Intra-Party Politics and Public Opinion: How Candidate Selection Processes Affect Citizens' Views on Democracy

Abstract

It is often argued by politicians and reporters alike, that democratizing candidate selection procedures would lead to greater political participation and interest in politics, stronger sense of satisfaction with and support for democracy, and higher levels of confidence/trust with democracy. Yet, to date no systematic comparative analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized effects of democratizing selection procedures on citizens' views on democracy. In this paper we use a cross-national hierarchical analysis to examine whether open and democratized selection processes are associated with positive views on democracy. We use numerous public opinion surveys such as the CSES, and the World Values Survey to measure citizens' perceptions and views about democracy, as well as their level of participation, and our data contains information on about 300 parties' candidate selection procedures.