Re-electing the party leader: The 2024 PASOK contest
2026-08-31
This article examines leadership contests in European mainstream parties confronting electoral decline and attempting to restore competitiveness. Focusing on this broader phenomenon, it analyses incumbent leaders seeking renewed mandates through open primary elections in such contexts. The article applies Stark’s (1996) selection criteria (‘acceptability’, ‘electability’ and ‘competence’) to the 2024 Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) leadership contest in Greece as a demanding empirical and methodological setting: an incumbent leader seeking re-election through a competitive open primary within a recovery major party after only limited electoral improvement. Drawing on candidates’ speeches, press reports, official results and polling indicators mapped onto Stark’s criteria, the study evaluates party members’ and supporters’ perceptions of the main contenders. The findings show that the incumbent leader, Nikos Androulakis, led his opponents on all three criteria and suggest that incumbent re-election in recovery major parties is broadly consistent with Stark’s model when electability is interpreted as credible electoral recovery and unity concerns stem from strategic rather than ideological conflict.