Party Activists, Recruitment and Party-Building

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

There is a growing literature on representation and party activists in the context of the Global South. Yet, we are only beginning to learn about how who holds political office affects the recruitment of party members and activists. We know little about how candidate and party activist recruitment works in developing regions, where informal processes, factional, and patronage politics undergird intra-party decision making. The papers in this panel address this urgent gap in the literature. Goyal and Sells examine how female candidacy affects party building and the recruitment of party activists in Brazil. Cruz examines candidate selection and how community-based interventions shape female candidacy in Cambodia and the Philippines. Gulzar et. al examine whether elite-driven recruitment campaign influence who joins the party in India. Brierley and Nathan examine how parties use compensation to extract work from party brokers in Ghana. The panel contributes with theory and experimental evidence that improves our understanding of recruitment and party-building in developing countries.

Sub Unit

• Division 6: Political Economy

Chair

• Tanushree Goyal Harvard University

Discussants

• Rachel Beatty Riedl Cornell University

• Gareth Nellis University of California, San Diego

Individual Presentations

• Women and Party-Building: Evidence from Municipal Governments in Brazil - Cameron Sells, Tulane University; Tanushree Goyal, Harvard University

• Networks and Candidate Selection in Consolidating Democracies - Cesi Cruz, University of California, Los Angeles

• Can Party Elites Shape the Rank and File? A Recruitment Campaign in India - Saad Gulzar, Stanford University; Durgesh Pathak; Sarah F. Thompson, Stanford University; Aliz Toth, Stanford University

• Paying Party Brokers: How Patronage Sustains Machine Parties - Sarah Brierley, London School of Economics; Noah Nathan, University of Michigan