How do internal party rules affect candidates’ valence characteristics? Are parties that select candidates through decentralized mechanisms, such as primaries, more likely to choose “high quality” candidates who run effective campaigns, fundraise successfully, avoid scandals, act professional, and of course, get reelected? Primaries may serve as successful mechanisms to weed out bad apples. Alternatively, leadership selection may attract professionals and dissuade activists who lack political skills.
To answer this question, I make use of two novel datasets. The first measures candidate selection mechanisms in 66 parties from 20 parliamentary democracies. The second uses new cross-national measures of candidate quality for all of the parties in the data. Quality measures are based on salaries, previously-held jobs, scandals, and competitiveness. The findings highlight tradeoffs in selecting candidates who are ideologically representative of the population and selecting those with strong campaign skills.
