Abstract
Parties' motivation to include locals depends on the characteristics of the electoral system. This article analyzes where on the lists parties choose to position locals under closed-list proportional representation systems. Furthermore, it also investigates how that choice varies depending on two key district factors, namely district magnitude and whether or not the district is in a peripheral region. To that end, it draws on an original biographical data set of candidates for the Portuguese National Parliament (1983, 1995, 2002, 2005 and 2009). The findings show that there are fewer locals among the higher positions on the candidates' lists and among heads of lists. District magnitude and peripheral region effects go in the expected direction, but these effects are small.
Highlights
E Portuguese case in particular, where studies on leaders effects (Lobo, 2006) and modes of campaign (Lisi and Santana-Pereira, 2014), suggest that citizens do value candidates’ characteristics
We have organized this article as follows: the section presents the state of the art about localness and candidate selection in closed-list proportional representation systems (CLPR) systems and introduces our working hypotheses; Sections 3 introduces the key institutional features of Portugal and resumes what is already known about the way parties chose their candidates; Section 4 details the structure of the data and shows descriptive results on localness and main explanatory variables; Section 5 presents the results of the main analysis; and Section 6 summarizes the main conclusions of the study
As mentioned before, following Shugart, Valdini, and Suominen (2005), we use the probability that a candidate has local ties as our dependent variable, which originates three dependent variables: the probability (Pr) that a candidate is native to the district - Pr, the probability that a candidate lives in a district - Pr, and the probability that a candidate has lower-level political experience in a district - Pr
Summary
Parties’ motivation to include locals depends on the characteristics of the electoral system. The Portuguese case offers the perfect conditions to analyze these research questions, as it features a steady CLPR system with great variance at the district level, namely concerning district magnitudes and with two out of 22 districts that are clearly peripheral regions (Azores and Madeira) To answer these questions, we have organized this article as follows: the section presents the state of the art about localness and candidate selection in CLPR systems and introduces our working hypotheses; Sections 3 introduces the key institutional features of Portugal and resumes what is already known about the way parties chose their candidates; Section 4 details the structure of the data and shows descriptive results on localness and main explanatory variables; Section 5 presents the results of the main analysis; and Section 6 summarizes the main conclusions of the study
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