Does Inclusiveness Affect Mps Parliamentary Behavior? Insights from Italian Legislative Primaries

Primary elections have become part of the participatory repertoire of several Italian parties. At political level, the main incentive leading political parties to promote primaries relates to the need to promote a new public image, reacting to antiparty feelings and disaffection with politics which is challenging their role as actor in the representation process. Hence, after 10 years, since their first entrance in Italian political system (2004-2014), several primary elections have been organized for the selection of elective offices at the local level (about 894 municipal primaries) as well as national level (for the selection of party leaders and candidates for the premiership). Furthermore, the contagion effect induced several parties – also different from and organizational and political culture – to converge in inclusive methods for the selection of their leaders or candidates. The rapid diffusion of these inclusive procedures makes Italy a stimulating case study beyond research on the level of participation, the sociopolitical profile of selectors involved, the organizational consequences of primaries.

Using Hazan and Rahat (2001; 2010) framework  we try to find out the impact of the use of primaries for selecting politicians on their legislative behaviour. Resorting to a large dataset including data about MPs elected in 2013 General Election (sociopolitical features, methods of selection, parliamentary activity) this paper will test several hypothesis linking candidate selection methods to party cohesiveness and responsiveness in legislative behavior.