Popular Candidates and/or Party Soldiers? The Interactive Effect of Candidates’ Vote-Earning Capacity and the Candidate-Party Congruence at the 2014 Belgium Elections

Political parties need to act as unitary actors in parliaments to implement their policy goals. The literature has acknowledged that candidate selection process is one of the most powerful tools for a party to achieve and maintain internal cohesion within the parliamentary group. Political parties that do not win election cannot develop their policy goals though. Candidate selection processes present thus two – potentially conflicting – objectives: vote-seeking strategy (recruiting ‘popular candidates’) and policy-seeking strategy (enlisting ‘party soldiers’). The personalization of politics,... Mehr ...