Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Political Parties in the Neo-Madisonian Theoretical Framework
- 3 Insiders and Outsiders
- 4 Constitutional Design and Intraparty Leadership Accountability
- 5 Electoral Separation of Purpose within Political Parties
- 6 The Impact of Constitutional Change on Party Organization and Behavior
- 7 Parties' “Presidential Dilemmas” in Brazil and Mexico
- 8 Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Mandate Representation
- 9 Conclusion
- References
- Index
5 - Electoral Separation of Purpose within Political Parties
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Political Parties in the Neo-Madisonian Theoretical Framework
- 3 Insiders and Outsiders
- 4 Constitutional Design and Intraparty Leadership Accountability
- 5 Electoral Separation of Purpose within Political Parties
- 6 The Impact of Constitutional Change on Party Organization and Behavior
- 7 Parties' “Presidential Dilemmas” in Brazil and Mexico
- 8 Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Mandate Representation
- 9 Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Chapters 3 and 4 considered differences in parties' ability to select and deselect leaders across democratic regimes. In this chapter we explore the implications of our theoretical argument further, by moving into the electoral arena. In political systems where voters cast separate ballots – often at separate times – for a party's executive and legislative candidates, those candidates can seek support from different elements of society and can even campaign on different bases. Seen through the lens of principal-agent theory, under both pure and semi-presidentialism, the separation of origin forces parties to confront a problem in the electoral arena that they do not face under pure parliamentarism: how to minimize the likelihood that their agent will develop a support base that does not fully overlap with the party's.
In this chapter we explore the degree to which parties' candidates for executive and legislative office derive support from and respond to different sets of voters, a phenomenon we call electoral separation of purpose. Conceptually, electoral separation of purpose measures the degree to which the electoral process generates misalignment of the political incentives between a party's executive candidate and its median legislative candidate. A continuum exists, with complete “fusion” of electoral purpose at one end, and complete “separation” of electoral purpose at the other end.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Presidents, Parties, and Prime MinistersHow the Separation of Powers Affects Party Organization and Behavior, pp. 123 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010