Paul Pennings and Reuven Y. Hazan, "Democratizing Candidate Selection: Causes and Consequences," Party Politics, 7 (May 2001), 267-275.

First Paragraph:
In most modern representative democracies, the relationship between the party and the voter is weakening. The reasons are mostly related to increasing levels of education and material well-being, which make citizens more and more independent from parties, unions and other collective bodies of representation (Flanagan and Dalton, 1984; Mair, 1989; Schmitt and Holmberg, 1995; Poguntke, 1996).

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Last Paragraph:
The types of consequences produced by democratizing candidate selection, and their impact on the functioning of parties, are not univocal because there are different degrees of democratization. The empirical evidence presented in this special issue shows that moderate forms of democratization can have beneficial effects on party organizations - such as higher levels of membership - but that this effect is far from certain. Radical forms, on the other hand, are more likely to distort party cohesiveness, and consequently weaken the quality of representative democracy.