The Selection of Candidates and Its Impact on Parliamentary Behaviour: Insights from the Italian Case

Candidate Selection, Personalization and Different Logics of Centralization in New Southern European Populism: The Cases of Podemos and the M5S

“…Schattschneider (1942: 64) stressed more than 70 years ago, candidate selection is ‘one of the best points at which to observe the distribution of power within the party’. In fact, just a few studies focus on the candidate selection processes in these parties (on Podemos, Pérez-Nievas et al 2018; on the M5S, Seddone and Rombi 2018) and comparative research is rare (for exceptions, see Lanzone and Rombi 2018; Mikola 2019).…”

“…Moreover, the extant literature offers conflicting conclusions. Whereas some stress that candidate selection is (at least formally) a relatively inclusive process in both parties (Albertini 2019; Mikola 2017, 2019; Pérez-Nievas et al 2018), others have doubts (mainly concerning the M5S) and claim it is ‘hyper closed’ (Lanzone and Rombi 2014; Seddone and Rombi 2018: 239). Most of these analyses ‘do not capture the impact of informal pressure from the party leader on the outcome of primaries’ (Mikola 2019: 103), 2 an aspect that, we argue, is key to understanding how candidate selection works in practice (see also Pérez-Nievas et al 2018).…”