Document Title
Competition, Decentralization, and Candidate Selection in Mexico
Department/School
Political Science
Abstract
This article examines how political context affects the strategic choice of nomination rules, using data from federal and state-level legislative elections. Our analysis indicates that competition affects the selection rules parties adopt. Overall, parties are most likely to use open selection rules when they think they will win, largely due to the effects of activist competition over coveted nominations. However, state-level party leaders have not been consistently empowered by decentralization. Although state- level party leaders do have nonnegligible influence when it comes to the selection of local legislative nominees, they have more influence in those states that are the most dependent on the federal government for resources. Competitive context continues to be a stronger predictor of selection rule choice than decentralization.
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
American Behavioral Scientist
Publication Date
2016
Volume
60
Issue
7
Pages
819-836
