What determines geographical representation on party lists?

Political parties in proportional electoral systems are often obsessively involved with balancing their ticket (i.e. the list of election candidates). Gender, ethnicity, age, profession and geographical dispersion are usually primary selection criteria in the candidate selection process. After all, parties fear that unbalanced candidate lists will lead to an electoral penalty. Moreover, candidate lists where large societal factions are not represented may also lead to intraparty turmoil. As a result, parties aim to select a balanced mix of election candidates. This turns the candidate selection process in a more complex puzzle of finding the right set of candidates with diverging profiles.

In a recent publication for the journal Politics, Gert-Jan Put analyzes the degree of geographical representation on Belgian party lists. Do Belgian parties nominate candidates from both the larger cities as the more rural areas of the country? And which determinants increase or reduce the level of geographical dispersion on party lists?

The results show that parties with decentralized candidate selection methods have more balanced lists. Put differently, if local party branches are involved in the selection process, there are significantly more candidates from small party branches represented on the party lists. Looking at the realistic list positions, the presence of more women candidates has led to an increasing overrepresentation of large city candidates. This article is also one of the chapters in Gert-Jan’s dissertation.