CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations Track: Comparative Politics New Party Organizations and Intra-party Democracy: A Comparative Analysis of the Five Star Movement and Podemos PhD dissertation BY Bálint Mikola SUPERVISOR: Zsolt Enyedi CEU eTD Collection BUDAPEST, HUNGARY Date of submission: November 24, 2018 Word count: 84,744 words Table of contents Chapter 1 – Theoretical introduction........................................................................................................ 8 1. Literature review – Members’ role across party models ..................................................................... 10 2. Participation in new political parties ................................................................................................... 13 2.1 The diversification of party affiliation .......................................................................................... 14 2.2 Online participation....................................................................................................................... 15 2.3 Intra-party democracy ................................................................................................................... 16 3. Indicators............................................................................................................................................. 18 4. Causal model and hypotheses ............................................................................................................. 20 5. Cases ................................................................................................................................................... 21 6. Data and methods ................................................................................................................................ 24 7. Outline of the chapters ........................................................................................................................ 26 Chapter 2 – New party models and their place within national party systems ................................... 28 1. From anti-parties to movement parties – Sides of the same coin? ...................................................... 29 2. Outside and beyond: How parties define themselves ......................................................................... 32 3. Party organizational distinctiveness based on PPDB data .................................................................. 34 3.1 Party membership ......................................................................................................................... 34 3.2 The functioning of internal party institutions................................................................................ 37 3.3 Candidate selection ....................................................................................................................... 40 3.4 Leadership selection ...................................................................................................................... 41 3.5 Program, party platform, and policy development ........................................................................ 42 3.6 Online functioning ........................................................................................................................ 44 4. Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 3 – Internal organization and leadership: formal structures and informal practices ......... 47 1. Formal structures: What is written in the statutes? ............................................................................. 49 1.1 Local organizations ....................................................................................................................... 50 1.2 General Assembly ......................................................................................................................... 51 1.3 Executive Committee .................................................................................................................... 53 1.4 Party leader ................................................................................................................................... 54 CEU eTD Collection 1.5 Party judiciary ............................................................................................................................... 56 2. Informal practices: The functioning of party institutions in real-life settings ..................................... 58 2.1. Grillo: “Trust me!” – Flexible rules in the Five Star Movement ................................................. 59 2.2. Podemos: Proportional vote with a majority bonus ..................................................................... 61 1 3. Perceptions from within: Interviews with party representatives ......................................................... 63 3.1. Interpretations on the role of party members ............................................................................... 63 3.2 Views on the mission and the functioning of the organization ..................................................... 69 3.3 Views on party leaders and internal democracy ........................................................................... 73 4. Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................... 79 Chapter 4 – Candidate selection processes in the Five Star Movement and Podemos ....................... 82 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 82 2. The regulation of primaries ................................................................................................................. 86 2.1 Five Star Movement ...................................................................................................................... 86 2.2 Podemos ........................................................................................................................................ 89 3. Primaries in practice ........................................................................................................................... 92 3.1 Five Star Movement ...................................................................................................................... 92 3.2 Podemos ........................................................................................................................................ 95 4. Online primaries considering the four dimensions ............................................................................. 98 4.1 Five Star Movement ...................................................................................................................... 99 4.2 Podemos ...................................................................................................................................... 100 5. The contribution of candidate selection to IPD................................................................................. 101 6. Conclusions and discussion .............................................................................................................. 103 Chapter 5 – Inside the online platforms: Policy development on the Internet .................................. 105 1. Party rules for citizen engagement in policy development ............................................................... 107 1.1 Five Star Movement .................................................................................................................... 107 1.2 Podemos ...................................................................................................................................... 109 2. What the online platforms do ............................................................................................................ 112 2.1 Five Star Movement .................................................................................................................... 112 2.2 Podemos ...................................................................................................................................... 122 3. How policy input from the members is perceived ............................................................................ 130 3.1Five Star Movement: “This is a revolution, even if some things might still have certain limits.” .......................................................................................................................................................... 131 3.2 Podemos: “where there is no Internet, there’s no Podemos” ...................................................... 137 4. Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 142 CEU eTD Collection Chapter 6 - Members’ influence on coalition behavior ....................................................................... 144 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 145 2. Data and methods .............................................................................................................................. 146 3. Variables and indicators ...................................................................................................................