Candidate Selection by Parties: Crime and Politics in India

• In Event: Recruitment and Performance of Government Officials

Abstract

We study how parties choose candidates, a key issue to understand political selection
and ultimately policy choices. Do parties select candidates that voters like, or
are their choices shaped by other considerations? What is the impact of policies that
limit parties’ choice sets, such as limitations on candidates with a criminal history? To
study these questions, we combine rich candidate level data from India with a model
in which parties trade-off the electoral appeal of candidate types against internal party
preferences in a strategic game of candidate selection. We find that, while parties do
consider voter demand, party preferences are the dominant force in selection. Parties
select criminal candidates mainly because of the direct payoff they yield, such as
through their ability to finance their own electoral campaigns. A ban on criminal candidates
can raise party payoffs by eliminating an equilibrium inefficiency. However,
the ban causes voters to switch to third parties, lowering the win probability of major
parties, which provides a logic for parties’ unwillingness to commit to a ban on criminal
candidates.

Authors

• Arvind Magesan

• Andrea Szabo

• Gergely Ujhelyi, University of Houston