Untold story of intra-party democracy: The case of Germany, Italy, and Austria

This research investigates the intra-party democracies of 19 countries. Based on the classical method of Most Similar Systems Design, Germany, Italy, and Austria are the cases to seek the nature and reasons of differences in intra-party democracies. These cases show how different states that share a common historical and political heritage have different levels of intra-party democracy. The thesis will answer why Germany, Italy, and Austria have different levels of intra-party democracy despite their similarities. The thesis will show that legal provisions and political party ideologies influence the degree of intra-party democracy. Party systems and party types can provide an alternative explanation to legal provisions. The level of democracy, GDP, and Governance levels of the countries are weak and insufficient to explain the different levels of intra-party democracy as these three countries have similar values. To examine the effects of legal provisions and political party ideologies on intra-party politics, this paper uses the Political Party Database Project index as a measure of intra-party democracy and an index constructed in this project to measure the related legal provisions for intra-party democracy. There are two main findings of this research. First, Germany, Italy, and Austria have different levels of intra-party democracy, which can be attributed to the presence of legal provisions regulating intra-party democracy. Second, political party ideologies show that left-wing or environmentalist parties are accepted as acting more democratically than right-wing parties without legal provisions, as in Italy and Austria. Finally, right-wing political parties can follow democratic principles for their internal action with well-established legal provisions, such as Germany.