Benjamin von dem Berge, Thomas Poguntke, Peter Obert, Diana Tipei
Measuring Intra-Party Democracy: A Guide for the Content Analysis of Party Statutes with Examples from Hungary, Slovakia and Romania

SpringerBriefs
68 p.
,
Heidelberg
,
Springer
,
2013
ISBN: 978-3-642-36033-6

This book presents an integrated approach to measuring the level of intra-party democracy through deductive and standardized content analysis of party statutes. Following the two main criteria of intra-party democracy—inclusiveness and decentralization—three main categories of intra-party democracy are theoretically derived: members’ rights, organizational structure, and decision-making. On the basis of theoretical considerations further sub-categories and individual items are deduced from these main categories and put together into a comprehensive coding scheme. Furthermore, precise coding instructions are presented. Since it is the ultimate aim of this book to present an approach to measuring the level of intra-party democracy for any party statute and to express this in numerical terms, the final step is the quantification of the coded data and the calculation of a numerical measure of intra-party democracy. The level of intra-party democracy ranges from ?1 (lowest level of intra-party democracy) to +1 (highest level of intra-party democracy) and can be calculated for any statute of any political party. Additionally, we present some empirical examples from Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania.