Don't air your dirty laundry
Party leadership contests and parliamentary election outcomes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6256592 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Florence So (0000-0001-8346-4326, Department of Political Science Aarhus University Denmark, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3-24 |
| Publication date | 2021-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Political Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0304-4130 • E-ISSN: 1475-6765 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1475-6765.12383 |
| OpenAlex | W3003866736 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 13 |
| References cited | 40 |
Staging an open contest is a democratic method to choose a party leader, though its electoral consequences remain unclear. I argue that leadership contests are electorally detrimental to governing parties. Competitive contests signal intraparty policy and/or personality conflict to voters, which damages governing parties’ perceived unity as well as competence in the policy‐making process. Thus, leadership contests undermine governing parties’ performances in parliamentary elections. Moreover, since voters evaluate governing parties’ record in office more than their rhetoric, unlike opposition parties, they cannot repair the image of incompetence/disunity by reshaping their rhetoric and/or policy direction. This implies that leadership contests damage governing parties’ electoral prospects more than they do to opposition parties’ electoral performances. Results from statistical testing with original data from 14 countries support my argument. In addition, these results are not endogenous to the contests’ timing; degree of competitiveness; leadership selection rules; whether or not the incumbent retains office; norms of contests; or how predecessors left office. These findings underscore the need to investigate the relationship between intraparty dynamics and election outcomes
General election · Laundry · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Social Policy and Reform Studies
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Party research and party support aid
How Centralized is Party Communication on Social Media
A multi-stage and multi-actor perspective on intra-party competition
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Intra-Party Democracy and Party Unity
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The Economic Vote
Classifying Party Leaders’ Selection Methods in Parliamentary Democracies
Political Leaders and Democratic Elections
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Understanding Parties’ Policy Shifts in Western Europe
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The (Un)Importance of Party Leaders
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Intra-Party Politics and Public Opinion
Parties and Leader Effects
Parties, conditionality and leader effects in parliamentary elections
Agree or disagree
Performance pressure
How Many Countries for Multilevel Modeling? A Comparison of Frequentist and Bayesian Approaches
Perceptions of Partisan Ideologies
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Modeling Multilevel Data Structures
Valence as Macro-Competence
Ideology, Party Factionalism and Policy Change
Prospective and Comparative or Retrospective and Individual? Party Leaders and Party Support in Great Britain
Election Timing in Majoritarian Parliaments
Leadership Competition and Disagreement at Party National Congresses
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If Winning Isn't Everything, Why Do They Keep Score? Consequences of Electoral Performance for Party Leaders
Party-leader effects in Norway
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Democratization of party leadership selection
The consequences of appearing divided
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| Citations per year | 2.6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |