Why Primaries in Latin American Presidential Elections?

Kemahlıoğlu, Özge; Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca; Hirano, Shigeo

doi:10.1017/s0022381608090221

Cited by 63 publications

(55 citation statements)

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“…An additional finding in Kemahlioglu et al (2009) is that the above-mentioned relationship between small and a low likelihood of primaries disappears when we control for the number of parties. In other words, they find that when is very small, the reduction in the use of primaries goes hand in hand with an increase in the number of parties: in Figure 4 we can see that when is small (the graph on the left-hand side) the relevant trade-off is indeed between a party split and the use of primaries.…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

“…16 and 17). More recently, Kemahlioglu et al (2009) acknowledge the inability to directly collect data on intra-party conflict and show that more heterogeneous parties (as captured by those that are large, incumbent and centrist) are most likely to hold primaries. Similar results are found in Ansolabehere et al (2006) when analyzing the adoption of primaries at the county level in nineteenth century Pennsylvania.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, they find that when is very small, the reduction in the use of primaries goes hand in hand with an increase in the number of parties: in Figure 4 we can see that when is small (the graph on the left-hand side) the relevant trade-off is indeed between a party split and the use of primaries. 13 In their cross-country section, Kemahlioglu et al (2009) code the thresholds for preventing runoff elections as zero, one and two respectively. A higher likelihood of a runoff can be interpreted as a lower and our theory suggests a non-monotonic effect on the aggregate use of primaries.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Primaries: the unifying force

Hortalà-Vallvé

Mueller

2015

Public Choice

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Abstract. We present a formal model of intra-party politics to explain candidate selection within political parties. We think of parties as heterogeneous groups of individuals who aim to implement a set of policies but who differ in their priorities. When party heterogeneity is too great, parties are in danger of splitting into smaller yet more homogeneous political groups. In this context we argue that primaries can have a unifying role if the party elite cannot commit to policy concessions. Our model shows how three factors interact to create incentives for the adoption of primary elections, namely (1) the alignment in the preferred policies of various factions within a party, (2) the relative weight of each of these factions and (3) the electoral system. We discuss the existing empirical literature and demonstrate how existing studies can be improved in light of our theoretical predictions to provide a new, structured perspective on the adoption of primary elections.

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confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Primaries: the unifying force

Hortalà-Vallvé

Mueller

2015

Public Choice

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“…Thus, primary elections may be adopted by heterogeneous parties wishing to avoid fractionalization (Hortala-Vallve and Mueller, 2012), and by dominant parties facing little external competition (Ansolabehere et. al., 2007;Serra, 2006;Kemahlioglu, et. al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferential Voting, Accountability and Promotions into Political Power: Evidence from Sweden

2014

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractPreferential voting has been introduced in a number of proportional election systems over the last 20 years, mainly as a means to increase the accountability of individual politicians. But most of these reforms have been criticized as blatant failures. In this paper, we discover a genuinely new fact, which calls into question this negative evaluation. We show that preferential voting in a general election can operate as a stand-in internal primary election for top party positions. To do this, we rely on a unique data set from four waves of Swedish local elections, which includes every nominated politician in each of 290 municipal assemblies. We use a natural-experiment (regressiondiscontinuity) approach to estimate the causal effect of winning the most preferential votes on becoming the local party leader, and find that narrow "list winners" are over 50 percent more likely to become party leaders than their runner-ups. Comparing across politicians, the effect of list winning is the strongest for competent politicians, who are also more likely to draw preferential votes than mediocre politicians. Comparing across municipalities, the response to narrow list winning is the strongest within unthreatened governing majorities, where voters also use the preferential vote the most frequently.

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“…One possibility is to relax the assumption that nomination decisions are made at the individual level and incorporate parties into the analysis. Existing research focuses on how parties allocate nominations between districts (Galasso and Nannicini ); a potential extension would be to examine how the electoral calendar affects the distribution of nominations over time , for example, by looking at how the electoral calendar shapes parties' decisions to hold primary elections (see Carey and Polga‐Hecimovich ; De Luca, Jones, and Tula ; Kemahlioglu, Weitz‐Shapiro, and Hirano for recent research on the issue). A related issue is whether parties, like individuals, maximize differently depending on their electoral strength.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of the Electoral Calendar on Politicians' Selection into Legislative Cohorts and Legislative Behavior in Argentina, 1983–2007

Lucardi

Micozzi

2016

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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How do electoral opportunities affect politicians' career strategies? Do politicians behave strategically in response to the opportunities provided by the electoral calendar? We argue that in a legislature that combines nonstatic ambition with a staggered electoral calendar, different kinds of politicians will have dissimilar preferences towards running in concurrent or midterm elections. More specifically, politicians with no previous executive experience should strategically run in midterm legislative elections in order to increase their visibility among voters, while more experienced politicians should opt for concurrent elections. We support these claims with data from the Argentine Chamber of Deputies between 1983 and 2007.How do electoral opportunities affect politicians' career strategies? Do politicians behave strategically in response to the opportunities provided by the electoral calendar? In this article, we explore how a scattered electoral calendar affects politicians' career choices in a setting in which legislators show little interest in re-election. Employing a simple decision-theoretic model, we show that the combination of (1) politicians with little interest in pursuing a legislative career-nonstatic ambitionand (2) staggered membership renewal (SMR)-the fact that legislators belonging to the same body are elected at different points in time (Goetz et al. 2014)-can induce a self-selection process among ambitious politicians who differ in their underlying quality. Specifically, politicians with previous executive experience have strong incentives to run for legislative office in concurrent elections, while their less experienced peers are better off by self-selecting into midterm elections. The electoral calendar should

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Why Primaries in Latin American Presidential Elections?

Cited by 63 publications

References 13 publications

Primaries: the unifying force

Primaries: the unifying force

Preferential Voting, Accountability and Promotions into Political Power: Evidence from Sweden

The Effect of the Electoral Calendar on Politicians' Selection into Legislative Cohorts and Legislative Behavior in Argentina, 1983–2007

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