Political Candidate Selection: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Under-Representation in the UK

235 Pages·2019·1.98 MB·English

by  Jeanette Ashe

Political Candidate Selection
The “secret garden of politics”, where some win and others lose their candidate
selection bids, and why some aspirant candidates are successful while others
fail have been enduring puzzles within political science. This book solves this
puzzle by proposing and applying a universally applicable multistage approach
to discover the relationship between selection rules, selectors’ biases, aspirants’
attributes, and selection outcomes.
Rare party and survey data on winning and losing candidates and insider views
on what it takes to win a selection contest at multiple selection stages are compared
and used to reveal the inner workings of the secret garden. With a primary focus
on the British Labour party over several elections, the findings challenge many
long-held assumptions about why some aspirant candidate types are successful
over others and provides real-world and controversial solutions to addressing
women’s and other marginalised groups’ descriptive underrepresentation. As
such, it provides a much-needed fresh look at party selection processes and draws
new conclusions as to why political underrepresentation occurs and should inform
policies to remedy it.
This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of gender and ethnicity
in politics, political parties and candidate selection, and more broadly to the study
of political elites, comparative politics, sociology, labour studies, gender, race,
and disability studies, and to practitioners.
Jeanette Ashe is Chair of the Political Science Department at Douglas College,
British Columbia, Canada.
Routledge Studies on Political Parties and Party Systems
Series Editors: Ingrid van Biezen
Leiden University, the Netherlands, and Fernando Casal Bértoa, University of
Nottingham, UK
This new series focuses on major issues affecting political parties in a broad sense.
It welcomes a wide-range of theoretical and methodological approaches on politi-
cal parties and party systems in Europe and beyond, including comparative works
examining regions outside of Europe. In particular, it aims to improve our present
understanding of these topics through the examination of the crisis of political
parties and challenges party organizations face in the contemporary world, the
increasing internal complexity of party organizations in terms of regulation, fund-
ing, membership, the more frequent presence of party system change, and the
development of political parties and party systems in under-researched countries.
Party System Change, the European Crisis and the State of Democracy
Edited by Marco Lisi
Do Parties Still Represent?
An Analysis of the Representativeness of Political Parties in Western
Democracies
Edited by Knut Heidar and Bram Wauters
Leaders, Factions and the Game of Intra-Party Politics
Andrea Ceron
Informal Politics in Post-Communist Europe
Political Parties, Clientelism and State Capture
Michal Klíma
Political Candidate Selection
Who Wins, Who Loses, and Under-Representation in the UK
Jeanette Ashe
For information about the series: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-
in-International-Relations-and-Global-Politics/book-series/IRGP
Political Candidate Selection
Who Wins, Who Loses, and
Under-Representation in the UK
Jeanette Ashe
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Jeanette Ashe
The right of Jeanette Ashe to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-03951-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-17580-5 (ebk)
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For my Mum and Dad

Contents
List of tables viii
List of figures x
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xiii
1 Study overview 1
2 The selection process puzzle and ideal candidate types 22
3 Data and initial supply and demand tests 42
4 Centralisation and the Labour party’s candidate selection process 61
5 Assessing centralisation in the British Labour party’s
selection process 85
6 Assessing early stage selector preference for “ideal” candidates 110
7 Do local party members select “ideal” candidates? 154
8 Conclusion 180
Appendix: British Labour party candidate survey 189
Bibliography 204
Index 214
Tables
1.1 Factors influencing the selection processes 11
3.1 Labour party candidate selection process results (2001, 2005, 2010) 46
3.2 Labour party’s selection process 50
3.3 Labour party selection process filtering (sex) 54
3.4 Labour party selection process filtering (race) 55
3.5 Labour party selection process filtering (physical ability) 56
3.6 Filtering by sex, race, and disability (2015) 57
4.1 Key reforms to the Labour party candidate selection process 69
4.2 2010 General Election 12-week selection timetable 74
5.1 Labour candidate selection process: key participants and rules 88
5.2 Multistage assessment of the Labour party selection
process (women) 98
5.3 Multistage assessment of the Labour party selection
process (BAME) 100
5.4 Multistage assessment of the Labour party selection
process (disabled) 101
5.5 The effect of centralisation on women 102
5.6 The effect of centralisation on BAME 104
5.7 The effect of centralisation on disabled aspirants 105
6.1 Independent variables and associated categories 112
6.2 Survey data from aspirant candidates (2005 and 2010
selection processes) 122
6.3 NPP approval: variables, descriptive statistics, and
relationship tests 125
6.4 Shortlisting: variables, descriptive statistics, and relationship tests 131
6.5 Model 2 logistic regression predicting likelihood of being shortlisted 133
6.6 Shortlisting: descriptive statistics and relationship tests
for open seats 136
6.7 Model 3 logistic regression results for shortlisting in open seats 138
6.8 Descriptive statistics and relationship tests for open and
winnable seats 139
6.9 Model 4 logistic regression results, shortlisted (open and
winnable seats) 142
Tables ix
6.10 Regression model summary 143
7.1 Selection contests 157
7.2 Model 5 regression results (selected) 161
7.3 Selection contests in open seats 163
7.4 Model 6 regression results (selected in open seats) 165
7.5 Selection contests in open and winnable seats 167
7.6 Model 7 regression results (selected in open and winnable seats) 170
7.7 Selection contests in AWS seats 172
7.8 Model 8 (AWS seats) 174
7.9 Regression model result summary 176
8.1 Regression modelling summary 183