Membership ballots and the value of intra-party democracy

Wolkenstein, Fabio (2018) Membership ballots and the value of intra-party democracy. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 21 (4). pp. 433-455. ISSN 1369-8230

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Abstract

On the face of it, membership ballots present a clear case in which intra-party democ-racy comes into collision with core principles of representative democracy: they weaken the autonomy of representatives, and undermine the authority of the voters. In this article, I investigate whether this is correct, and whether membership ballots are, therefore, democratically illegitimate, using the controversial 2013 Mitgliederentscheid in the German Social Democratic party as a critical case. I argue that there is nothing democratically suspect about membership ballots and mount a defence of intra-party democracy as intrinsically valuable, appealing to a principle of equal respect for persons as autonomous agents. It turns out that endorsing this prin-ciple has two possible implications: that the content of the ballot must be open to de-liberation, and that these deliberations should be rendered open to non-members. I discuss these implications and offer some institutional design guidelines.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fcri20/current
Additional Information:	© 2016 Taylor & Francis
Divisions:	European Institute
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Date Deposited:	14 Mar 2016 14:27
Last Modified:	13 Sep 2024 13:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/65719

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