Who Gets a Seat at the Table? Immigrant-origin Politicians in Party Executive Roles

Research on migrants’ political inclusion has largely focused on candidates and legislators, leaving party leadership positions underexplored. This study addresses that gap by analysing migrants’ inclusion as party executives, concentrating on state-level executive committees of German parties, which oversee day-to-day operations and hold substantial power. Examining how accessible these positions are to minority group members is key to understanding broader political inclusion dynamics. How prevalent are migrants in party executive positions, and under what conditions do they attain them? Leveraging multiple original data sources—a unique large-N dataset covering all state-level executive committees across six parties, qualitative interviews and a survey with party executives, and party documents—this study investigates the influence of three party-level factors. First, party ideology matters. Left-leaning parties are generally more likely to have party executives of migrant origin, while surprisingly the radical right has more than expected and the radical left fewer. Second, intra-party structures play an important role. Among left-wing parties, migrant sections help empower their members to reach leadership positions. In other parties, such sections either do not exist or serve different purposes. Third, parties do not appear to strategically select migrants for the party executive to attract new members. In sum, this study highlights how left-wing parties, for ideological reasons, are especially committed to including migrants in high-level executive positions, and how organisational structures shape this process. More broadly, this study seeks to shift the focus from parliaments to the everyday inner life of party organisations, advancing our understanding of migrants’ political inclusion.