Inclusive Candidate Selection and Corruption-Evidence from Spanish Regions

A substantial body of research has documented and continues to explore the curvilinear relationship between democracy and corruption. In doing so, the literature focused mainly on macro-level explanations such as the horizontal and vertical division of powers, and micro-level explanations such as electoral accountability. This paper adds a meso-level to the literature, focusing on the impact of political parties on the regional level and their internal accountability structures. Drawing on principal-agent theory, I argue that parties using inclusive candidate selection methods to determine their executive candidates are more likely to avoid adverse selection. Therefore, I argue, parties using inclusive candidate selection methods contribute to decrease corruption on several indicators. By using data from 150 regional elections in Spain and the European Quality of Government Index, preliminary results of the multivariate quantitative analysis suggest that if parties select legislative candidates via primaries, corruption on the regional level decreases.