Candidate Selection by Parties: Crime and Politics in India

• In Event: Campaigns, Elections, Voting Behavior

Abstract

We study how parties choose candidates, a key issue to understand political selection and ultimately policy choices. Do parties select candidates that voters like, or are their choices shaped by other considerations? What is the impact of policies that limit parties' choice sets, such as limitations on candidates with a criminal history? To study these questions, we combine rich candidate level data from India with a model in which parties trade-off the electoral appeal of candidate types against internal party preferences in a strategic game of candidate selection. We find that, while parties do consider voter demand, party preferences are the dominant force in selection. Parties select criminal candidates mainly because of the direct payoff they yield, such as through their ability to finance their own electoral campaigns. A ban on criminal candidates can raise party payoffs by eliminating an equilibrium inefficiency. However, the ban causes voters to switch to third parties, lowering the win probability of major parties, which provides a logic for parties' unwillingness to commit to a ban on criminal candidates.

Authors

• Arvind Magesan

• Andrea Szabo, University of Houston

• Gergely Ujhelyi, University of Houston