- PSA Annual International Conference, Glasgow, 10-12 April 2017 - Camille KELBEL Cevipol - Université libre de Bruxelles [email protected] The determinants of candidate selection processes for European elections Draft – Please do not cite or quote without the permission of the author - Abstract - Candidate selection is a key function of political parties and a main filter to political positions, especially to the European Parliament. If political parties allegedly devote little time and interest to EP electoral processes drafting lists for European elections has become an unavoidable exercise for them, not least given the resource opportunities provided for by the EP. This paper accordingly asks how national political parties settle on specific nominations procedures for European elections. It attempts to account for variations in the procedures that parties use by examining different factors identified by the literature as shaping national selection procedures, but it further considers whether more EU-related factors (the party stand on European integration, the saliency of EU issues in the party and in the country, the regional situation within the continent) may also affect the way in which parties select their candidates at this level. To do so, this research builds on a new and unique dataset recording the selection procedures set out ahead of the 2014 elections in all political parties from the 28 member states represented in the 8th EP legislature (N=198). To classify the processes thus unveiled, the paper relies on an analytical framework distinguishing the selectorate and the decentralisation dimensions of candidate selection. Results suggest that ideological considerations including the importance granted to the EU explain why parties may confer selection to specific party actors, while such attention as well as regional patterns best predict a party's use of decentralization. 1 Introduction National political parties play a doubly decisive role in the elections to the European Parliament. On the one hand, their policy positions on national and European issues, and their status as part of the government or the opposition, largely structure voters’ choices in European elections (Reif & Schmitt, 1980; Lord, 2002; Hix & Marsh, 2007). On the other hand, ever since the first direct EP elections in 1979, national parties exert a quasi-monopoly on drafting candidate lists for these contests. In fact, candidate selection is such a major feature of the European electoral and legislative arenas that the voting behaviours of MEPs during the legislature is often said to be linked to the parties’ powers in the selection processes, through which they can reward or punish incumbent MEPs (Faas, 2003; Frech, 2016; Hix, 2002). At the same time, national parties are generally acknowledged to be largely remote from the European level. They remain more interested in the national arena which continues to provide them with more opportunities in terms of their office and policy-seeking goals (Lord, 2002) and consequently devote little time and energy in the European level in general and especially in the run-up to the European elections (Føllesdal & Hix, 2006; Moravcsik, 2002). Yet, the attention they grant to the politics and policies of the European Parliament has largely increased over time (Raunio, 2000), and this can rationally be expected to be matched by more attention being also granted to the question of the access to the institution. In addition, drafting lists for EP elections has become a necessary and rewarding exercise for parties given the material and symbolic resources the institution offers (Reungoat, 2014). How political parties deal with this apparent paradox is thus a prime indicator of how they view and use the EU in general, and the European Parliament (EP) in particular. This paper accordingly asks how national political parties settle on specific nominations procedures for European elections. If previous research has largely highlighted that national political parties keep a strong hold on candidate selection for EP elections (Pemstein et al., 2015; Hix, 2004), the mechanisms underlying this pattern remain unclear. And just like other selection processes, far from being homogenous, the selection processes of future MEPs are marked by a striking diversity (Bille, 2001; Faas; 2003; Field and Siavelis, 2008; Pilet et al., 2015). This paper hence quite naturally asks why such is the case, exploring the determinants of this variation. In contrast to the sophisticated accounts of what the choice of a particular selection procedure entails for parties, legislatures and polities (Pennings & Hazan, 2001; Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Serra, 2011; Alvarez & Sinclair, 2012; Indriðason & Kristinsson, 2013;), much less is known about this choice itself. Few studies have investigated the determinants of recruitment processes at the national level and they have come to often contradictory conclusions (Ware, 2002; Lundell, 2004; Shomer, 2012; Serra, 2011). None has looked at the European level. 2 This paper hence aims at shedding light on the factors that prevail in the design of selection processes for EP elections. It is more precisely concerned with recruitment processes - that is, the different steps candidates have to go through to be designated as candidates for their party in European elections. Recruitment processes are only one of several elements to be considered when studying nominations (Norris and Lovenduski, 1993). The study concentrates on the two most studied dimensions of selection processes (for a summary, see: Hazan & Rahat, 2010): the selectorate - i.e. the party actors or organs in charge of selection -, and the territorial level at which selection is conducted within the party. The question examined in this chapter is thus more precisely: under what conditions does the party elite choose to grant influence to more inclusive and decentralised selectorates? This paper proceeds as follows. In a first section, theoretical perspectives are outlined, suggesting that parties' elites may opt for specific selection methods for strategic reasons, or decide upon them according to ideological considerations notably related to intra-party ‘democratization’, while being constrained by the political and institutional multi-level environment in which they operate. The second part of the paper expounds the data and methods. This research builds on a new and unique dataset documenting the formal selection procedures displayed ahead of the 2014 elections by all the political parties from the 28 member states represented in the 8th EP legislature (N=198). In terms of timeframe, the analysis covers the last round of selection processes having occurred ahead of the 2014 European elections, a single time point allowing to maximize comparability. In a final part, results are displayed, making use of bivariate and multivariate statistics. Findings highlight that a multiplicity of factors across levels and arenas are indeed at play, before I conclude. 1. Theory What may account for the shape that candidate selection processes ahead of European elections undertake and for variations therein? In this section, theoretical perspectives are employed to generate propositions about the design of candidate selection processes. Outlooks derived from the party organization research are applied to candidate selection, while growing the literature on political parties and the EU help me generate expectations that more precisely relate to my case. On the one hand, most previous accounts of candidate selection procedures use the selectorate and decentralisation aspects - either in isolation (see: Lundell, 2004), or in combination (see: Bille, 2001; Shomer, 2012) - as dependent variables. There is hence some theoretical and empirical ground that can be mobilised when accounting for these two dimensions of the processes. On the other hand, the EU cannot anymore be considered as neutral for political parties (Lord, 2002; 3 Blomgren, 2015), neither can processes surrounding the main electoral event of such a growing polity. There are in fact two main ways in which Europe may impact selection processes: fundamentally, by affecting the strategies and norms of parties, or more marginally, through the specificities entailed for parties by the multi-level political system. The main assumption behind this work is perhaps that parties possess much leeway when putting in place selection rules1. Considering party organisations, Harmel states that “both the environment and internal party politics produce important stimuli which result in discrete organizational change only when relevant party actors allow them to do so” (2002: 128) [emphasis added]. For Gallagher, “to some extent, each party must be looked on as being sui generis. Parties do have some autonomy” (1988: 265). If parties are generally said to be the main gatekeepers to elected office (Norris, 1996; Siavelis and Morgenstern, 2008), this is all the more true of the EP, with very few independent candidates making it to the Strasbourg assembly (three out of 751 in 2014). Parties hence appear as privileged units of analysis. The design of candidate selection processes: the result of parties’ strategies in a multi-level setting A first set of explanations see parties as choosing their internal procedures according to their aims - that is, based on utilitarian considerations. Party rules are indeed often seen as echoing intra-party power sharing compromises (Cross & Gauja, 2014). Strategic party actors