Abstract
This book by Anika Gauja takes a close look at party change. This has long been a theme of interest for many scholars but now is particularly so as political parties have been changing their internal structures in a way that allows the grass roots to have a say in decision-making processes, especially in candidate and leadership selection. To date, a growing number of studies have dealt with some of the key aspects of intra-party democracy, but the literature has lacked a comprehensive account of why and when political parties decide to alter their internal organization. As Gauja rightly argues, some of the theoretical arguments that aim to explain those changes have not been empirically tested. This results from a variety of reasons, with the limited availability of data being perhaps the most important one.
This last factor may have led Gauja to study only a handful number of parties over a limited time span. She analyses only six parties in two countries (Australia and the United Kingdom) over almost a decade (2006–2015). However, unlike many studies that touch upon intra-party democracy, her book encompasses changes in four broad areas: membership, policy development, candidate selection and leadership selection. This way, Gauja was in a position to rightly argue that her study deals with organizational changes in that it reflects the key functions that political parties perform. Case selection is homogenous, but one can doubt whether it allows for generalizations that goes beyond the studied cases, as Gauja seems to suggest (p. 20). Perhaps this is why the book also offers discussion of examples of party reform from six more parties in Canada, France, Germany and New Zealand.
The book uses the notion of ‘party reform’ that captures ‘intentional and publicized changes that are made to a party’s structure and practices in order to improve them’ (p. 20). Gauja is, therefore, not interested in any kind of organizational change and does not limit herself to account only for alterations in party’s statues, which are easier to observe than informal practices. In order to explain the occurrences and timings of reforms, Gauja takes an interesting perspective as she is interested in how the key actors in political parties perceive stimuli for change and how this has an impact on what they would do about it. This perspective is novel in studies of party organizations and, in stark contrast with arguably more common ones which seek to uncover both internal and external conditions, seen as an objective push for party change.
Adopting an existing framework for understanding changes in candidate selection (Barnea and Rahat 2007), Gauja demonstrates that party reforms tend to occur when there is alignment of stimuli for change at the level of the political system, the party system and the political party. Gauja explains that actors within political parties have the ability to alter this alignment. In line with the cartel party thesis, the key actors within parties seek to weaken collective groups such as factions and unions by strengthening individual members. Overall, the explanations the book puts forward would seem to be, to a large extent, in line with both theoretical expectations and empirical evidence already uncovered in the scholarship. By this I mean expected electoral gains as drivers for reform, contagion effects and means for addressing negative perceptions of the public caused by political scandals. Gauja finds that each analysed party in the United Kingdom and Australia has undergone major organizational change. Most reforms were concentrated on candidate selection. Changes to policy development and leadership selection were less frequent. A number of explanations for this is offered. One of them reflects the fact that candidate selection is one of (if not the) key function that political parties perform, hence it is important that this processes be handled correctly.
Gauja’s work is an excellent contribution for the comparative study of party change, particularly for its theoretical perspective, which demonstrates that the perceptions of crucial party actors as to their environment are equally important as the environment itself. This allows us to understand why and when party reforms may or may not happen, a factor that has been overlooked by the literature until now. Due to its clear language and easy-to-follow narration, the book is suitable for students, journalists and anybody interested in party politics. For party scholars, it offers valuable insight and perspective into what drives party reforms and when they occur.