Opening doors to more intra-party democracy? Local politicians’ perspectives on including voters in candidate selection processes in Flanders (Belgium)

Political parties, and especially the ‘party on the ground’ which refers to the party’s members, voters and local sections, have witnessed a decline in Western Europe. This spurred parties to undertake organizational reforms, among others by giving their members a larger say in the selection of electoral candidates and party leaders. At the same time, parties are increasingly embracing the ‘multispeed’ membership model (Scarrow: changing approaches to partisanmobilization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014) involving also non-members in the party’s internal functioning. These different forms of affiliation raise questions about whether and to what extent non-members should have a say in the selection of party candidates for elections. While previous research has mainly focussed on opinions of those who select (party members and voters), this paper studies opinions of those who are selected, i.e. local politicians. We investigate which local politicians are in favour of opening up the candidate selection process to voters Leveraging data from a large-scale survey conducted in Flanders (Belgium) during Spring 2022 (N > 1000), our analysis delves into the complex interplay of ideological factors, notions of democracy and rational considerations driving local politicians’ attitudes towards opening up candidate selection.