Bottoms up: How subnational elections predict parties’ decisions to run in presidential elections in Europe and Latin America

Do parties’ experiences in subnational elections predict when parties enter national competition and compete for the presidency? Building upon the party nationalization literature, we argue that a party’s presence in elections across subnational units and its subsequent performance in these elections are determining factors for whether it enters the presidential race. To conduct our analysis, we have assembled an original dataset on parties’ presence and performance in subnational elections and presidential entry in 17 countries in Europe and Latin America from 1990 to 2013. We find that a party’s presence and performance in subnational elections are significant predictors of its decision to run for president, even when the party ran in the previous election and when the elections are concurrent. These findings have important implications for understanding how subnational elections relate to national party systems and democratic representation, more generally

Political parties in Canada: What determines entry, exit and the duration of their lives?

International audienceTwo margins of political party life in Canada since Confederation (1867) are analyzed—the extensive margin involving entry and exit (together with party turnover or churning) and the intensive margin determining survival length. The results confirm many hypotheses advanced to explain entry and exit—the importance of social and religious cleavage, election institutions, and economic circumstance. More novel are the findings that public election funding and periods with larger immigration flows have reinforced established parties at the expense of entrants and smaller sized parties. The intensive margin uses a discrete hazard model with discrete finite mixtures to confirm the Duverger-type presence of two distinct long-lived political parties surrounded by a fringe of smaller parties. Both parametric and semi-parametric models concur in finding that public funding and higher immigration flows are as successful in extending the life of established parties as in discouraging entry and exit