Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Siavelis ◽  
Scott Morgenstern
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Inclusive Processes ◽  
Recruitment And Selection

Candidate recruitment and selection is a complex and opaque process that drives political outcomes and processes. Further, the process of candidate selection is notoriously difficult to study because of its informal nature, the multiplicity of actors involved, and because politicians may prefer to obfuscate their motives when asked about their decisions. Still, the literature has made advances in understanding recruitment and selection (R&S) and this article explores this crucial and understudied topic with respect to Latin America. Much literature has considered the importance of political institutions to candidate selection, but these explanations alone are insufficient. Analyses of political institutions have significantly advanced in the region, but in isolation, their explanatory power can fall short, as evident in examples where similar institutional frameworks yield different outcomes . This suggests the need to include informal processes when analyzing candidate recruitment and selection procedures. Then, armed with a more complete understanding of the processes, we can better assess the impacts of candidate choice on political outcomes. There is extensive work on recruitment and candidate selection in Latin America that focuses on executives, legislators, and gender. Each of these themes provides multiple examples of how outcomes are determined through a combination of formal institutions and informal practices. . The region’s politics have been trending towards more formal, open, and inclusive processes. This is largely a result of the belief that there is a crisis of representation for which parties are to blame. Reformists have thus championed more inclusive selection processes as an antidote to the problem of low-quality representation. By themselves, however, these reforms are insufficient to enhance the quality of democracy and they can have high associated costs for the democratic system. Therefore, the multiple consequences of the R&S process—intended and hidden—should raise caution for scholars and reformers.

Candidate Recruitment and Selection in Latin America: A Framework for Analysis

2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Siavelis ◽  
Scott Morgenstern
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Incentive Structure ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
Political Recruitment ◽  
Subsequent Behavior ◽  
Recruitment And Selection ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractThis article provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the recruitment and selection of legislative candidates in Latin America. It argues that political recruitment and candidate selection are undertheorized for Latin America yet have determinative impacts on political systems, often overriding the influence of more commonly studied institutional variables. The article elucidates a typology of legislative candidates based on the legal and party variables that lead to the emergence of particular selection methods, as well as the patterns of loyalty generated by those methods. It analyzes the recruitment and selection processes as independent and dependent variables, underscoring the significant effect these procedures have on the incentive structure and subsequent behavior of legislators. Those factors, in turn, have important consequences for democratic governability and the performance of presidentialism.

Party organization and gender in European elections

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 675-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea S Aldrich
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Selection Procedures ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Promote Gender Equality ◽  
Level I ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Elected Office

Political parties often monopolize the flow of politicians into elected office making it important to understand when, and under what conditions, parties are more or less likely to promote gender equality in representation. This article argues that party choices to nominate women in elections are conditional on the centralization of candidate selection within the party. Gender quotas and characteristics of the electoral environment have differential effects on candidate lists across party types. Leveraging data at the party level, I test when it is electorally feasible and organizationally possible for parties to nominate women for office. I find that candidate selection procedures condition the effects of party strategy and characteristics of the electoral environment on the percentage of women on electoral lists. The results provide insight into how strategic party choices, attenuated by electoral considerations and organization, impact the diversity of representation in political institutions.

Gender and Representation in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
And Gender

In the past thirty years, women’s representation and gender equality has developed unevenly in Latin America. Some countries have experienced large increases in gender equality in political offices, whereas others have not, and even within countries, some political arenas have become more gender equal whereas others continue to exude intense gender inequality. These patterns are inconsistent with explanations of social and cultural improvements in gender equality leading to improved gender equality in political office. Gender and Representation in Latin America argues instead that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries and that these challenges matter for the number of women and men elected to office, what they do once there, how much power they gain access to, and how their presence and actions influence democracy and society more broadly. The book draws upon the expertise of top scholars of women, gender, and political institutions in Latin America to analyze the institutional and contextual causes and consequences of women’s representation in Latin America. It does this in part I with chapters that analyze gender and political representation regionwide in each of five different “arenas of representation”—the presidency, cabinets, national legislatures, political parties, and subnational governments. In part II, it provides chapters that analyze gender and representation in each of seven different countries—Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. The authors bring novel insights and impressive new data to their analyses, helping to make this one of the most comprehensive books on gender and political representation in Latin America today.

Transparency in Academic Recruitment: A Problematic Tool for Gender Equality?

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (11) ◽  
pp. 1459-1483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke van den Brink ◽  
Yvonne Benschop ◽  
Willy Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Gender Practices ◽  
Underrepresentation Of Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Recruitment And Selection ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Transparency And Accountability

Gender research has made a call for more transparency and accountability in academic recruitment and selection in order to overcome the inequality practices that have led to an underrepresentation of women among full professors. This paper provides insight into the multiple ways in which the notions of transparency and accountability are put into practice in academic recruitment and selection, and how this has enhanced — or hindered — gender equality. The methods employed consist of a qualitative content analysis of seven recruitment and selection protocols, interviews with 64 committee members, and an analysis of 971 appointment reports of full professors in the Netherlands. Our analysis contributes to the study of organizations in three respects. First, it shows that recruitment and selection processes are characterized by bounded transparency and limited accountability at best. Second, it explains that the protocols that should ensure transparency and accountability remain paper tigresses, because of the micropolitics and gender practices that are part and parcel of recruitment and selection. Third, it contributes to gender equality theory in organization theory by showing how a myriad of gender practices simultaneously increases and counteracts gender equality measures in academia.

scholarly journals Opening Up the Black Box: Gender and Candidate Selection in a New Era

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meryl Kenny ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
Party Politics ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
New Era ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Secret Garden ◽  
Politics And Gender ◽  
And Gender

Recent global developments, including the feminization of parliaments and the rise of gender quotas, have transformed the ways in which parties and legislatures operate. This introduction to the special issue ‘Candidate Selection: Parties and Legislatures in a New Era’ puts these recent developments in context, making the case for revisiting the ‘secret garden’ of candidate selection in light of this ‘new era’ in politics. It sets out a critical dialogue between party politics and gender politics scholarship and points to the need for more research on how political parties facilitate or block women’s access to political office. Building on the burgeoning research on gender and political recruitment, it outlines how a gendered and institutional approach allows us to retheorize candidate selection processes and opens up new avenues for empirically examining the pathways prior to election. The article then introduces the papers in this special issue and concludes by evaluating the main implications of gendering analyses of candidate selection and party politics more broadly.

Civil sphere and democracy in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ch. Alexander ◽  
Carlo Tognato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
Civil Sphere ◽  
The Everyday

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the civil spheres of Latin America remain in force, even when under threat, and to expand the method of theorizing democracy, understanding it not only as a state form, but also as a way of life. Moreover, the task of the authors goes beyond the purely application of the theory of the civil sphere in order to emphasize the relevance not only in practice, but also in the theory of democratic culture and institutions of Latin America. This task requires decolonizing the arrogant attitude of North theorists towards democratic processes outside the United States and Europe. The peculiarities of civil spheres in Latin America are emphasized. It is argued that over the course of the nineteenth century the non-civil institutions and value spheres that surrounded civil spheres deeply compromised them. The problems of development that pockmarked Latin America — lagging economies, racial and ethnic and class stratification, religious strife — were invariably filtered through the cultural aspirations and institutional patterns of civil spheres. The appeal of the theory of the civil sphere to the experience of Latin America reveals the ambitious nature of civil society and democracy on new and stronger foundations. Civil spheres had extended significantly as citizens confronted uncomfortable facts, collectively searched for solutions, and envisioned new courses of collective action. However when populism and authoritarianism advance, civil understandings of legitimacy come under pressure from alternative, anti-democratic conceptions of motives, social relations, and political institutions. In these times, a fine-grained understanding of the competitive dynamics between civil, non-civil, and anti-civil becomes particularly critical. Such a vision is constructively applied not only to the realities of Latin America, but also in a wider global context. The authors argue that in order to understand the realities and the limits of populism and polarization, civil sphere scholars need to dive straight into the everyday life of civil communities, setting the civil sphere theory (CST) in a more ethnographic, “anthropological” mode.

Food systems, obesity, and gender in Latin America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
And Gender

Personal Values Required for Ethical Best Practice during Intrapartum Care

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobeth Mmabyala Louisa Malesela
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Education ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Personal Values ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Intrapartum Care ◽  
Performance Reviews ◽  
Qualitative Research Design ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Recruitment And Selection

Women bring into the birthing unit values which include preferences, concerns and expectations that are involved in decision-making during intrapartum care. When midwives fail to meet the women’s values, they experience such care as being inhumane and degrading, thus affecting the childbirth outcomes. The inhumane and degrading care includes a lack of sympathy and empathy, as well as a lack of attention to privacy and confidentiality. Midwives’ possession of the required personal values and the ability to integrate women’s values are vital to enhance ethical best practice during intrapartum care. The aim of the study was to explore and to describe the midwives’ personal values that are required for ethical best practice during intrapartum care. The birthing unit at a public hospital in the Gauteng province of South Africa formed the context of the study. A qualitative research design that was explorative, descriptive and contextual in nature was used. The following personal values emerged: (1) respect, trust and dignity; (2) justice, equality and fairness; (3) freedom of choice and autonomy; (4) integrity, honesty and consistency; (5) good character and personality; (6) self-control and rapport; and (7) open-mindedness and flexibility. The midwives’ personal values form a strong precursor that is crucial for ethical best practice during intrapartum care. The individual midwives, nursing education institutions and health facilities can use the study findings in areas such as reflective midwifery practice, the midwifery curriculum, recruitment and selection processes, and as part of key performance areas and indicators in performance reviews.

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