Representing the Extra-Party: Candidate Support Interventions for Non-Ideologues

Whilst intra-party democracy on local candidate nomination can ensure the representation of local party organisations’ interests at state, national and federal levels, it also erects barriers for the less active in local party politics. As political parties are increasingly distrusted by the public nowadays, such an institutional setting risks alienating potential candidates and voters who are less committed to a specific party ideology but are nonetheless politically motivated (non-ideologues). This paper investigates what kind of support interventions are effective in nominating and electing such individuals in a highly party-centred system, Germany. In collaboration with the German NGO Brand New Bundestag (BNB), one of the most high-profile NGOs that support these non-ideologue candidates, this paper seeks to uncover effective types of interventions through qualitative interviews and a survey experiment among BNB alumni and the effectiveness of BNB’s interventions via a quasi-experimental analysis of an original dataset of intra-party nomination. This work will have implications in representing moderate voters and candidates in an era of political polarisation.