ABSTRACT
The examination is partly theoretical, but it includes reference to the experience of parties that have been plainly programmatic. Policy-making in this sense presents the programmatic party with the problem of how and by whom decisions are to be made. The problem of how policy is made in a programmatic party revolves around the part to be played by the organized membership. From what has been said about an ideal case for the institutional examination of internal party policy-making, it is apparent that the British Labour party is eminently qualified. Insofar as Labour has accorded a policy-making role to its organized membership, it has been exceptional in British politics. The left could point to a neutralist unilateralism as the policy of the organized party membership, and so argue that the parliamentary party leadership was bound by the doctrine of conference supremacy to adopt the same policy.
