Autonomy of the Party System: Recruitment Into the National Legislature

Abstract

The first indicator of Autonomy as a dimension of political institutionalization is the recruitment pattern of political leaders into a national legislative body. In a country with a highly institutionalized party system, political parties play the central role in legislative recruitment. The growing body of literature on political recruitment in advanced democracies takes the statement that “parties are the principal ‘gate-keepers’ in the process of candidate selection” as an axiom requiring no further proof. In fact, there seems to be no major work in the area of recruitment studies challenging this thesis. “Outside the United States, where no primary elections are held, parties have complete control over eligibility and selection,” argues Moshe Czudnowski (1975, 225). Even in the United States “parties monopolize national elections, and independents are rarely elected” (Erickson, 1997, 34). The great majority of members of congress previously held party positions at the national, state, or local level (Czudnowski, 1975, 224). In their analysis of Western European governments, Gallagher, Laver, and Mair confirm that both selectors and candidates are well aware that “outside the party there is no … political career prospect” since “European parties keep candidate selection firmly under their own control” (Gallagher et al., 1995, 258, 254). The centrality of parties is an important feature of democratic nations in other parts of the world: “In common with other advanced industrial democracies with strong party systems, [in Australia] legislative recruitment depends on a party label; without it, election to the federal parliament is all but impossible” (McAllister, 1997, 17).¹