%0 Journal Article %T Managing Intra-Party Democracy: Comparing the French Socialist and British Labour Party Conferences %+ Centre de Recherches sur l'Action Politique en Europe (ARENES) %+ Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Sciences Po, CNRS) (CEVIPOF) %A Treille, Eric %A Faucher, Florence %< avec comité de lecture %Z 2441/9labe9r4se65i789685q908ii %@ 1476-3419 %J French Politics %I Palgrave Macmillan %V 1 %N 1 %P 61-82 %8 2003 %D 2003 %R 10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200017 %K labour party %K parti socialiste %K intra-party democracy %K organizational change %K labour party %Z Humanities and Social Sciences/Political scienceJournal articles %X The French Socialists and British Labour consider intra-party democracy as a central tenet of their philosophies. It is a core value that orientates their political attitudes and defines their identity. Traditionally, they have privileged a particular type of decision-making, based on the sovereignty of the party conference. However, at the beginning of the 1990s, these meetings projected a damaging image of division and chaos. Confronted with the intense scrutiny of their internal debates by the media, the two parties had to find a better balance between their culture and practices, and the need to promote an image of unity and efficiency. They introduced a number of reforms that, they claim, have expanded the possibilities for individual members to participate while at the same time giving the two leaderships a firmer grip on decision-making. Based on qualitative research conducted over many years, this paper explores the parties' new attitudes to internal democracy and analyses the process of power redistribution within the organizations. %G English %2 https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03458646/document %2 https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03458646/file/2003-faucher-treille-managing-intra-party-democracy.pdf %L hal-03458646 %U https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03458646 %~ SHS %~ SCIENCESPO %~ UNIV-RENNES1 %~ CNRS %~ CRAPE %~ AO-SCIENCEPOLITIQUE %~ CRAPE-MCVP %~ CAMPUS-AAR %~ AAI %~ UR1-HAL %~ UR1-SHS %~ UR1-DROIT %~ TEST-UNIV-RENNES %~ TEST-UR-CSS %~ UNIV-RENNES %~ UR1-DEGSP %~ CEVIPOF %~ SCPO_OA