Changes to Candidate Selection and Political Recruitment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy K. Langston
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
National Party ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Political Recruitment ◽  
Demand Control

This chapter examines how the PRI’s candidate selection and recruitment changed from the hegemonic to the democratic era to capture how electoral competition strengthened the governors at the expense the corporatist sectors and other PRI groups. Under hegemony, the president controlled (through choosing or vetoing) which PRI politician appeared on the ballot, and thus could punish or benefit ambitious politicians within the wide-flung coalition. Once competition grew, however, a candidate’s popularity with voters began to weigh on these decisions and governors began to demand control over nominations for subnational and federal posts. Regime leaders had to devolve power over federal candidacies to state executives because of their ability to win votes for the party, decentralizing the party. National party leaders won a good deal of control over the closed-list PR seats for both the Chamber and the Senate. Most party-affiliated unions lost nomination power because they were unable to choose popular candidates or procure electoral victories, weakening their position within the party.

Sharing is caring: the role of voter-candidate similarities in intra-party electoral competition

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick F. A. van Erkel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Underrepresented Groups ◽  
Candidate Characteristics

AbstractPrevious studies have found similarities with presidential candidates or party leaders to be an important factor in explaining voting behaviour. However, with the exception of gender, few studies have structurally studied voter-candidate similarities in intra-party electoral competition. This study investigates the Belgian case and argues that voter-candidate similarities play a role in the decision-making process of citizens when casting preferential votes. Moreover, it investigates whether underrepresented groups, and especially women, are more guided by these voter-candidate similarities than overrepresented groups. To achieve this aim voter and candidate characteristics are modelled simultaneously. This enables an investigation of the decision-making process of voters while taking into account structural inequalities at the supply side. The results demonstrate that citizens are indeed more likely to cast preferential votes for candidates similar to themselves and that these effects are stronger for underrepresented groups. Hence, preferential voting could ultimately pave the way for better descriptive representation.

Party Brands and the Democratic and Republican National Committees, 1952–1976

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Heersink
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
National Minority ◽  
National Committee ◽  
National Party ◽  
White House ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Minority Party ◽  
Party Brands

Political scientists have traditionally dismissed the Democratic and Republican National Committees as “service providers”—organizations that provide assistance to candidates in the form of campaign funding and expertise but otherwise lack political power. I argue this perspective has missed a crucial role national committees play in American politics, namely that national party organizations publicize their party's policy positions and, in doing so, attempt to create national party brands. These brands are important to party leaders—especially when the party is in the national minority—since they are fundamental to mobilizing voters in elections. In case studies covering the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) in the period 1952–1976, I show that minority party committees prioritize their branding role and invest considerably in their publicity divisions, inaugurate new publicity programs, and create new communication tools to reach out to voting groups. Additionally, I show that in cases where the party is out of the White House, the national committees have considerable leeway in deciding what party image to publicize. Rather than being mere powerless service providers, I show that party committees have played crucial roles in debates concerning questions of ideology and issue positioning in both parties.

A model of electoral competition between national and regional parties

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihir Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Median Voter ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
National Party ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Regional Parties ◽  
Homogeneous Regions ◽  
Outcome Function

We consider a one-dimensional model of electoral competition with national and regional parties. There are two regions and three parties—one national party and one regional party for each region. We divide the paper into two parts— homogeneous and heterogeneous regions. In the former, the policy positions of the national party and the regional party of the region with the greater number of constituencies coincide with the favorite policy position of the region-wide median voter. In the latter, the national party chooses a policy position in a maximal isolation set, while the two regional parties choose policies on the same side of the national party’s policy as their own respective region-wide medians. For a given outcome function, the national party performs better when the regions are heterogeneous. In the homogeneous regions case, the national party can at best do as well as the regional party of the region with the greater number of constituencies. Our results are broadly consistent with intuition and evidence.

Facing a Changing Party

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
National Party ◽  
Party Leaders

This chapter analyzes the battle for control of the national Democratic Party as the players empowered by the coalitional and ideological changes after 1937 battled not just against southern Democrats but also against national party leaders desperate to hold together the fragile North–South coalition. The bland national platforms that Democrats adopted in the 1940s and 1950s belied the vigorous efforts by the liberal civil rights coalition to push for a strong platform plank, which became a regular focal point of dispute starting in 1944. The national platform fights exemplify both the much stronger push for civil rights on the part of important Democratic constituencies (compared to Republicans) and the efforts of national party leaders to avoid a clear stand. A survey of convention delegates from 1956 shows that despite the two parties' similar national platforms, the distribution of delegate preferences was decidedly more pro-civil rights among Democrats.

scholarly journals Corruption, Party Leaders, and Candidate Selection: Evidence from Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffaele Asquer ◽  
Miriam A. Golden ◽  
Brian T. Hamel
Keyword(s):  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Party Leaders

The Transition to Democracy and the Struggles to Take Over the Party

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy K. Langston
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Party ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
Party Change

This chapter provides a description of the political and economic crises of the mid-1990s that led to the loss of the PRI’s majority in the Chamber and the presidential defeat in 2000. Even as leaders of the authoritarian regime grappled with downward electoral trends, groups within the party began to battle among themselves over the timing and scope of the transition and of party change. The PRI adapted to the rigors of electoral competition because vote-winning groups within its ranks took over the party and defeated their internal rivals, who were less able to respond to the challenges of the ballot box. Political institutions such as federalism and the two-tiered electoral system helped define winners and losers within the party and gave the winning groups—the party’s governors and the national party officers—ways of controlling resources (candidacies and finances) that did not come into direct conflict.

The Supply and Demand Model of Candidate Selection: Some Reflections

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joni Lovenduski
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Demand Model ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Core ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Political Recruitment ◽  
Supply And Demand Model

This contribution takes a look back at the supply and demand model of selection and recruitment, developed by Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris in Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament (1995). The core understanding of this model was that candidate selection was an interactive process in which both selectors and aspirants affected outcomes that were organized in several sets of institutions. The model illuminates power in particular institutions – British political parties – and was designed to examine the various effects of the selection process. This contribution reflects on the model and puts forward ideas and arguments about what might be done differently, taking into account the theoretical and methodological innovations of the succeeding generation of scholars who have used the model. It also identifies remaining challenges for research on candidate selection and suggests that the supply and demand model is sufficiently flexible that it can still travel across national, system and party boundaries.

CREOLE NATIONALISTS AND THE SEARCH FOR NATIVIST AUTHENTICITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ZANZIBAR: THE LIMITS OF COSMOPOLITANISM

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathon Glassman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
National Party ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Pan Africanism

AbstractThe founders of the Zanzibar National Party can be understood as creole nationalists, who imagined their political authority as stemming from membership in a transnational Arab elite. But in the mid-twentieth century, prompted by the rising hegemony of territorial nationalism and by subaltern challenges informed by pan-Africanism, they crafted a new historical narrative that depicted their movement as having originated with indigenous villagers. Party leaders then related this narrative to Western scholars, whose publications helped reproduce the myth throughout the rest of the century. This article traces the genesis of this masquerade and asks what it implies about the nature of the creole metaphor and its supposed link to discourses of cosmopolitan hybridity. The conventional contrast betweencréolitéand nativist essentialism is shown to be illusory.

scholarly journals Introduction

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 746-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meryl Kenny ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Social Bias ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Recruitment ◽  
The Secret Garden

Twenty years ago, Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski published the classic workPolitical Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament(1995), one of the most comprehensive accounts of legislative recruitment thus far. Seeking to explain the social bias evident in legislatures worldwide, Norris and Lovenduski focused on the central role of political parties, arguing that the outcome of parties’ selection processes could be understood in terms of the interaction between thesupplyof candidates wishing to stand for office and thedemandsof party gatekeepers who select the candidates. Indeed, in most countries, political parties control not only which candidates are recruited and selected, but also are the central actors involved in adopting and implementing candidate selection reforms such as gender quotas. Yet, two decades later, systematic studies of the “secret garden” of candidate selection and recruitment have been few and far between in the gender and politics literature. It therefore seems a particularly appropriate time to revisit the core preoccupations, puzzles, and challenges that remain in the field of gender and political recruitment.

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