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
Abstract

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.

Table of Contents

1

Introduction

2

Deduction of the Coding Scheme

2.1

Members’ Rights

2.1.1

General Members’ Rights

2.1.2

Minority Rights

2.2

Organizational Structure

2.2.1

Party Congress

2.2.2

Conflict Solving Agencies

2.2.3

The National Executive

2.2.4

The Executive Committee

2.2.5

The Party President

2.2.6

Relationship Between the National Level and Subnational Levels

2.3

Decision-Making

2.3.1

Recruitment

2.3.2

Programmatic Issues

3

The Coding Scheme

4

The Coding Procedure

4.1

The Coding Unit

4.2

General Coding Instructions

4.2.1

Identification of Party Organs

4.2.2

The Coding Itself

4.3

General Coding Rules

4.4

Coding Examples

4.4.1

Example A: General Coding Example

4.4.2

Example B: One Sentence, More Arguments

4.4.3

Example C: The Term ‘Explicitly Mentioned’

4.4.4

Example D: Contradicting Information

5

The Proof of the Pudding: Arriving at Numbers

5.1

Quantification, Robustness and Inter-Coder Reliability

5.1.1

Quantification

5.1.2

Examining Weighting, Robustness, and Variance

5.1.3

Inter-Coder Reliability

5.2

Intra-Party Democracy in Hungarian, Slovak and Romanian Parties

5.2.1

Parties in Hungary

5.2.2

Parties in Slovakia

5.2.3

Parties in Romania

5.3

Conclusion

6

Summary and Outlook

Appendix A: Coding Instructions and Allocation of Values (Quantification)

Appendix B: Descriptive Statistics

Appendix C: Reliability Test

References

 

MZES-Project

Further Information

Springer Link