The regulation of primaries in the LOREG: conditions of mandatory application, guarantees and external oversight

Abstract

The LOREG remains silent on the internal procedure by which parties select their electoral candidates, leaving that process to the discretion of their governing bodies. The oligarchic tendencies of political parties, combined with the vagueness of the constitutional mandate of internal democracy and the technique of statutory delegation employed by the legislature, have consolidated a model in which the drawing up of candidacies responds more to the logic of apparatus control than to the will of party members. This article takes that deficit as its starting point and sets out a proposal for the regulation of primaries within the LOREG, assuming as its premise the constitutional viability of such legislative intervention.

The proposal articulates five interdependent elements: the conditions of mandatory application and the scope of the procedure; guarantees of competitive equality between candidacies with regard to expenditure, access to communication channels and the voting system; the minimum status of members entitled to participate; the legally binding nature of the result; and external oversight entrusted to the Electoral Boards. It is argued that none of these elements is dispensable and that a regulation which fails to address their material dimension will reproduce, under a different name, the very dynamics it seeks to correct.