IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/v13y2013i2p783-810n20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Parties, Candidate Selection, and Quality of Government

Author

Listed:
  • Aragón Fernando M.

    (Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A1S6, Canada)

Abstract

This article explores empirically the relation between political parties’ institutions and quality of government. I focus on procedures used to nominate presidential candidates given the importance of candidate selection in party politics. Using a panel dataset of Latin American countries, I find robust evidence of a positive relation between the use of democratic procedures, such as primaries, and quality of government. To shed light on the mechanism, I examine why parties use primaries. I find evidence suggestive that the results are mostly driven by the increase in political competition and candidates’ pre-electoral incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • Aragón Fernando M., 2013. "Political Parties, Candidate Selection, and Quality of Government," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 783-810, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:13:y:2013:i:2:p:783-810:n:20
    DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2013-0036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2013-0036
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bejeap-2013-0036?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert, 1999. "The Quality of Government," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 222-279, April.
    2. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    3. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    4. Masayuki Kudamatsu, 2012. "Has Democratization Reduced Infant Mortality In Sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence From Micro Data," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(6), pages 1294-1317, December.
    5. Brian Knight & Nathan Schiff, 2010. "Momentum and Social Learning in Presidential Primaries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(6), pages 1110-1150.
    6. Barro, Robert J, 1996. "Democracy and Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-27, March.
    7. Klumpp, Tilman & Polborn, Mattias K., 2006. "Primaries and the New Hampshire Effect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1073-1114, August.
    8. Dani Rodrik & Romain Wacziarg, 2005. "Do Democratic Transitions Produce Bad Economic Outcomes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 50-55, May.
    9. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1995. "Institutions And Economic Performance: Cross‐Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 207-227, November.
    10. Jackson, Matthew O. & Mathevet, Laurent & Mattes, Kyle, 2007. "Nomination Processes and Policy Outcomes," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 67-92, March.
    11. Nicolas Sahuguet, 2010. "Party Organization and Electoral Competition," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 212-242.
    12. Gerber, Elisabeth R & Morton, Rebecca B, 1998. "Primary Election Systems and Representation," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 304-324, October.
    13. Moulton, Brent R, 1990. "An Illustration of a Pitfall in Estimating the Effects of Aggregate Variables on Micro Unit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 334-338, May.
    14. Bernard Caillaud & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Parties as Political Intermediaries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1453-1489.
    15. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson & Daniel M. Sturm, 2010. "Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the US," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1329-1352.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agustin Casas, 2020. "Ideological extremism and primaries," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(3), pages 829-860, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fernando Aragón, 2014. "Why do parties use primaries?: Political selection versus candidate incentives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(1), pages 205-225, July.
    2. Fernando Aragon, 2009. "Candidate nomination procedures andpolitical selection: evidence from LatinAmerican parties," STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series 003, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    3. Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Khalid Sekkat, 2016. "A time to throw stones, a time to reap: How long does it take for democratic transitions to improve institutional outcomes?," Working Papers CEB 16-016, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Andreas Assiotis & Kevin Sylwester, 2013. "Do Good Institutions Lower the Benefit of Democratization?," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 05-2013, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    5. Piergiuseppe Fortunato & Ugo Panizza, 2015. "Democracy, education and the quality of government," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 333-363, December.
    6. Flachaire, Emmanuel & García-Peñalosa, Cecilia & Konte, Maty, 2014. "Political versus economic institutions in the growth process," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 212-229.
    7. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2009. "Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 88-126, July.
    8. Rok Spruk & Mitja Kovac, 2018. "Inefficient Growth," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 9(2).
    9. NARITA Yusuke & SUDO Ayumi, 2021. "Curse of Democracy: Evidence from 2020," Discussion papers 21034, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    10. Ashok Chakravarti, 2012. "Institutions, Economic Performance and the Visible Hand," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14751.
    11. Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Hannes Mueller, 2015. "Primaries: the unifying force," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(3), pages 289-305, June.
    12. Marc Schiffbauer & Ling Shen, 2010. "Democracy vs. dictatorship," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 18(1), pages 59-90, January.
    13. Gradstein, Mark, 2005. "Democracy, Property Rights, Redistribution and Economic Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 5130, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Jan U. Auerbach & Costas Azariadis, 2015. "Property Rights, Governance, and Economic Development," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 210-220, May.
    15. Aidt, Toke & Dutta, Jayasri & Sena, Vania, 2008. "Governance regimes, corruption and growth: Theory and evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 195-220, June.
    16. Andreas Assiotis & Kevin Sylwester, 2013. "Do the effects of corruption upon growth differ between democracies and autocracies?," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 06-2013, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    17. Fabrizio Carmignani, 2007. "Efficiency of Institutions, Political Stability and Income Dynamics," The IUP Journal of Managerial Economics, IUP Publications, vol. 0(1), pages 6-30, February.
    18. Theo S. Eicher & David J. Kuenzel, 2019. "European influence and economic development," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 667-734, May.
    19. Yusuke Narita & Ayumi Sudo, 2021. "Curse of Democracy: Evidence from the 21st Century," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2281R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Aug 2021.
    20. Bhattacharyya, Sambit, 2009. "Unbundled institutions, human capital and growth," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 106-120, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H80 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:13:y:2013:i:2:p:783-810:n:20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.