Competing on Good Politicians

Is electoral competition good for political selection? To address this issue, we introduce a theoretical model in which ideological parties select high-valence (experts) and low-valence (party loyalists) candidates and allocate them into the electoral districts. Voters care about a national policy—corresponding to the party ideology—and the valence of the candidate in their district. High-valence candidates are more costly for the parties to recruit. We show that parties compete by selecting good politicians and by allocating them to the most contestable districts. Empirical evidence on Italian members of parliament confirms this prediction. We find that politicians with higher ex-ante quality—as measured by years of schooling, previous market income, and local government experience—are more likely to run in a contestable district. Indeed, despite being different on average, the characteristics of politicians belonging to opposite political coalitions converge to high-quality levels in close electoral races. Furthermore, politicians elected in contestable districts make fewer absences in parliament; this is shown to be driven more by a selection effect than by reelection incentives.