2025/06/04 by Michal Grahn, Sandra Håkansson · 3 voices · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Gender Politics and Representation #Electoral Systems and Political Participation
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/01402382.2025.2504296
Candidate selection practices are often highlighted as a key factor in explaining the political underrepresentation of marginalised groups, such as women, ethnic minorities, or youth. Conventional wisdom holds that exclusive candidate selection methods, such as selection committees, tend to yield more descriptively representative outcomes than inclusive methods, such as primaries. However, these conclusions are often drawn from cross-sectional comparisons between parties with different selection methods. This article leverages an original conjoint experiment in Sweden to compare the demand for different candidate profiles, including women, youth, and immigrants, among party members (N = 6400) and selection committee members (N = 1300) under two modes of candidate selection: primaries and selection committees. The findings reveal strikingly similar preferences for underrepresented candidate profiles across both groups and selection modes. These results suggest that, within a favourable institutional framework, both inclusive and exclusive selection procedures can be equally effective in promoting descriptive representation.