An Experiment in Candidate Selection

Katherine Casey, Abou Bakarr Kamara and Niccoló F. Meriggi

American Economic Review, 2021, vol. 111, issue 5, 1575-1612

Abstract: Are ordinary citizens or political party leaders better positioned to select candidates? While the American primary system lets citizens choose, most democracies rely instead on party officials to appoint or nominate candidates. The consequences of these distinct design choices are unclear: while officials are often better informed about candidate qualifications, they may value traits, like party loyalty or willingness to pay for the nomination, at odds with identifying the best performer. We partnered with both major political parties in Sierra Leone to experimentally vary how much say voters have in selecting Parliamentary candidates. Estimates suggest that more democratic procedures increase the likelihood that parties select voters' most preferred candidates and favor candidates with stronger records of public goods provision.

JEL-codes: D72 H41 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20200125 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E124501V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20200125.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20200125.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:111:y:2021:i:5:p:1575-1612

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200125

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().