Friends and neighbours politics in Belgian candidate selection processes. Does place matter?

Place would matter in politics. This would hold particularly true for the relationship between voters and politicians. According to the friends and neighbours voting hypothesis (Key 1949), psychological connections between voters and candidates involve that voters would favour local candidates because ‘hometown candidates’ may better know what they want, but more pragmatically, since they may also directly help the voters by engaging in pork-barrel politics. This paper focuses on geographical representation on electoral lists and takes the political parties’ perspective. Parties are expe... Mehr ...