Parties’ organizational choices are a matter of aspirations as well as of strategy: a party’s internal procedures help to define what the party stands for. Clear internal rules and procedures are invaluable for parties which are seeking long-term electoral success. Procedures that regulate internal conflict can contribute to a party’s longevity, particularly if rules are transparent, well-publicized, understood by members and followed.
Parties generally adopt party constitutions or party statutes to spell out the relations between different levels of the party, and to define procedures for making decisions. These rules usually detail how local and national party leaders are selected (and often, how they may be de-selected), how candidates for public office are selected, and who is eligible to stand for both types of positions. Parties’ organizational choices reflect the environments in which they compete, and because of this they are likely to vary widely over time, and across countries.
Nevertheless, there are some basic organizational issues which most successful democratic parties are likely to confront.
Defining and Protecting Party Labels
Parties may use their statutes to establish their legal name and to specify who may use the party label.
Party names are shorthand messages which help citizens to identify which candidates and which representatives are allied in support of particular principles or leaders. Permanent party names can contribute to party longevity by fostering voters’ loyalty to a party in addition to their allegiance to specific leaders.
Parties may also wish to state authorized abbreviations or alternative labels. Specifying the legal name ensures uniformity and continuity on ballots and in media coverage. It also minimizes the risk that rival parties or break-away factions will claim the same name, something that would make it more difficult for a party to preserve its distinctive identity.
In order to protect the party identity, parties may also wish to establish rules about who may use the party label. In some cases these rules may include procedures for expelling elected officials or local or regional branches that are found to be in opposition to the national party leadership or the national party program. Having some kind of control mechanisms about who may speak for the party is important for ensuring that the party label is not hijacked. However, these procedures should not be used to prevent healthy internal debates.
Conditions for Party Membership
Party rules should define membership eligibility requirements and spell out members’ rights, roles and responsibilities.
Many political parties enlist their supporters as enrolled members. Having enrolled memberships can help parties to spread their ideas and to solidify their popular roots. Membership dues can also be an important source of party revenues.
Parties can use their membership organizations to encourage meaningful political participation and to strengthen ties between supporters and leaders.
Clear membership rules can help facilitate such participation, particularly participation in the selection of candidates and the designation of leaders. These rules should make clear who has the power to admit members, or to refuse admission, and on what grounds; they should also spell out members’ rights. Rights that party members commonly enjoy include opportunities to participate in candidate selection procedures, access to party-only forums, and the receipt of special information from the party. Common obligations of members include the duty to pay monthly or annual dues and, in some cases, the requirement to attend a certain number of meetings. Eligibility requirements make clear who may join. Stipulations generally include a minimum age for membership, the incompatibility of membership with membership in another party, and, in some cases, a residency or citizenship requirement. Party constitutions may also set the length of membership terms, as well as the grounds for termination.
Relations Between Party Units
Party statutes can clarify lines of communication, authority and accountability between a party’s various layers.
Most parties exist on several political levels (local, provincial, national), and have several faces (the voluntary organization, the legislative group, and, in some cases, the president and provincial chief executives). This raises the question of who ultimately defines what the party stands for. In many cases, party structures will reflect national political structures: for instance, parties’ regional units may be more autonomous in federal states, whereas party organization may be more hierarchical in unitary states. The relative autonomy of provincial parties may make particularly good political sense in countries where regional elections are fought on distinct issues. But even in these situations, it is important to have rules in place to help mediate conflicts between national and regional party leaders.
When a party has multiple organizational levels and multiple governing organs, its statutes should designate the highest authority in the party. In some cases, the highest authority may vary according to the policy area. For instance, the legislative group might have the ultimate authority to select the party leader, whereas the party’s annual conference might be the final arbiter for selecting the party’s executive board; a special auditing committee might oversee the party’s financial affairs. Additionally, parties often have smaller executive boards which oversee day-to-day affairs. These boards may be accountable to the party’s annual conference, or they may be selected by the legislative party (or they may represent a combination of the two).
Parties may also want to formally define their relationships with other groups. Many parties have sub-groups and affiliated associations that cater to particular segments of society, and that fulfill specific tasks. Examples include think tanks, organizations for women or young people, or policy-oriented organized factions that lobby within the party. Such sub-groups may be wholly independent of the party itself, linked only informally by shared goals and possibly overlapping memberships. Or they may be formally subordinate to the party’s voluntary organization. In order to avoid confusion about who speaks for the party, party statutes may clarify these relationships.
They may also clarify formal relationships with non-party organizations, particularly those that are closely linked to the party’s origins and ongoing missions. For instance, many social democratically-oriented parties have close ties with trade unions. In some cases, trade unions are organizational affiliates of the party with their own voting rights and their own financial obligations to the party. In other cases, the unions are independent supporters without any formal rights. In parties associated with religious movements, certain religious authorities may have special standing within party circles. By defining the extent and limits of these relations, parties help to define what they stand for, and who may speak for them.
Mechanisms for Dispute Resolution
Party statutes should anticipate conflicts and should provide frameworks for fostering, but also for containing, healthy internal debate.
In democratic political parties, it is both inevitable and desirable that dedicated and ambitious politicians will have clashing perspectives about which policies and approaches are in the best interests of the nation, and of the party. Having rules for the internal adjudication of conflict may prevent disputes from escalating, and may make it less likely that aggrieved members take disputes to the courts.
These frameworks should include an independent appeals body within the party in cases where party members or party representatives are expelled from the party, or from the party’s legislative caucus. Having an independent appeals body within the party not only leads to more considered decisions; it also should make it more difficult for local or national party factions to use expulsion mechanisms to entrench their power or to settle personal scores.
Selection of Party Leaders and Candidates
Parties benefit from having clear rules about the regular selection (and possible de- selection) of party leaders and party candidates.
Clear rules help to channel and encourage competition among politicians and among advocates of rival policy alternatives. For parties committed to democratic principles, there is some appeal to implementing democratic principles within the party organization, giving party members a voice in important decisions through representative party congresses or through direct membership votes. But however inclusive the decision-making rules, merely having clear and established procedures for making important decisions may make it more likely that losing participants will respect the outcome, and that they will put their energies into winning under existing rules, or into changing the rules, rather than breaking away to found new parties. This channeling of conflict is one of the virtues of transparent rules.
Selection rules need to specify who is eligible to compete for party positions and for candidacies for public office. They also need to spell out who is eligible to participate in the selection processes. For instance, the rules may require that both candidates and selectors are party members, and that they have this status a certain number of months ahead of the election. Rules should specify voting mechanisms (secret ballots? Plurality winners? Run off elections? etc.), and they should set up internal bodies to oversee the process and to hear possible appeals if procedures appear to be violated. Such rules should be clearly spelled out even if the selection panel is a relatively small group (such as the national party executive filling candidate positions on a party’s electoral list).
When devising their selection rules, parties often respond to several conflicting pressures. One of these is the desire to make selection procedures more inclusive in order to present candidates and leaders who can claim the endorsement of a broad swathe of party
supporters. In pursuit of this, many parties have developed mechanisms of intra- party democracy that give party members a meaningful role in these important decisions. Another, and sometimes conflicting pressure, is to safeguard the party identity by ensuring that all candidates agree with major party aims. A third pressure may be to ensure that those selected represent a cross-section of constituencies within the party, whether these be geographic regions, linguistic or ethnic communities, women, or representatives of various internal factions.
Given these contrasting and legitimate considerations, and given the diversity of electoral systems within which parties compete, there is no single best way for parties to choose leaders and candidates. Indeed, many parties frequently change their selection rules in response to the pressures described above. However, in order to minimize internal wrangling, and to enhance the legitimacy of those selected, parties should strive to establish clear rules well in advance of each contest.
Adherence to Internal Rules
Party officials and party employees should adhere to party rules for making decisions, including selection decisions for candidates and leaders.
Procedural frameworks can only contribute to a party’s long-term stability if those within the party agree to abide by the stated rules. This does not mean that rivals within a party are permanently stuck with any given procedure. Party statutes should include procedures on how to amend the statutes and generally, party statutes are much easier to amend than national constitutions.
It does mean that competitors agree to respect the rules currently in force, and to follow due process unless and until they are able to change the rules to be more to their liking. Internal agreement to abide by set procedures helps to clarify the opportunities and boundaries for legitimate internal dissent. Moreover, parties which follow their own rules strengthen democratic cultures in their country by demonstrating through their actions that rules matter.
Accountability in Party Finance
Political parties should keep sound and proper financial records, which serve to generate confidence, enhance credibility, and encourage contributions to finance party operations. In addition, officeholders and party units need to be internally accountable for party finances within their domains.
Internal accountability means that parties have clear procedures for tracking who gives money to the party and its candidates, and where that money winds up; it also may mean creating party oversight boards which are entitled to audit the accounts of all the party’s sub-units, and which can reprimand party officials who fail to provide accurate accounts.
Parties with such safeguards may establish their own rules about how such donations may be given (no anonymous cash donations above a certain amount, for example), and to whom. A primary aim of such rules is to ensure that funds given to party employees and party representatives are used for party purposes, and not for personal gain.
Such tracking mechanisms help protect parties from financial scandals which can seriously damage their credibility. Procedures for financial reporting may also limit the ability of individual party leaders to use illicit funds to enhance their personal power base within the party. In some countries, parties are required to follow such procedures to comply with national laws, but even in the absence of such legislative requirements, parties may find a certain amount of internal financial transparency to be politically advantageous. Where party finance legislation exists, political parties should strive to respect and implement the requirements of the law, even if imperfect, and even as they work to seek improvements to those regulations through legal means.
In addition to establishing procedures to ensure that party revenues are internally transparent, parties may choose to disclose to the public at least some of the details of their audited financial situation. Public disclosure of party accounts is a good way for parties to dispel suspicion about whether some party actions may be more motivated by concern for a few big donors’ private interests than by concern for the general welfare. Parties’ responsibility to manage funds responsibly increases exponentially when they accept public subsidies. In some countries, particularly those that provide parties with public subsidies, parties are required to disclose audited accounts to public authorities, and often these accounts are made public. But even when parties are not required to publish their accounts, some may choose to do so in order to protect themselves from unsubstantiated suspicions about the sources of their funds.
Measures to Tackle Political Corruption
Parties should take responsibility for their officeholders and other leaders who abuse their positions for personal gain.
If party representatives are convicted of such offenses, their parties should disown them, not seek to minimize the crime. Even in the absence of convictions, parties which overlook credible charges of corruption within their ranks may harm their own long-term goals, as well as damage overall support for the democracy, because doing so sends the message that self-interest is the parties’ primary political aim.