Do parties play a role in the electoral competition under open-list proportional representation (OLPR)? It is a point of agreement in the literature that OLPR is a candidate-centered electoral system. In this system, parties present an unordered list of candidates. Voters can choose any candidate running in that electoral district. Under these circumstances, voters would rely only on the information the very candidates provide about themselves, there being little room left for parties to play a role in structuring electoral competition.
This paper goes against that perspective. We argue that, even assuming parties play no role in the electoral campaign itself, they have the prerogative to shape electoral competition when they decide who’s going to run. One way in which they may do so is by fielding candidate according to the number of seats each geographical region within the electoral district is able to fill; that is, by “regionalizing” their lists of candidates. That electoral competition has a geographical dimension even under OLPR is acknowledged by the literature. In such a candidate-centered system, a candidate’s place of origin – its “localness” – is an important heuristic for voters decision-making.
There is no reason to assume that parties play no role in shaping this geographical dynamic. On the contrary, by fielding a number of candidates from a given region equal or inferior to the region’s electoral potential, parties keep intraparty competition under control. Copartisans from the same region may still compete among themselves. But in principle all of them can get elected. The party makes sure there’s room for everybody.
In order to investigate whether parties regionalize their lists of candidates and why, we employ a multi-method approach that combines quantitative analysis of data on Brazilian congressional elections and candidates and on socio-economic flows (IBGE, 2007) and interviews with party leaders. Based on the socio-economic data we divide each district in several regions and calculate each region electoral potential. Then, based on the candidates’ place of origin, we construct lists of candidates by region for each party. The comparison between parties’ lists of candidates by region and each region electoral potential confirms our expectations: parties hardly field more candidates from a given region than this region can get elected. In order to further investigate the causal pathway behind this phenomenon, we conducted interviews with party leaders on the decision-making process regarding their parties’ lists of candidates. They confirm that the regionalization of the lists of candidates is a deliberate decision by the parties.
Our findings have implications for the field’s understanding of the role parties play in electoral competition under OLPR. The prevalent view is that such role is minimal if nonexistent. We show the opposite. Parties play a role in structuring electoral competition when they choose who’s going to run and do so according the electoral potential of geographical regions within the district.
