Candidacy Eligibility Criteria and Party Unity

Abstract

Extant research suggests that candidate selection methods can be consequential for party unity in legislative voting. Yet thus far, only variations in the selectorate and the degree of centralization have been examined. This article argues that Candidacy Eligibility Criteria (CEC), too, have implications for party unity. I theorize that with stricter formal requirements, parties avoid adverse selection and ensure the nomination of committed candidates. By using roll-call vote data from 16 industrial democracies, candidate surveys and an original data set consisting of nearly 500 historical party constitutions, I show that parties demanding prior membership and nudging aspirants to maintain networks within the party tend to be more unified in parliamentary voting. Moreover, their candidates, too, express greater loyalty when compared with parties without formal CEC. Thus, this article contributes to the literatures on party unity and on candidate selection by showing how certain party rules, hitherto neglected, affect party unity.

Party membership, pre-parliamentary socialization and party cohesion

“…These trends, in conjunction with additional local factors, have led parties in Japan (e.g., Smith and Tsutsumi, 2014; Yu et al, 2014), France (e.g., Par et al, 2017; The Economist, 2017), Austria (e.g., Austria Presse Agentur, 2017), and Germany (e.g., Ripperger, 2016), to nominate candidates without prior party membership or political experience. Institutionally, this development is mirrored in parties’ constitutions and their formal candidate nomination criteria which have seen a reduction in the length of required membership spells in many parties over the last decades (e.g., Rehmert, 2020b). Membership in political parties, it appears, is losing in importance for political careers in many countries (see also Bailer et al, 2013).…”

Party Elites’ Preferences in Candidates: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

“…First, selection is carried out by party selectors in contrast to primary voters. Secondly, German parties employ only minimal eligibility criteria in contrast to many other parties in Europe (see Rehmert 2020). Third, the closed-list electoral system minimizes selectors' concerns for any single candidate's presumed electability with voters.…”

The legislative cost of ruling: Voter punishment of governing parties fuels legislator party dissent

“…2 This literature has paid much attention to the role of institutions (Carey, 2007; Faas, 2003). For example, legislator party dissent is typically high in open‐list, multi‐member district systems where candidates compete against other candidates within their own party and when the party has little or no power to (re‐)nominate candidates for election (Carey & Shugart, 1995; Crisp et al, 2013; Heitshusen et al., 2005; Rehmert, 2020; Sieberer, 2006; Zittel & Nyhuis, 2019). This research agenda has generated important insights into how and why legislator dissent varies across political systems and the institutions that serve to minimize it.…”