Behavioral Consequences of Open Candidate Recruitment

Rehmert, Jochen

doi:10.1111/lsq.12283

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…This study resonates with recent studies exploring the consequences of lacking proper party socialization including Rehmert (2020a) and Ohmura et al (2018). Both studies show from different angles how the lack of long-term party membership affects MPs behavior and success in parliament.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…For the Japanese case, Smith and Tsutsumi (2014) report that candidates nominated in the wake of public calls for applications mostly lack prior party membership and political experience and that these candidates exhibit political attitudes more moderate when compared to their copartisans selected through more traditional channels. Rehmert (2020a), moreover, finds that Japanese MPs nominated through this open recruitment are less active in parliament.…”

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confidence: 96%

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Party membership, pre-parliamentary socialization and party cohesion

Rehmert

2021

Party Politics

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Party membership seems to lose relevance for political careers in many established democracies. Increasing numbers of parties are recruiting non-members as candidates. Yet, what are the implications of a lack of long-term party membership for party cohesion? In this paper, I argue that pre-parliamentary party membership is in fact crucial for cohesion. Using data from the Comparative Candidate Survey and voting behavior of ca. 2,000 MPs of the German Bundestag on free votes from 1953 to 2013, I examine the effect of length of previous party membership and the age of joining the party on indicators of party cohesion. Examining free votes allows for credibly controlling alternative explanations of unified voting behavior. Results are in line with expectations generated from social identity theory and underscore the importance of party membership for party cohesion. The paper concludes with a discussion on the findings’ implications in light of recent developments in parties’ candidate recruitment.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

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confidence: 96%

Party membership, pre-parliamentary socialization and party cohesion

Rehmert

2021

Party Politics

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“…Contributions in the edited volume on candidate selection by Gallagher and Marsh (1988) present cross-sectional information on candidacy criteria, but lack systematic research on the unifying consequences of variations on the candidacy dimension. Limited empirical research has shown that candidates selected through open recruitment following nationwide and formally undiscriminating calls for applications exhibit policy attitudes different from those of co-partisans that were selected through traditional channels (Smith & Tsutsumi, 2014) and that these candidates are less active in parliament than those MPs with a stronger party membership background (Rehmert, 2017). As of now, the theoretical and empirical research on the candidacy dimension is bleak and empirical evidence on its effect on party unity is lacking completely.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Candidacy Eligibility Criteria and Party Unity

Rehmert

2020

Comparative Political Studies

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Extant research suggests that candidate selection methods can be consequential for party unity in legislative voting. Yet thus far, only variations in the selectorate and the degree of centralization have been examined. This article argues that Candidacy Eligibility Criteria (CEC), too, have implications for party unity. I theorize that with stricter formal requirements, parties avoid adverse selection and ensure the nomination of committed candidates. By using roll-call vote data from 16 industrial democracies, candidate surveys and an original data set consisting of nearly 500 historical party constitutions, I show that parties demanding prior membership and nudging aspirants to maintain networks within the party tend to be more unified in parliamentary voting. Moreover, their candidates, too, express greater loyalty when compared with parties without formal CEC. Thus, this article contributes to the literatures on party unity and on candidate selection by showing how certain party rules, hitherto neglected, affect party unity.

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“…First, not all candidate selection processes might be influenced by “fairness rules” or informal networks. This might hold even more true as parties tend to increase “open recruitment” candidate selection processes (Rehmert, 2020a). In such cases, the factors identified by the experiment can play a relevant role.…”

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confidence: 99%

Local preferences in candidate selection: Evidence from a conjoint experiment among party leaders in Germany

Berz

Jankowski

2022

Party Politics

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Candidate selection is one of the most relevant tasks of parties and has important consequences for various aspects of political representation. While previous research has addressed many important aspects of the candidate selection process, we know little about the question of which candidate characteristics are preferred by party members. We address this research gap by conducting a conjoint experiment among more than 300 local party leaders in Germany. In the experiment, potential candidates differed on various important dimensions regarding their socio-demographic background, prior political experience, local roots, and work within the political party. We find that prior political experience and engagement within the party are the most important features. However, socio-demographic characteristics and deviation from the party line also matter. These findings have implications for theories of descriptive representation as well as the impact of decentralization on party cohesiveness.

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Behavioral Consequences of Open Candidate Recruitment

Cited by 8 publications

References 35 publications

Party membership, pre-parliamentary socialization and party cohesion

Party membership, pre-parliamentary socialization and party cohesion

Candidacy Eligibility Criteria and Party Unity

Local preferences in candidate selection: Evidence from a conjoint experiment among party leaders in Germany

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