The Gatekeeper’s Dilemma: Political Selection or Team Effort

Jon Fiva, Federica Izzo and Janne Tukiainen
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Federica Izzo: Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego

No 164, Discussion Papers from Aboa Centre for Economics

Abstract: Political parties play a crucial gatekeeping role in elections, including controlling electoral resources, candidate recruitment, and electoral list compositions. In making these strategic choices, parties aim to encourage candidates to invest in the campaign, while also trying to secure advantages for their preferred candidates. We study how parties navigate this trade-off using a specific feature of the Norwegian local electoral system in which parties can give advantaged positions to some candidates in an otherwise open list. Our theory reveals that parties’ ex-ante electoral strength impacts their strategic decisions. Notably, the trade-off is weaker for more popular parties, allowing them to facilitate the election of their preferred candidates without compromising the party’s overall performance. We show empirically that the moral hazard concern is real, and that larger parties are indeed more likely to use their power to make some candidates safe. The advantage of large parties extends further: safeguarding specific candidates enables parties to achieve disproportionately favorable outcomes in post-electoral bargaining. These findings reveal new insights for political representations, policy outcomes, and intra-party dynamics more broadly.

Keywords: Intra-party politics; flexible party lists; campaigning; moral hazard; seniority norms; bargaining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 65
Date: 2024-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: The gatekeeper’s dilemma: Political selection or team effort (2024)
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