ABSTRACT
On their way to claiming a seat in the legislature, politicians in modern democracies almost always face two principals: the party selectorate and the electorate. In this chapter, I present a conceptualization and analysis of collegialism and personalism in candidate selection methods and electoral systems, the two institutions that regulate political recruitment to parliament. After assessing how this strand of the scholarly literature relates to the personal versus the collegial distinction, I analyze the institutional features of 183 parties in 35 democracies. The findings show that the two institutions produce varying and independent incentives for collegialism and personalism, frequently pulling parties and politicians in multiple contradictory directions. These findings highlight the importance of theorizing and measuring the effects of the electoral system and of candidate selection methods as distinct explanatory factors of elite political behavior.
