Candidate selection is the process by which political parties
decide who will be on the ballot paper as their recommended candidate(s). The
way in which they make that choice is mainly determined by their own internal
rules and procedures. Nomination is the legal process by which
election authorities screen the candidates recommended by the party, approve
their candidacy, and print their names on the ballot paper.
In each election, thousands
of persons could potentially stand for election, but it would be impossible for
voters to make an informed choice among them. Political parties therefore act
as useful and necessary gate-keepers narrowing down the list of candidates to a
small enough pool.
Parties can select their
candidates in many different ways. In numerous cases, the existing legal
framework establishes that political parties should “democratically” elect
their candidates, but this concept is very vague, and there are few if any
applicable legal provisions. Only in a few cases does legislation lay down the
process by which candidates should be selected, and the selection process can
have a direct impact on the depth and breadth of the democratic
process—particularly if a given party’s candidate selection process is
non-transparent[1]
There are two concepts that
are central to the issue of party selection of candidates. One is centralisation,
that is, what level in the party – local, regional or national –controls the
candidate selection. The second is participation, meaning who –
ordinary members or top leadership – controls the process at the level where the
decision is taken.
Centralisation
In an extremely centralised
system, a national party agency would decide on the candidate selection without
any involvement by the more local branches of the party. At the other end of
the scale would be a system where the most local branches of the party would
decide on candidates without any approval or participation from the national
level. As in so many other fields, the actual practice is usually somewhere
between the two extremes.
In most political parties,
candidates are chosen at the local level even though the national level of the
party has a varying degree of influence. The influence can be pro-active by
encouraging, recommending, or forcing the local branch to chose a particular
candidate – or negative by the national level party reserving the right to veto
candidates. In both cases, the party has to strike a difficult balance between
national level strategies and local sensitivities.
Participation
A situation with extremely
low participation would be if the party leader alone would decide on the
candidates. The other extreme would be if the ordinary members of the party
would decide without any participation or involvement of the party leaders.
The latter can be
illustrated with the case of the United States, where members (or in some
states, all registered voters) can elect the party candidate(s) through direct
votes in primary elections. The election is between all candidates that present
themselves, and the process takes place under the supervision of the government
– largely outside the control by the party organisation. The government also
ensures that the person who won the primary election is the one who will be on
the ballot paper representing the party.
Other parties in different
countries have chosen to have varying degrees of member participation in the
selection process, from party-run primary elections to indirect elections where
party branches send delegates to a national congress.
What determines the
selection process?
Factors such as electoral system,
party ideology, political culture, and the organisation of government have been
thought to have an influence on the centralization and participation in the
candidate selection process. However, there is no evidence that any of them is
decisive.
It would be natural for
national party agencies to be more influential in multi-member district systems
(where more than one person is elected to the legislature from each
constituency), while single-member constituencies would give more power to
local branches.
In the same logic, federal
systems would tend to favour decentralized candidate selection, parties with an
inclusive political ideology would favour participatory selection procedures,
and parties in countries with a hierarchical political culture would foster
non-participatory processes.
However, all these (and
more) criteria are mixed in all political parties, and conclusions are
therefore hard to draw. Not even in cases where legislation stipulates a
particular selection process is it always possible to say if the law has
determined the processes, or if they simply reflect practice.
[1]
See for example: Field, Bonnie N.
and Siavelis, Peter M. Endogenizing
legislative candidate selection procedures in nascent democracies: evidence
from Spain and Chile (Democratization, vol 8, No. 3, May 2011) and Ashiabgor,
Sefakor (et al). Political
Parties and Democracy in Theoretical and Practical Perspectives: Selecting Candidates for Legislative
Office. (National Democratic
Institute for International Affairs, 2008).
http://www.ndi.org/files/2406_polpart_report_engpdf_100708.pdf
