Unaccounted Competition

Abstract

In most countries, national, inter-party elections are financed and regulated by national authorities, while there is little interference or supervision of intra-party elections. This is especially true in countries with proportional representation or mixed electoral systems. In this article I question the wisdom of ignoring the regulation of intra-party elections and examine the pitfalls created by regulating only one part of the democratic electoral process, i.e. national elections, while leaving the preliminary cycle of leadership and candidate selection, which takes place largely within the parties, open to free, uncontrolled and unsupervised competition.