Intra-party democracy: democratization processes in Armenia

Abstract

The essay focuses on intra-party democracy of Armenian political parties. Intra-party democracy is essential as it promotes a culture of democratic debate and deliberation of important issues within the party, ensures collective ownership of decisions, and reduces opportunistic and arbitrary use of delegated authority. This research is designed to profile the extent of centralization of decision-making in six Armenian Political Parties belonging to traditional, independence and post-independence establishment periods. Centralization of decision-making is studied for six spheres: candidate selection, leadership election, setting party policies, consultations for coalition formation, allocation of financial resources and conflict resolution procedures. The results support the hypothesis that traditional parties are more internally democratic than independence and post-independence parties; and partially support the hypothesis that small parties are more internally democratic than large ones. The study also shows none of the Armenian political parties has a high degree of intra-party democracy - i.e. practices decentralized decision-making. Among possible explanations of such situation are political culture and historical legacy of Armenia, existing institutional arrangements and improper regulations in party charters.