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Party elites’ support for democratic innovations: the role of ideology.

par Nunez Lopez, Lidia ;Close, Caroline
Référence Politicologenetmaal (13: 12-13th June 2014: Maastricht University)
Publication Non publié, 2014-06-12

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Political parties have for a long time been considered as essential for the functioning of democratic government. But nowadays, representative democracy seems to be in crisis in Western political systems. Voter turnout is decreasing, levels of political trust are fading, and citizens’ dissatisfaction with the current system is growing. In order to remedy these issues, political actors have implemented reforms aimed at democratic innovation –e.g. electoral reforms, more frequent use of referenda, experiments with deliberative democracy etc. If a growing attention has been given to the consequences of these changes, our paper is dedicated to take a step back. This paper concentrates on the determinants of democratic innovations, and particularly, on the role of party ideology. The paper argues that the willingness to implement democratic innovations differs across parties depending on their ideological placement in the left-right spectrum. The central hypothesis states that parties at the extremes are more willing to implement democratic innovations than centrist parties. At the empirical level, the paper relies on the analysis of 50 parties across 15 European democracies, using data collected through the PARTIREP Comparative MP Survey.