Party Nomination Strategies in Flexible-List Systems: Rewarding Vote-Earners at the Expense of Group Representation?

In a recent article in Party Politics, André et al. (2017) demonstrate that party selectorates in flexible-list systems promote candidates with high numbers of preference votes to better ballot list positions in the next election. Our paper examines the consequences of this nomination strategy for group representation on the ballot list. We expect that the parties’ focus on vote-earning capacity as nomination criterion comes at the expense of the – often already – underrepresented groups of women, young candidates and political newcomers. The analysis presents a replication and extension of the study by André et al. (2017) using an alternative research design that focuses on the case of Flanders (Belgium), for which we collected data on twenty federal and regional elections between 1987 and 2014. The results show that women are structurally disadvantaged in the flexible-list nomination process: compared to male counterparts performing equally well in terms of vote-earning capacity, female candidates are more often assigned to lower list positions. As regards age representation, we find that nomination strategies are more loosely applied to ensure representation of younger age cohorts. Finally, strong performing candidates with prior candidacies are more successful in persuading party selectorates to get allocated higher list positions in the next election.