How German Parties Select Candidates of Immigrant Origin: Neutrality, Opening or Closure?

ISBN-13: 9783030594534 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 272 str.

Sara Ceyhan

Opis

This book analyzes the threshold candidates of immigrant background need to overcome to run for legislative office. Understanding whether political parties are able to adapt their selection criteria helps to assess their ability to respond to the underrepresentation of citizens of immigrant origin in parliament.

Although Germany’s ethnic diversity is on a steady rise, citizens of immigrant origin remain descriptively underrepresented. Despite the pivotal role the intra-party candidate selection plays in shaping who runs for election, the question of how candidates of immigrant background fare in political parties’ candidate selection in comparison to native-born candidates remained a blind spot of research. Therefore, the author presents in-depth empirical evidence on the selection of candidates of immigrant background in German political parties.

The book addresses scholars of political science interested in electoral studies as well as policy-makers and party officials interested in a balanced representation of their political representatives.

Spis treści

1 The Relevance of Party Candidate Selection for Immigrant Representation 

2 The Political Representation of Immigrant Origin Citizens in Germany

2.1 Definition of Immigrant Origin

2.2 Immigration and Immigrant Political Representation in Germany

2.3 Immigrants as a Representational Group

3 Candidate Selection as a Bottleneck on the Way to Parliament

3.1 Context: Legislative Recruitment

3.2 Setting the Stage: Reasons for Studying Parliamentary Candidates

3.3 Critical Success Factors in Candidate Selection

3.3.1 General Requirements for Nomination 

4 Party Selection Behavior Towards Immigrant Origin Candidates A Framework of Analysis

4.1 The Present State of Research 

4.2 How to Select Immigrant Origin Candidates Neutrality, Opening and Closure

4.2.1 Neutrality Want You Just Like We Want Any Other 

4.2.2 Opening Want You at Any

4.2.3 Closure Must Work Twice as

5 Variances in Party Selection Behavior Towards Immigrant Origin Candidates

5.1 Differences across Political Parties

5.2 Differences across the Mode of Candidacy

5.3 Differences across the Level of Ethnic Concentration in Single-Member Districts

5.4 Differences across the Level of Social Deprivation in Single-Member Districts

6 Research Design

6.1 Why Germany?

6.2 How to Measure Candidate Selection Behavior?

6.2.1 Quantitative Approach

6.2.1.1 German Candidate Study 2013

6.2.1.2 Candidate Surveys at State Level

6.2.2 Qualitative Approach

6.3 Operationalization

6.3.1 Immigrant Origin

6.3.2 Dependent Variables

6.3.3 Conditioning Factors

6.3.4 Controls

7 Are Immigrant Origin Candidates Any Different?

7.1 Exploring the Socio-Demographic Background

7.2 Exploring Immigrant Origin

7.3 Exploring Political Backgrounds

8 Requirements for the Nomination of Immigrant Origin Candidates

8.1 Years of Party Membership

8.2 The Role of Political Office Experience

8.3 The Role of Localness in Single-Member Districts

9 How Political Parties Support the Nomination of Immigrant Origin Candidates

9.1 The Role of Encouragement

9.2 The Role of Competition in Candidate Selection

9.3 The Role of Support in the Candidate Selection Process

9.4 The Role of Electoral Viability

9.5 Interim Conclusion: Selection Behavior?

10 Variances in Party Selection Behavior

10.1 Do Immigrant Subgroups Matter?

10.2 Do Political Parties Matter?

10.3 Does the Mode of Candidacy Matter?

10.4 Does the SMD Context Matter?

11 Conclusion

Appendix

O autorze

Sara Ceyhan received her doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Goethe University of Frankfurt (Germany). After years of research focused on the selection of parliamentary candidates, she started working in the field of strategic communication analysis for EU institutions.