… Like bluegrass and Abstract Expressionism, the party primary is a unique creation of the American 20th century, an alternative to the “smoke-filled rooms” that dominated politics in the 19th. In the rest of the world, however, parties effectively remained clubs, bounded by pledges and membership fees, with responsibility for selecting candidate lists tightly controlled by steering committees.
Now many party leaders are choosing to relinquish that authority in exchange for developing better relationships with the type of casual backers whom one former Canadian prime minister dismissed as “tourists.” Faced in particular with a desire to gain intelligence about the electorate — in countries where both laws and culture impede the type of large-scale collection of voter data common in the United States — party leaders are hoping to lure participants with primaries. CONT.
Sasha Issenberg, New York Times