The More, the Smoother? Candidate Selection and Intraparty Competition

This paper investigates candidate selection procedures as institutions that could affect politics. We bridge two intraparty phenomena, i.e. how candidates are selected and how candidates compete against each other within the party before the elections. With the aim of studying whether the type of selectorates (their size and their degree of centralisation) may affect the degree of competitiveness of the selection process, we rely on Norris and Lovenduski (1995)’s process of political recruitment model. This paper questions the impact of the modes of selection on intraparty competition, by taking into account the candidates’ resources and motivation, as main covariates in the relationship under study. Drawing on the Belgian Candidate Survey 2014 dataset (N=1225 candidates for regional and federal elections), we show that both the exclusiveness and the centralisation of the party gatekeepers affect the degree of intraparty competition but our findings do not always follow the patterns expected based on the literature. This research concludes that the features of candidate selection can help explain the extent of intraparty battles in the run-up to the elections, and so doing we suggest that political parties could be able to master the degree of intraparty cohesion in the pre-electoral period and thus maintain a strong the candidate-party linkage.