Ofer Kenig, Gideon Rahat, Or Tuttnauer
Competitiveness of Party Leadership Selection Processes

S. 50–72 in: William Cross, Jean-Benoit Pilet (Hrsg.): The Politics of Party Leadership. 2015. Oxford: Oxford University Press

This chapter analyses competitiveness of party leadership selection processes in about 500 leadership selection events that took place in the years 1965–2012 in more than 100 parties from 14 parliamentary democracies. After pointing to the importance of competition for democracy in general and specifically in the case of selecting party leaders, we present the various factors that may affect the degree of competitiveness of leadership selection events and the several indicators that are used to measure competitiveness. Bivariate and multivariate analyses find that the overall level of intra-party competition for party leadership is low, and that close competition is the exception rather than the rule. Yet there is variance among cases. The institutional and cultural environment (that is, the country) is the main factor that explains variance, but additional factors, such as the selectorate and the size of the party, also seem to matter and influence various aspects of competition.