Abstract

In contemporary Ukraine political parties are strongly fragmenting the political spectrum, preventing the providing of significant opportunities to consolidate electoral groups of citizens, to promote conscious and rational political participation. The transition period has created conditions for the emergence of so-called party projects and parties that are targeted on a specific person. Formal conditions for the party structures functioning allow them to exist even in the absence of formal membership and, comparatively, low public awareness of their activities. The way of citizens’ involving as conscious actors of the political process to the party life is intra-party democracy, which can become the basis for significant major democratic debate on ideological issues and on the development of the country. However, in transition countries membership in the ruling party is a sign of the influence of social circumstances, patron-client dependance, factors of group, clan, political choice, and so on. Hence, there is a need to study the basic principles of intra-party democracy in a rapidly changing situation of democratic transition. Moreover, indications of the political parties projects in Central and Eastern Europe transition countries and former Soviet states, are relative closeness of the party leadership, lack of convergence between the formal and organizational principles of the party and the true meaning of specific policy actions of the party leaders and their functionaries. Transformation in the countries of stable democracy showed that the level of intra-party democracy was the basic statutory condition and political parties functioning. In conditions of intra-party competition, this factor is important because of political forces competition which promotes openness to intra-party processes, which encourages citizens to political participation. An example of the UK shows that all party-organizational processes are transparent, which has the reflection even at the appointment of senior party leadership and political parties` participation in the appointment of government. In contemporary Ukraine party organizations responsibility and their value is only beginning to move away from purely formal, documented provision. The extremely important role in this context, should play a civil society. It can extend its sphere of control outside of state government and local government. This area should be extended on intra-party solutions. The possibility of intra-party democracy appearance as a sustainable and well played phenomena can only be based on the formation of political parties as a competitive and dynamic structures that have a high degree of internal relationships and a clear understanding of a common goal that is shared by both the governing parties and the basis of parties and ordinary party members. Distribution of party members in top management, middle functional rank and ordinary members is an obvious consequence of the organizational functioning of any extensive and systematic organization.