Bottoms up: How subnational elections predict parties’ decisions to run in presidential elections in Europe and Latin America

Abstract

Do parties' experiences in subnational elections predict when parties enter national competition and compete for the presidency? Building upon the party nationalization literature, we argue that a party's presence in elections across subnational units and its subsequent performance in these elections are determining factors for whether it enters the presidential race. To conduct our analysis, we have assembled an original dataset on parties' presence and performance in subnational elections and presidential entry in 17 countries in Europe and Latin America from 1990 to 2013. We find that a party's presence and performance in subnational elections are significant predictors of its decision to run for president, even when the party ran in the previous election and when the elections are concurrent. These findings have important implications for understanding how subnational elections relate to national party systems and democratic representation, more generally.

Small versus Statewide Parties: How Subnational Contestation and Decentralisation Influence Presidential Elections in Europe and Latin America

“…To test our hypotheses on how decentralisation conditions a party’s decision to enter the presidential race, we rely on two independent variables: a party’s presence in subnational elections, that is, the percentage of subnational units in which the party ran (see also Spoon and West, 2015b), and the level of decentralisation in the country.…”

“…Despite Shugart and Carey’s (1992) rich theoretical discussion of the relationship between subnational contestation and the presidential race, recent research does not provide a clear answer to the question of how local elections affect presidential elections (Hicken and Stoll, 2008; Spoon and West, 2015b; West and Spoon, 2013). The question remains – do subnational elections give parties the experience and resources necessary to compete in national races (Jones, 1997; Moreno, 2003), leading local parties to run for the presidency as Shugart and Carey suggest?…”

Regionalization and the Transformation of Policies, Politics, and Polities in Europe

“…Indeed, not only do electoral dynamics interact between electoral arenas at different territorial levels (Jeffery and Hough, ; Schakel and Jeffery, ), but the power and autonomy of regional and EU institutions implies that who wins and loses these non‐national elections has tangible implications on the policy‐politics‐polity triptych. It is then unsurprising that recent research has documented significant spillover and feedback effects across different electoral arenas (Dinas and Foos, ; Dinas and Riera, ; Spoon and Jones West, ). Party, election, and voter scholars may hence wish to broaden their horizon beyond national elections as, in many countries, these are no longer credibly independent from political and electoral dynamics at play at the sub‐ and supra‐state levels in Europe.…”

Unusual Bedfellows? PRI-PVEM Electoral Alliances in Mexican Legislative Elections

“…Finally, research has demonstrated that parties use subnational politics to improve their electoral fortunes (see, e.g., Garman, Haggard, and Willis 2001;Boone 2003;Escobar-Lemmon 2003;O'Neill 2003;Vlahos 2013;Meguid n.y.). Moreover, party behavior at the subnational level can influ-ence behavior at the national level (see, e.g., Hicken and Stoll 2008;Spoon and West 2015b). In federal states, such as Mexico, party performance at the gubernatorial level may influence electoral decisions at the federal level (Carlson et al 2009).…”