‘I bend, indeed, but never break’: Formal rules and informal processes of candidate selection for European elections

Abstract

Many of the criticisms commonly made of modern political parties concern their alleged lack of transparency and use of informality in their inner organization. Yet, little is known about the extent to which parties really bend their rules. This article investigates whether and how political parties use informality in one central aspect of intra-party life: candidate selection. More specifically, selection procedures for European elections are examined since party actions at the European level are still under little scrutiny from the media and the voters, hence granting them much leeway. To compare rules with practices, actors and levels cited in 51 party statutes are matched with their uses in 2014, gathered through a survey and interviews of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Even though informal processes are found to be generally less inclusive than the rules prescribed, divergences are often modest, suggesting that parties do not necessarily rely on informality in their day-to-day functioning.

Party organization and gender in European elections

“…Information on the centralization of selection for European electoral lists was coded from party statutes that were collected between the 2009 and 2014 European elections. This data was supplemented and/or corroborated with using the studies of candidate selection offered by Bense et al (2009), Kelbel (2018), and Pilet et al (2015). This can include language in the statute stating the national executive(s) vote on candidate lists, approve candidate lists, select candidates for the final list, and so on and no other body can veto this list nor add candidates to it.…”

“… 7. For the exact collection and coding procedures, please see section S3 in the Online supplemental material. The coding was verified, when possible, with material offered by the European Parliament pertaining to candidate selection for European elections (Benes et al, 2009; Pilet, Van Haute and Kelbel, 2015) and the coding for centralization offered by Kelbel (2018). …”

Digging in the ‘Secret Garden of Politics’: The Institutionalisation and De‐institutionalisation of Membership Ballots in the Selection of Finnish Parliamentary Candidates

“…District executive concern with the representativeness of party lists has prevailed over the participation of members in constituting them. This is not to discount the role of informality (Kelbel 2020) in the candidate selection process or to report the wholesale demise of membership ballots as an intraparty consultative mechanism. Membership ballots have been widely employed in the selection of new party leaders; in VAS in respect of whether to enter government; in VIHR for the determination of mayoral candidates and, more routinely, in the SDP for selecting party conference participants.…”

“…A greater role for the party member through the provision of membership ballots cannot of course be equated with increased influence for members in the candidate selection process. Indeed, going beyond the letter of formal party statutes, Kelbel (2020) focuses on the importance of informality in candidate nominations and notes that ‘although a general trend towards more open candidate selection procedures is often acknowledged in the literature, informality may largely operate against these democratisation patterns’ (Kelbel 2020, 52).…”

A Comparative Analysis of Selection Criteria of Candidates in Belgium

“…Yet one knows that candidate selection goes beyond formal rules and candidacy requirements. De jure and de facto procedures do sometimes not match, and scholars should at least consider the divergences between both (Meserve et al, 2018;Kelbel, 2020). The accounts of selectors retrieved from in-depth interviews allows to assess how much room for maneuver for informality is left for selectors.…”