Reining the Party In: The Price of Taking Back Control

Selcen Çakır, Asli Ceren Cinar, Florian Foos, Konstantinos Matakos and Janne Tukiainen
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Selcen Çakır: Department of Economics, University of Turku
Asli Ceren Cinar: Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin
Florian Foos: Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science
Konstantinos Matakos: Department of Political Economy, King's College London

No 180, Discussion Papers from Aboa Centre for Economics

Abstract: Parties may trade local choice for leadership control when recruiting candidates, either to promote loyalists or to diversify candidate pools. We quantify the resource cost of centralization using the British Conservative Party’s 2006 A-list reform, which increased national influence over nominations. A-list parliamentary candidates were less locally embedded than other Conservative candidates. Difference-in-differences estimates show that A-list candidacies raised party (non-personal) campaign spending by roughly 11–21%, with no detectable change in candidates’ personal spending or short-run vote share. The increase occurred for both female and male A-list candidates. By 2015, the party further increased its spending. A simple vote-production model maps these estimates into the cost of offsetting weaker local appeal. For vote–spending elasticities between 0.10 and 0.25, offsetting a one-percentage-point appeal deficit requires roughly 11–30% more party funds. The results quantify a previously implicit price of centralized party control.

Keywords: centralized nominations; party control; campaign finance; political selection; vote elasticity; difference-in-differences; United Kingdom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C26 D72 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57
Date: 2026-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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