Internal democracy is a huge issue in all political parties, trade unions, businesses and many non-government organisations because the constitutions and rules structure the contest over who holds the leading positions. The competition is fierce and competitors often try to manipulate the rules to their own advantage. Democracy is a rough and tumble sport within organisations.

There are various legitimate ways of electing leaders and standard-bearers, such as candidates in public elections. Political parties in Australia have swung between representative and participatory democracy as the basis for their internal processes. Participatory democracy has the edge currently and in all other states and territories Liberal pre-selection is conducted by plebiscites of members rather than by representative bodies.

Neither method is in principle more democratic than the other because each produces democratic outcomes while also being able to be manipulated in undemocratic ways like stacking. But on both the left and the right, representative democracy is in retreat as organisations experiment with ways of injecting wider participation into their processes. Insider politics is on the nose as traditional party membership numbers fall and new parties spring up.

This experimentation takes different forms. Labor, for instance, now elects its party president by a vote of its members and its federal parliamentary leader by a 50:50 vote of MPs and party members. Some parties are even experimenting with local primaries, which allow not just party members but non-members to vote in pre-selection of candidates. Here the inspiration is American presidential primaries.

The determination of candidates and election outcomes is the prize. Parties perform many other functions, including campaigning and policy-making, and people hold party membership for various reasons, including symbolism and loyalty, but for activists and careerists the right to vote in internal elections is key. As one letter writer said recently, "Whether it be Liberal Party or Labor Party, or any party, there is simply no point in being a member if you don't have a vote". This is a narrow but often persuasive view.

Whatever the internal constitutional provisions, groups and factions within parties, not just free-thinking individuals, usually play a role. To think otherwise is dreaming. Groups and factions adapt their ways of operating according to the rules that are in play but they are never eliminated altogether.

As prime minister, Tony Abbott had a personal concern with organisational reform within his state division. In 2014 he commissioned a panel, chaired by former prime minister John Howard, to investigate reforms and Howard recommended the plebiscite model. Abbott also pushed strongly to eliminate conflicts of interest between party office-bearers who were also lobbyists and forced such individuals to choose. They chose lobbying over party office, but continued to exert influence at arms-length.

In a somewhat different vein, Abbott pushed hard for a national plebiscite rather than a parliamentary conscience vote to determine the legalisation of same sex marriage. But that case muddies the waters as his motivation there clearly was more a delaying tactic than a commitment to democratic principle. He was trying to outflank his party and parliamentary opponents.

That leads back to NSW Liberal politics. Abbott has also had a factional interest as his right faction is in a numerical minority in the NSW party branch in which the left and centre right factions hold sway. In this sense his enthusiasm for the motion of his own Warringah federal electorate conference, pushing for plebiscites to decide pre-selections, has a clear factional basis too. At an extraordinary party convention attended by more than 1200 members the Warringah motion was easily successful and now will be put to the official decision-making body, the much smaller NSW State Council, where it will require 60 per cent support to pass.

Abbott brings his proven salesmanship and sloganeering on the national hustings even to this internal party contest. He has some great lines and is a master of the one liner. So, he says, the NSW Liberals expect members just "to turn up, to pay up, to shut up". In Trump-like language he describes the battle as between "true" democracy and "fake" democracy.

After the victory at the convention Abbott reflected that, "At every step of the way this has been contested by people who want the Liberal party to be an insider's club". Those so-called insiders included former state premier Mike Baird and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who delayed this extraordinary convention, as well as federal MPs such as Alex Hawke and Julian Leeser who supported alternative compromise motions with strict safeguards for pre-selection plebiscites. These issues will be fought again at the state council.

Abbott characterised the internal pre-selection alternatives in typically florid language. "It's a clear road ahead to a democratic political party which is controlled by its members, not by lobbyists, not by factionalists, not by string-pullers, but by ordinary decent Australians". Substitute voters for members and MPs for lobbyists, factionalists and string-pullers and that's a characterisation of ordinary decent Australians versus MPs which he would certainly use again in any same sex marriage plebiscite campaign.

The truth is that these battles between the claims for various forms of democracy are always driven by a mixture of self-interest and altruism. Power-brokers will not disappear but merely transform themselves to cope with new circumstances. Turnbull was laughed at by party members not long ago when he expressed the opinion that his party was not factionalised. So the battle for supremacy within the NSW Liberals will continue regardless of which pre-selection processes the party eventually adopts.

John Warhurst is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University