Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the introduction of party primaries. There are very few comparative studies on the adoption, functioning and consequences of primary elections in advanced and new democracies that go beyond analysis of a country or party case study and that are developed on the basis of electoral or individual level data. The book aims to fill the gaps in the literature on primary elections and addresses growing public and scholarly interest in intra-party democracy processes. It provides an integrated and comparative analytical framework for empirically assessing: how the primary election processes function, and the consequences of using primaries on internal party organisation and on inter-party competition. The book provides the basis for a comparative analytical framework for studying primary elections beyond the American experience.