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Inclusivity vs. Representativity: Do party members compile (un)representative candidate lists; and what to make of it?

Gender
Political Parties
Party Members
Experimental Design
Survey Experiments
Rozemarijn van Dijk
Universiteit Antwerpen
Rozemarijn van Dijk
Universiteit Antwerpen

Abstract

In party politics literature, more specifically, in literature about intra-party democracy, democratization of candidate selection is often seen as a trade-off between inclusivity and representativity. The idea is that when you broaden the selectorate from exclusive (only including party leaders or committees) to more inclusive (also containing party members or even voters in general), the process of candidate selection is democratized. More people will have influence on which candidates will run for office for the party. However, this comes with the risk of unrepresentative selections of candidates. Indeed, by widening the selectorate, less women tend to be selected. To better understand and potentially solve this trade-off, we need to synthesize knowledge from both party politics and gender and politics literature. Two mechanisms are used to explain the relation between inclusivity and representativity. The first mechanism is the representational challenge. Party members themselves are not representative of society: they are predominantly white, middle-aged men. Given the fact that people prefer people that are like them, it can be expected that this unrepresentative group will not come up with a representative candidate list. The second and most prevalent mechanism is the coordination challenge. In an inclusive candidate selection procedure party members vote in isolation; they cannot coordinate their votes to ensure a representative selection of candidates. An exclusive selectorate on the other hand can deliberate about the composition of the selection of candidates and can, therefore, produce a more representative result. Despite these clear theoretical mechanisms, empirical analyses of the effect of inclusive selectorates are mixed. This can partly be explained by the fact that candidate selection is a multi-staged process and selectorates can differ per stage, resulting in different effects. Moreover, party culture and ideology can moderate the effect of inclusivity. Another reason for these mixed findings is that we have not empirically tested these mechanisms extensively. In this paper the goal is to fill that gap and to empirically test these mechanisms with a particular focus on gender and party culture. We will study Dutch party members of different political parties. Dutch party members play an important role in candidate selection because they can finalize and thereby even re-order candidates on the list. Dutch party members play an influential role in who gets an eligible seat and therefore stands a good chance to be elected. To scrutinize which criteria party members use, I will conduct a conjoint experiment in which party members rank candidates for their preferred lists. This can help us understand which criteria party members use and prioritize: socio-demographic features (e.g., gender, age) or political features (e.g., party and political experience). Moreover, I will study the interaction between these features, e.g., does political experience affect female and male candidates differently? This study will further our understanding of the trade-off between inclusivity and representativity. Based on these findings, I will reflect on how to design inclusive candidate selection procedures, desirable from a democratic perspective, while also ensuring gender-balanced lists.