Do Candidate Selection rules Influence MPs’ Political Careers? Insights from Italy (2006-2016)

Which is the impact of candidate selection rules on the political careers of parliamentarians? This can be a fascinating question to address, given that the existing literature on the consequences of candidate selection has mainly focused on MPs’ behaviour in parliament. The study of the influence of these rules on MPs’ political careers is still an underdeveloped strand of research. This work aims at filling this gap by analysing the conditioning effect of candidate selection rules on the probability that MPs are selected for more relevant parliamentary or governmental offices. Our expectation is that candidate selection rules may modify the effect of candidate-related variables (such as the position within a political party, the position within party lists in general elections, and politicians’ tenure), and of personalisation-related variables (i.e. the power of party leader in shaping electoral competitions and in controlling the party organisation). Our research focuses on the past three legislative terms in Italy (2006-2008, 2008-2013, and 2013-2016). The Italian case is very appealing to analyse, for many reasons: the radical and incremental changes in the patterns of candidate selection, the relevant changes in the party system and in the structure of competition (with the end of the so-called ‘fragmented bipolarism’), and the rise of new party leaderships. The analysis uses a newly-built dataset, which includes information on Lower House MPs’ personal backgrounds and offices held during the political careers, as well as data on Italian parties’ and party system’s level of personalisation. This paper aims at tackling the influence of candidate selection rules from a potentially valuable viewpoint and, more generally, at connecting intra-party-related analyses with studies more focused on political careers and political elites.