Intraparty Politics and Candidate Selection in Mexico

• In Event: The Dynamics and Consequences of Internal Party Politics

Abstract

This paper studies the conditions under which political parties adopt primaries in contexts in which campaigning is based on clientelistic rather than programmatic appeals. I develop a model of electoral competition in which two office-motivated parties compete over a pool of potential candidates to office. On the one hand, political parties choose nomination rules in order to attract higher-quality aspirants. On the other hand, ambitious office-seekers join the political party that maximizes their chances of getting elected to office. The main result of this paper shows that there is a positive relationship between a party's electoral strength and the use of primaries. The political party that is relatively stronger adopts primaries in order to increase the number of high-quality aspirants that join the party and, thus, to increase the probability that the party's general-election candidate will face an opponent of lower quality. The electorally-weaker party, in contrast, has incentives to appoint its candidate, since this makes it a more attractive option for at least one higher-quality aspirant who would prefer to avoid a crowded field in the stronger party. I provide support for this expectation using an original dataset on legislative candidate selection in Mexico in four federal legislative elections (2003-2012).

Author

• Sergio Jesus Ascencio Bonfil, University of Rochester