Nominations through party primaries in Iceland

Party primaries have been widely used to select candidates in parliamentary and local election in Iceland since around 1970. Such widespread and inclusive primaries are unusual in parliamentary systems of government. This makes the Icelandic parties an interesting testing ground for theories of the effects of primaries outside the more familiar presidential framework. Primaries, however, may be conducted in different ways and the first aim of this paper is to draft a typology of primary elections for party lists, based on such elements as the degree to which they are mandatory or not, degree of inclusiveness, regulation of campaigning, electoral formula and how binding the results are. The second aim is to make a preliminary attempt at mapping the impact of primaries in this unusual setting. The variables to be explored include the relationship between primaries and political finance and their impact on the party membership organization, composition of parliamentary party groups (e.g. gender), election results (bonus or penalty) and party cohesion. It seems likely that whereas primary elections represent a more capital intensive method of doing politics than before and their impact on the party membership files is strong, their effects on other aspects of party life are surprisingly small.