Candidate Nomination Rules and Party Leader Strategies

TY - JOUR

T1 - Candidate Nomination Rules and Party Leader Strategies

AU - Tromborg, Mathias Wessel

PY - 2021/5

Y1 - 2021/5

N2 - Parliamentary party leaders have an electoral incentive to protect the informational value of their party's label by promoting unity, but recent research has shown that parties can also benefit electorally from appealing broadly through a wide distribution of candidate positions on political issues. This article suggests that party leaders with formal candidate nomination powers balance these incentives by nominating new candidates who are more congruent with the party when the distribution of issue positions among the senior candidates is wide, and, conversely, by nominating new candidates who are more divergent from the party when the senior candidate position distribution is narrow. These possibilities are tested with candidate survey data from six parliamentary democracies, and the results show that new party leader nominations are indeed conditional on the senior candidate distribution, but only on issues that are salient to the party’s electoral brand.

AB - Parliamentary party leaders have an electoral incentive to protect the informational value of their party's label by promoting unity, but recent research has shown that parties can also benefit electorally from appealing broadly through a wide distribution of candidate positions on political issues. This article suggests that party leaders with formal candidate nomination powers balance these incentives by nominating new candidates who are more congruent with the party when the distribution of issue positions among the senior candidates is wide, and, conversely, by nominating new candidates who are more divergent from the party when the senior candidate position distribution is narrow. These possibilities are tested with candidate survey data from six parliamentary democracies, and the results show that new party leader nominations are indeed conditional on the senior candidate distribution, but only on issues that are salient to the party’s electoral brand.

KW - broad-appeal strategy

KW - candidate nomination rules

KW - parliamentary parties

KW - party leaders

KW - representation

U2 - 10.1177/1354068819853967

DO - 10.1177/1354068819853967

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1354-0688

VL - 27

SP - 442

EP - 452

JO - Party Politics

JF - Party Politics

IS - 3

ER -