Elena Frech1
Département de science politique
et relations internationales
Université de Genève
Simon Hug2
Département de science politique
et relations internationales
Université de Genève
Candidate Selection and its Behavioral Consequences
Candidate Selection and its Behavioral Consequences
Working Paper (Aug 2, 2021
)3
.
Please do not cite or distribute without the authors' permission.
Abstract
The relationship between parliamentarians and the voters is importantly mediated by political parties, whose prime task is the selection of candidates. This paper analyzes the relationship between candidate selection and democracy in Switzerland from two perspectives: in a first, explorative analysis we show how democratic candidate selection processes are. Based on a current survey, this paper provides a unique overview of the informal and formal candidate selection rules of about 125 cantonal parties (which select the national parliamentarians).
In a second analysis we investigate which effect these various candidate selection rules have on the responsiveness of national parliamentarians. For many countries and electoral systems scholars have found a connection between the degree of democratization of parties candidate selection processes and the behavior of its MPs (Hazan and Rahat 2006; Shomer 2009, 2017). Using the roll-call votes but also other parliamentary activities of the members of the Swiss lower house (Nationalrat) between 2011 and 2019 we show how the candidate selection rules affect the parliamentarians loyalty towards the party and behavior towards the voters.
Footnotes:
1 Institut für Politikwissenschaft; Universität Bamberg; email: Elena.Frech@uni-bamberg.de
2 Département de science politique et relations internationales, Faculté des sciences de la société
; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont
d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; phone ++41 22 379 83 78; email:
simon.hug@unige.ch
3Financial support by the Swiss National Science Foundation (100017L-162427) and the Parliamentary Library of the Swiss Federal Assembly are gratefully acknowledged. Erstellt mit Unterstützung der Parlamentsdienste, Parlamentsbibliothek, Kompetenzzentrum fuer Parlamentsgeschichte und Parlamentarismus. We am grateful for support and feedback regarding the survey by Nenad Stojanovic, Lucia Helfer, Oliver Huwyler and Tomas Turner-Zwinkels. We further acknowledge excellent help and research assistance by Elena Bosshardt, Jérémie Poltier, Valentina Holecz, and Valeria Steiger.
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