 Open or Closed? How List Type Affects Electoral Performance, Candidate Selection, and Campaign EffortDominik Hangartner, Nelson A. Ruiz and Janne Tukiainen No 120, Working Papers from VATT Institute for Economic Research Abstract: What effect does using open (as opposed to closed) lists in proportional representation elections have on party performance and the quality of candidate selection? We provide novel evidence by studying local elections in Colombia, where parties have discretion to field either open or closed lists. Using panel data covering the 1,100 Colombian municipalities for the 2003–2015 period, we leverage within-party, within-municipality, and over-time variation to identify the effect of ballot structure. We find that the adoption of open list dramatically increases parties’ vote and seat shares. Semi-structured interviews with a representative sample of candidates reveal that parties that use closed list struggle to attract high-quality candidates and to incentivize them to campaign. Consistent with these mechanisms, our statistical analyses confirm that open-list candidates are more experienced, more engaged in their constituencies and campaigns, and less likely to have committed election fraud in the past. Keywords: Electoral Systems; Ballot Structure; Closed vs Open Party List; Political Selection; Local public finance and provision of public services; C23; D72; Kunnat ja hyvinvointialueet (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fer:wpaper:120 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from VATT Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC. |
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