Who Runs at the Top of Party Lists? Determinants of Parties’ List Ranking in the 2013 German Bundestag Election

Abstract

In mixed-member proportional systems with closed party lists, such as the German Bundestag election, candidates’ electoral fate is widely determined by their placement on party lists. Despite its importance for the final composition of parliaments, candidates’ list placement in such systems is still under-researched. The literature on political careers has revealed a number of prevalent recruitment factors, but how these factors actually affect candidates’ placement on party lists has rarely been tested. This paper puts forward the question of what recruitment factors affected candidates’ chances to be allocated viable list positions in the 2013 German Bundestag election. The findings suggest that in particular candidates’ incumbency status, their number of prior candidacies and district nominations play key roles in shaping candidates’ electoral viability.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Thomas Zittel, Alexander Wuttke and Nils D. Steiner for their comments on a previous version of the paper as well as the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and helpful advises and suggestions.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara Ceyhan is doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Chair for Comparative Politics, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. She is a political scientist whose primary areas of research are the political representation of immigrants in German parliaments and intra-party candidate selection processes.