Who Chose José Montilla?

My last post touched on democratic accountability and the Barcelona mayoralty. Both Barcelona and Catalonia are governed by Socialist-led coalitions, and Spain by a Socialist parliamentary minority. The Catalan Socialist Party (or PSC) is a thus a party of government on three levels for the city's residents. The quality of democracy obtaining in the PSC thus speaks to the quality of Barcelona as a democratic polity. Now, As a democratic organisation, is the PSC more comparable to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the democratic centre-left parties in the UK, Canada, or the US? How are electoral candidates, leaders, and the party hierarchy chosen? I'll begin with the party leader.

Obama was chosen by party delegates to a national convention; the delegates had been chosen by party members and sympathisers in primary elections and caucuses. Though his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, had released her delegates, she nonetheless received about 23% support, and Mr Obama just over 72%. Gordon Brown was not opposed when he stood for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2007, but in 1994 his predecessor Tony Blair was elected by an electoral college in which party members, trade unions, and the parliamentary party had equal weight. Blair and two others competed for the post of party leader: he received 57% of weighted support.

The Catalan premier, José Montilla, did not compete for the support of the party rank and file. He was designated by his party's National Committee, receiving over 98% support. The National Committee is sufficiently opaque that the party's website gives no account of its composition or electoral regime. At least formally, Montilla's ascension to the party leadership resembles Gorbachov's election by the Soviet Politburo more closely than it does the processes for choosing party leaders in the Labour and Democratic parties. He is not directly accountable to his party's membership. This has nothing to do with the justice or efficacy or his policies and their administration, but with the quality of the process of which he is the product. If democracies are characterised by citizens' right to chose their leaders, it would seem natural that democratically run parties would confer on their members the same right. Montilla's party does not confer that right. Like nearly all Spanish parties, then, it suffers from a democratic deficit, and exists more as a cluster of organisational posts than a mass movement.