Do Party Lists Matter? Political Party Strategies in Legislative Candidate Nominations

In electoral systems with closed party lists, it is argued that the importance of central party organisation increases at the expense of individual candidates' role in candidate nomination processes. This logic also underestimates individuals' electoral potential and focuses on individuals' allegiance to the leadership as the main asset for increasing their chances of being nominated. We argue that forming a party-list is a strategic decision based on the principle of furthering the interest of the party as a whole rather than rewarding individuals' commitment to the party and is conditional on inter-party competition. We conveyed an original dataset of candidate lists for major parties in Turkey's parliamentary elections between 1999 and 2015 and found empirical evidence for the significance of candidate lists as being used as strategic tools in inter-party electoral competition.