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Inside Parties


(Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2025)

Politicians must reconcile a number of competing interests from different constituencies when making policy decisions in office. How and how well they do so determines the quality of a democracy's representation. Although we know that political parties play a critical role in tying politicians to voters, we have a poor understanding of the internal processes that lead some parties to be more successful than others at adopting attractive policy commitments and winning elections.

This book investigates the internal party rules that shape representation, participation, and electoral outcomes. While there is extensive research examining electoral structures and institutions at the country-level, very little work makes systematic comparisons of the rules within parties that govern how parties select their candidates, nominate their leaders, or write their platforms, and allocate resources. Focusing on these three areas, I examine how members’ control over party decisions shapes participation and party responsiveness.

The book is based on original research on party organizations in 65 parties from 20 parliamentary democracies. I collected and coded official party documents -- namely, party statutes and bylaws -- and I conducted over a hundred in-person and telephone interviews with party officials around the world.
 

Articles 

Works in Progress / Under Review

  • Kernell, Georgia. “Party Rules and Candidate Behavior”

  • Kernell, Georgia and PJ Lamberson. “Information Aggregation in Multiplex Networks”

  • Kernell, Georgia, PJ Lamberson, and Stuart Soroka. Models of Media

  • Carter, Benjamin, Hilary Izatt, Georgia Kernell, Alister Martin, Katherine McCabe, James McCann, and Yinlu Zhu. “A Healthy Democracy”