Political recruitment and the 2003 Scottish and Welsh elections: candidate selection, positive discrimination and party adaptation

Abstract

Party candidate selection procedures for Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections, in addition to a traditional concern to recruit effective politicians, have been viewed as a means of bringing in new blood, achieving better female representation, and in Wales at least, promoting ethnic minority representation. Such issues have been felt most keenly by Labour, the nationalist parties and the Liberal Democrats. This article explores the impact of candidate selection procedures on political recruitment at the second set of elections in 2003. As in 1999, there were tensions between party memberships and central party intervention over all of these goals. In 2003, these were resolved with varying degrees of success by the different parties, with party adapation towards greater central intervention being more accepted in the Labour Party than in the nationalist parties, where de‐centralist party traditions remained strong. Overall, a further advance in female representation was the most remarkable feature of political recruitment at the 2003 elections.