The Face of the Party: Party Leadership Selection, and the Role of Family and Faith

Political parties in developing country democracies are often characterized by undemocratic internal party practices, including for selecting party organizational leaders. Scholars identify institutional, party-level, and demographic factors as driving such practices. In this paper, we contribute to this research by considering the effect of two personal factors—personal religiosity and membership in a political family. Politicians act in accordance with personal values and strategic incentives. We argue religiosity influences both in ways that undermine support for democratic intra-party selection practices. We hypothesize that membership in a political family increases the undemocratic effects of high religiosity because it strengthens the capacity of highly religious dynasts to access and mobilize politically through religious and family networks. This strengthens their strategic independence from their party, leading them to support undemocratic leadership selection practices. We test this prediction for the case of Turkey using original data from a 2017 survey of 200 Turkish politicians. We find that religiosity is only associated with reduced support for democratic leadership selection practices among politicians who are members of political families. This result is robust to the inclusion of party-specific effects, religious party membership, and individual characteristics including support for political Islam.

Vineeta Yadav et al, The Face of the Party: Party Leadership Selection, and the Role of Family and Faith, Political Research Quarterly (75, 2) pp. 379-393. Copyright © 2021. DOI: 10.1177/10659129211011538. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission.

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Work Title The Face of the Party: Party Leadership Selection, and the Role of Family and Faith
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Vineeta Yadav
  2. Amanda Fidalgo
Keyword
  1. intra-party democracy
  2. elite religiosity
  3. political dynasty
  4. Turkey
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Political Research Quarterly
Publication Date May 4, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211011538
Deposited September 02, 2024

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Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added PRQ_RelDyns_Yadav_Fidalgo.pdf
  • Added SupplementalAppendixRelDyn.pdf
  • Added Creator Vineeta Yadav
  • Added Creator Amanda Fidalgo
  • Published
  • Updated
  • Updated Keyword, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • intra-party democracy, elite religiosity, political dynasty, Turkey
    Publication Date
    • 2021-01-01
    • 2021-05-04