Candidate Selection: Selectors of Main Intraparty Principals Vis-À-Vis Candidates & Aspirants

The paper examines the ways in which party-principal selects candidates from the pool of aspirant-agents, that will be subsequently be presented to the voters’ ordeal during the election campaign. It maps the variety of selection methods, what the selectorate seek, and what are the effects of this variation. The process that selects the candidates that run for parliament constitutes a key element of the process of representation (in terms of accountability and responsiveness, descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation, etc.). It determines the image, the face of the party to the voters during the election campaign, the composition of large part of the national political elite (as often “selection is equal to election”), affects discipline in parliament and party, etc. The chapter examines the variation for most of the main analytical dimensions of candidate selection procedures in Western parties identified in Hazan and Rahat’s seminal work (2010): the inclusiveness of the selectorate, the, the (de)centralisation of the process and itsits the degree of competitiveness. The determinants of variations of candidates selection methods and their effects are analysed at the meso-level (with political parties as units of analysis), and include the impact of party family, its style of decision-making, party leadership style, age, size and ideology, as well as party and district magnitude. Regarding the macro-level determinants, the impact of the electoral system (especially its candidate centrednesscenteredness), party system fragmentation and the form of the state are examined, while at the micro-level, candidates’ electoral vulnerability are is taken into account. The multivariate analyses indicate that mainly party ideology, party age and party leadership styles were significant for interparty variation in candidate selection decentralization and inclusiveness selection.