Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP4890
Authors: Micael Castanheira; Benot Crutzen; Nicolas Sahuguet
Abstract: We analyse how the governance structure of political parties influences electoral competition. Parties choose their organization to manipulate the incentives of politicians to provide effort. We show that intra- and inter-party competition interact to shape these incentives. We also get new insights on the role of information, polarization, and on the value of rents from office. More extreme parties tend to prefer less democratic governance structures. Instead, democratic structures are preferred when voters are ill informed about the candidates? performance and when the rents from office are low. We use our theory to interpret the introduction of the Direct Primary system in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century.
Keywords: candidates; incentives; internal organization; parties
JEL Codes: D23; D72; D81
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| party governance structure (D72) | electoral competition (D72) |
| party governance structure (D72) | politician effort (D72) |
| intra and interparty competition (D72) | politician effort (D72) |
| intra and interparty competition (D72) | electoral outcomes (K16) |
| voter information quality (K16) | party governance structure (D72) |
| socio-economic factors (P23) | party governance structure (D72) |
| party governance structure (D72) | trust-based voting behavior (D72) |
| direct primary system (D72) | intraparty competition (D72) |