exchange 155, 165, 166
key actors, role in 137 political advocacy organizations 64, 67,
conservative/social democratic 68, 69, 163, 164, 173, 174, 177
comparison 130, 134, 135 Portugal 112
consultation process 123–6, 130, 131, primary elections 4, 27, 29–30, 37–8,
137, 143, 172 43–4, 46, 52, 107–8
membership involvement 124, 126, conceptual confusion 29
129–30 open/semi-open variants 29–30, 37,
online use 124, 126 52, 105, 108, 111, 174
source for legitimacy 124, 126, 130 candidate/leadership-selection
data used 121–2, 123 108, 111
depoliticization 158 party use 108, 172
elite perceptions 122–3, 178–9 party opposition 136
leadership resistance 136–7 party reform 27, 29, 39, 52–5, 56, 84,
release of reports 136–7 88, 105, 136, 139–40, 155, 164,
members’ views 126–8 166, 172, 182
call for involvement 132 contagion effects 65–6, 112, 113
dissatisfaction 128, 178 experimentation and trials 139–40,
membership discussion level 134 143, 172
as ‘broadly based’ 134 gains/losses comparison 52, 53, 54, 56
gender representation 134 gradual change 139–40
party use 123, 177 increasing use 29
consensus/image development 122, influence of factions 43–4, 46
123, 130, 131, 136, 143, 172, 177 member influence 35
criticism deflection 123 public interest in 166
marketing exercise 120–1, 126 recruitment mechanism 182
recommendations see also under candidate selection;
implementation 138–43, 172 leadership selection
experimentation or trials Progress 166
139–40, 178 ‘Prime Time’ campaign 161–2
modernization process 140 Purpose 69
without conference
approval 139–43 Rahat, Gideon 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 22, 24
research use 122–3 n.3, 29, 42, 48 n.1, 49 n.8, 50, 61,
rhetorical strategies 130–6 78, 79, 83, 88, 100, 107, 108,
for justification 131–2, 134, 172 146–8, 167 n.1, 170, 183
212 Index
rational choice theory 10, 13, 15, 146 inclusiveness in 108
as zero sum game 146 membership decline in 31, 32, 179
Reece, Nicholas 87, 157 membership votes reform 36, 110
Reith, Peter 123, 136–7, 144 n.6 online participation in 95, 106
see also Australian Liberal Party, Reith Party on the Move (SPD) review 85,
Report (2011) 121, 123, 125, 126, 135, 136,
Riddell, Peter 165 143, 148
Rizzetti, Dean 87 association survey 126–7
Roberts, Mark 14, 120, 148, 178 consultation process 125
Romania 60, 178 marketing 125
Royal, Segolene 46 member involvement reform 132, 135
Rudd, Kevin 35, 45–6, 62, 65, 117, members’ views 127, 132
141–2, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 157 primaries reform removal 136
Ruddick, John 66, 162–3 primaries use 108, 178
Ruddock, Philip 158 reform initiatives 3, 20, 31, 37, 51, 85,
87, 88, 93, 110, 116, 117, 125, 132
Sandri, Giulia 92, 107–8, 112, 118 n.1 supporter participation 90, 93, 106,
Sandy, Marie G. 67, 177 175, 176
Sarkozy, Nicolas 71, 72 South Korea 65
scandals, political 11, 50, 61–3 Spain 108, 111–12, 184
organizational reform effect 62–3 regional autonomy 112
Scarrow, Susan 3, 15, 30, 34, 40, 52, 55, Steen, Jonathan 55, 56
56, 70, 72, 77–8, 79, 88–9, 90, 91,
109, 122, 176, 184 Thelen, Kathleen 16, 29, 139, 146
Schapps, Grant 69, 96, 97 think tanks 13, 14, 23, 109, 145, 148,
Schmidt, Vivien 120 163–5, 166, 173
Schutz, Aaron 67, 177 38 Degrees 64, 68
Scottish National Party 56 Thornton, Mike 96
Segerberg, Alexandra 81, 83 Totz, Daniel 3, 51, 90, 91, 93, 125, 127,
Shearer, David 117 136, 175, 176
Sheldon, Tony 141 Trudeau, Justin 71, 72
Shorten, Bill 34, 41, 56, 71, 74 n.12, 136, Turnbull, Malcolm 71, 72, 139–40
142, 149, 150, 151 Twitter, 70, 71, 72
social democratic parties: political parties use 70–2, 94, 161
ideological basis 41 Tyrie, Andrew 155
membership base/role 32, 35
decline in 86 UK Conservative Party:
organizational democracy in 21 Back from the Brink 155
party reform 21, 102, 105–18, 171 candidate selection 39
comparative analysis 105–18, 171 Reform Group 160
democratization initiatives 105 reform 6, 20, 21, 38, 62, 89, 104,
supporters’ networks 90, 118 113, 115
party review analysis 121–7, 130 online media use 71, 72, 96, 97
Social Democratic Party (SPD) open primaries use/effects 53, 54,
Germany 3, 32, 55, 85, 87, 88, 90, 65, 116, 117
93, 105, 106, 108, 125 supporters’ networks 90, 97, 113
Index 213
Team 2015 69 ‘Let’s Talk’ consultation 95, 104,
2010 postal primaries 61, 62, 89, 104, 106, 109
151, 156 National Policy Forum 110, 118 n.3
scandal 61, 62 ‘Your Britain’ online
2013 Conference 69 consultation 95–6, 97, 104,
campaign volunteer network 69 106, 109
UKIP 53, 54 Progress group 160, 162, 166
UK Labour Party: reform analysis 1, 5, 6, 20, 21, 32–3,
Building a One Nation Labour Party 38–9, 62, 66, 104, 106, 112, 113,
(Collins Review) 32, 33, 38, 40, 150–1, 176–7, 179, 184
61, 62, 87, 104, 121, 124, 127, 135, candidate-selection rights 38, 39, 104
136, 143, 150, 160, 175 community-organizing
consultation process 124, 132 initiatives 176–7, 179
historic foundations rhetoric 135 contagion effects 66, 68, 112, 113
leadership elections 135, 175 democratization effect 79, 88, 91
online consultation justification 132 leader’s role 150–1
modernization discourse 135 leadership selection 33, 37, 38, 40,
participation changes response 87, 127 62, 94–5, 104, 106, 110–11, 114,
primary elections issue 136 153, 157, 179, 184
Progress group contribution 160 new realities response 85, 88
union relations 135 online organization changes 70, 71,
Falkirk scandal 61–2, 171 73, 94, 95–6, 97, 132
Folkestone parking campaign 176–7 registered supporters 33, 55, 91–2,
LabOur Commission 174 97–8, 106, 111, 113, 174–5
Labour First group 160 rhetoric/framing use 5, 41, 67, 88,
London mayor election (2015) 113, 135, 151
115, 136, 178 trade union affiliation 32–3, 38–9,
semi-open primary 104, 113, 40–1, 47, 62, 104, 111
115, 178 Refounding Labour 33, 51, 55, 68, 93,
membership value/role 31, 32, 33–4, 104, 117, 143, 147, 148, 179
38–9, 55, 88, 91 ‘Train to Win’ programme 69
expansion 32, 33–4, 38, 55, 56, 179 2011 Conference initiatives 85, 93
grassroots activism 160, 177 2013 Conference 1–2, 67, 185
leadership promotion 34, 179 community organizing
numbers of 74 n.4 principles 67, 68, 69
supporters, differences with 92, leader selection reforms 2
104, 175 trade union reform 1–2
supporters’ rights, attitude 2015 leadership election 2, 33, 55, 59,
survey 174–5 93–4, 184–6
organizational ethos 40–1 membership increase 185, 186
Partnership in Power reforms 110 supporters’ votes 93–4, 184, 185–6
policy development 95–6, 97–8, UK Liberal Democrats:
104, 114 candidate selection 39
Australian Labor relations 157 coalition government 2010–15 21,
‘Fresh Ideas’ website 95, 97, 104, 58–9
106, 109 formation of 21
214 Index
UK Liberal Democrats: (cont.) United States 22, 65, 66, 88
membership decline 120 community organizing model 67–8,
membership views 55 69, 176
online participation 96 Democratic Party 65, 68, 153
Nation Builder use 96 parties, online use 94
reform 20, 39, 56, 69, 104, 113 Unlock Democracy 165
electoral factors 51
membership rebranding 56 Veltoni, Walter 39
2015 electoral defeat 56 Vromen, Ariadne 65, 164
United Kingdom 22
British Social Attitudes 81 Ward, Daniel 6, 17, 18
participation survey (2014) 81 Watts, Tim 93, 95, 166
Commission on Candidate Selection Wauters, Bram 21, 22, 31, 34–5,
(2003) 59–60 47, 52, 57, 58, 61, 63, 64,
party organizational reform 4, 50, 68 65, 88, 110, 111, 118
contagion effects 112–13 n.5, 146
finance and branding 58–9 Weldon, Steven A. 80
leadership selection 35, 110–11 Whitlam, Anthony 156
online media use 70, 71, 73–4 Wickham-Jones, Mark 150
primaries, gains/losses data 53 Wicks, Buffy 69
representativeness issue 59–60 Williams, Race 160
think tanks, work on 164–5, 173 Wright, George 149
2015 election 2, 33, 116
see also under individual parties YouGov 174–5, 185

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PARTY REFORM

OTHER TITLES IN THIS SERIES

How Europeans View and Evaluate Democracy

Faces on the Ballot

The Politics of Party Leadership

Beyond Party Members

Institutional Design and Party Government in Post-Communist Europe

Representing the People

New Parties in Old Party Systems

The Limits of Electoral Reform

The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy

If Money Talks, What Does It Say?

Part I. Understanding the Drivers of Party Reform

Part II. Party Reform in Practice

2.1 A multi-level framework for analysing party reform 9

ALP Australian Labor Party

UNDERSTANDING PARTY CHANGE IN A CLIMATE

Analysing Party Reform

As noted in the Introduction, change is a subject that has concerned party

A MULTI-LEVEL FRAMEWORK FOR

The literature canvassed so far has pointed to a myriad of different internal

THE DRIVERS OF REFORM

T A B L E 2 . 1 A multi-level framework for analysing party reform

Party level Party system Political system

THE PROCESS OF REFORM

Panebianco’s (1988) analysis of party change is in broad agreement with the

THE STRUCTURE AND AGENCY DEBATE

One of the common elements shared amongst existing theories of party

WHAT IS PARTY ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE?

The Subject of the Change

The Substance of the Change

The Genesis of the Change

PARTY REFORM VERSUS PARTY CHANGE

UNDERSTANDING PARTY REFORM: A RESEARCH DESIGN

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

1. See Panebianco (1988: 38).

Understanding the Drivers of Party Reform

The Internal Drivers of Party Reform

Focusing on the ﬁrst level of the three-level model of reform presented in

THE POLITICAL PARTY AS AN ARENA FOR REFORM

Individual political parties serve as the primary sites for organizational

For these authors, designing and implementing a successful reform agenda is

EXAMINING THE ‘PRIMARY’ AS A REFORM INITIATIVE

MEMBERSHIP AS A MOTIVATING FACTOR FOR REFORM

While statements such as these invariably serve a strategic purpose and

Growing the Membership of the Party

Conﬂicting Motivations: Is It Possible to Both Increase

NORMATIVE AND IDEOLOGICAL MOTIVATIONS

If we are truly serious about modernising the Labor Party, we need to

As is evident in this quote, the notion of modernization is crucial here, and

STRATEGIC MOTIVATIONS FOR REFORM: THE BATTLE

Mitigating the Power of Factions within the Party

It is unrealistic to imagine that some level of factionalism will not exist in

Elaborating on these detrimental processes, Howard argued that ‘factionalism

By 2010 the mechanism of inﬂuence had shifted from ‘branch stacking’ to

Looking beyond Australia: Dismantling Collective Afﬁliations

ORGANIZATIONAL SURVIVAL, IDEOLOGY, AND

If we attempt to reconcile the three primary motivations for reform at the

Competitive Pressures for Reform

Reform projects face a difﬁcult task because, in addition to addressing the

Total Vote ALP Vote Lib/Nat Vote Greens Vote other

Total more likely 26 38 15 38 26

and candidates. A survey conducted shortly after the announcement indicated