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Revamping the menu – or just offering what’s in stock? Candidate list volatility in open-list PR systems. Evidence from Finland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2021

Vesa Koskimaa Open the ORCID record for Vesa Koskimaa [Opens in a new window] ,
Mikko Mattila Open the ORCID record for Mikko Mattila [Opens in a new window] ,
Achillefs Papageorgiou Open the ORCID record for Achillefs Papageorgiou [Opens in a new window]  and
Åsa von Schoultz
Vesa Koskimaa*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere, Finland
Mikko Mattila
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Achillefs Papageorgiou
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Åsa von Schoultz
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
*
*E-mail: vesa.koskimaa@tuni.fi
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Abstract

Why do parties change candidate lists between elections? Although candidate list volatility is an important indicator of the responsiveness of electoral representation, it has received little attention in research. We offer a critical case study of party list volatility in Finland, using a candidate-centred open-list proportional (PR) electoral system with ideal conditions for ‘ultra-strategic’ party behaviour. Our explorative two-stage research design begins with party elite interviews, to extract factors that can affect list volatility, which in the following step are tested in a regression analysis of 564 party lists in parliamentary elections 1983–2019. Our results show that list formation is a complex phenomenon, where demand and supply factors interact in a contingent fashion. Following trends of voter dealignment, personalization and ‘electoral-professionalization’ of parties, volatility has increased over time. Electoral defeats and declining party membership increase volatility, but a member-driven mass-party heritage that limits party elites’ strategic capacity has a stabilizing effect.

Keywords

party organizationcandidate selectionpartisan dealignmentparty change
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 449 - 466
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research

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