More and more, elections around the world seem to be won or lost on the basis of the candidates’ personal qualities rather than their policies. Despite its prevalence in new and established democracies alike, we still know very little about what explains such candidate-centered voting. This study moves our understanding of this issue by examining variation in candidate-centered voting across individuals and electoral contexts in recent presidential elections in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. I argue that candidate-centered voting is largely an information problem. At the individual level, I focus on the conditioning role of political sophistication, arguing that voters with higher levels of political sophistication engage in less candidate-centered voting due their increased capacity to manage the more cognitively demanding types of information related to policy and performance. Moving beyond the individual level, I consider how candidate-centered voting may vary across electoral contexts as well. In particular, I consider how the institutionalization and structure of political competition shape the cognitive demands on voters, making it more or less difficult for voters to evaluate candidates on bases other than their personalities. To test these arguments, I estimate models of voters’ electoral utilities and vote choices using electoral survey data from the U.S. (2008), Brazil (2002), and Mexico (2000 and 2006). Overall, the empirical analysis supports my individual-level argument regarding political sophistication’s conditioning role. As political sophistication increases, the dominance of candidate considerations in voters’ electoral decisions tends to decrease. Likewise, comparisons in the level of candidate-centered voting across the elections under study suggest that certain aspects of the institutionalization and structure of political competition may help explain contextual variation in candidate-centered voting. / text

Au début du vingtième siècle, après deux décennies sans réforme électorale, le mode de scrutin devient un sujet de controverse. Cette étude se propose d’examiner les conditions du choix de la représentation proportionnelle par les membres de la Chambre des députés française ainsi que par d’autres militants. Au-delà de la rééligibilité législative, c’est à travers le changement du mode de scrutin (introduction du scrutin de liste et de la représentation proportionnelle) que le problème de la réélection apparaît sous la Troisième République. Les professeurs de droit constitutionnel, tant à Paris qu’en province, délaissent cette expertise malgré quelques entreprises militantes éparses. Leurs étudiants formulent alors un savoir académique vite enserré par les contraintes récurrentes des jurys de thèse. Nous cherchons à examiner pourquoi et comment le parlement s’est emparé de cette question. Si les conservateurs et les socialistes sont les plus zélés partisans de la représentation proportionnelle, on ne peut en rester au fait que les partis défendent des systèmes qui les favorisent le plus. Notre étude insiste sur la stabilité socio-biographique du recrutement parlementaire plutôt que sur les variations de majorité et donc d’intérêts. Il faut expliquer pourquoi et comment ce fut le débat parlementaire lui-même qui a pu aboutir à une réforme électorale. Le système mixte de 1919, entre proportionnelle et principe majoritaire, exprime cette tendance des députés à l’ « auto-critique » qui dessine in fine un « auto-portrait ». Progressivement, les circulaires ministérielles adressées aux préfets confondent ces problèmes en un seul mouvement qui tente de codifier l’organisation des candidatures qui pourrait être au fondement du renouvellement souhaité. Ce travail préfectoral retire aux seuls entrepreneurs électoraux le monopole de l’anticipation des résultats et en ménage une co-production administrative. Dans la production préfectorale, de nouvelles cartes des circonscriptions uninominales ont eu tendance à perpétuer le traditionnel « scrutin d’arrondissement ». Ces tentatives de réforme électorale spatiale ont également introduit une nouvelle échelle dans le déroulement des campagnes électorales. Cet élargissement de la capacité électorale a été rendu possible par une nouvelle représentation : la circonscription administrative du département a eu tendance à devenir le critère principal de la mobilisation électorale que ce soit pour la loi électorale de 1919 ou celle de 1927. / Early twentieth century, after two decades of indifference to electoral reform, the electoral system has become a controversial question. This study explores the factors that should been taken into consideration when members of the French Chamber of Deputies and some other activists have tried to choose “proportional representation”. Beyond its political and legislative dimensions, the problem of re-election of representatives in the Third Republic was influenced by manipulation of electoral rules – in particular the introduction of proportional and list voting. In Paris and in Province, professors desert this part of doctrine in spite of some militant activities. Students had produced their thesis under constraint because the boards of examiners were always the same. We seek to explain how and why Parliament becomes leader in this electoral reform. Conservatives and Socialists advocated more strongly the proportional representation. The problem is often stated on the level in which every political party prefers the electoral system that favors it. This study will underline the biographical and social effect of membership stability instead of change in partisan control of the legislature. We seek to explain why a parliamentary debate may lead to a change in the established electoral system. The mixed system of 1919, between proportional representation and majority principle, expresses the deputies’ trends to self-criticism which is also self- representation. Increasingly, ministerial letters of instruction to Prefects tend to conflate these elements into a single effort to codify the pre-selection of candidates who could form the base of the desired political renewal. In this way, the monopoly of expertise relating to anticipating and predicting electoral outcomes once held political entrepreneurs was replaced by co-management of elections by them and the Prefects. First, new maps for single-seat districts have tended to perpetuate the traditionnal “scrutin d’arrondissement”. These attemps of spatial electoral reform have introduced a new scale in electoral campaign. This enlargement of electoral capability was made possible with a new representation : the administrative district of “département” has tended to become the main criterion in electoral mobilization whatever one of the two different electoral rules in 1919 and 1927.

The racial composition of elected officials in the United States has significantly diversified in recent decades. Nevertheless, the proportion of candidates of color still fall far short of the underlying voter population, particularly as the minority demographic continues to grow at a rapid pace. To explain the source of racial disparity in government, scholars have long examined various political opportunity structures under which minority candidates arise, suggesting that whether candidates of color emerge or not is a strategic matter: minority candidates enter politics when they perceive high electoral viability, which they estimate using information such as the racial composition of a district and prior electoral success of co-ethnic candidates. However, absent from this scholarship is a comprehensive understanding of how minority individuals enter the emergence process in the first place and how the factors that advance them through the pipeline to power evolve over time. This dissertation investigates the process by which racial minorities decide to enter politics, examining the entire pipeline to power from developing an initial interest in running for office to officially becoming a candidate. First, I examine political ambition among the general American public, focusing on the racial differences in the development of political ambition and the factors uniquely influencing ordinary minority voters' entry decisions. Through an online survey on a sample of ordinary American voters, post-stratified to be representative of each racial population, I find that factors commonly used to predict political ambition, such as encouragement from personal or political sources, political efficacy, and community participation, operate differently between minority respondents and their white counterparts as well as across different racial groups. A conjoint experiment designed to examine entry decisions among ordinary minority voters both confirms existing theories and offers a new insight. I find that the perceived electoral viability is higher in electoral districts with larger share of co-ethnic populations, which aligns with conventional wisdom that minority population is often used to gauge the primary voter base among minority candidates. Furthermore, I find that among politically ambitious minority respondents, perceived electoral viability is higher when an incumbent shares the respondent's ethnicity. However, this effect is reduced when both the incumbent and the challenger share the same ethnicity, indicating that minority status is no longer a comparative electoral advantage. Second, in two field experiments embedded in real-world candidate recruitment efforts, I investigate the relative influence of intrinsic and extrinsic appeals on developing nascent interest in running for office. I find that intrinsic motivation to run, such as a desire to bring about social change, increases not only the immediate information-seeking behavior but also a longer-term commitment to candidacy, including applying to and attending a campaign training program. On the other hand, extrinsic appeals intended to increase the perceived likelihood of winning generate a significantly smaller effect on the immediate consideration of political candidacy while exerting a modest amount of influence on the longer-term commitment. Third, through a conjoint experiment on minority individuals situated at different stages of the emergence process, I study how the motivation to run evolves as they progress through their political journey. I find modest evidence of a shift in priority, from intrinsic to extrinsic, as minority individuals advance through the pipeline to power. Specifically, those with low levels of political ambition prefer to run in districts that have undergone a surge in violence targeted toward co-ethnic groups. In contrast, those with a high level of political ambition prefer districts with a substantial share of their co-ethnic population. Fourth, I examine how both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to run play out in real-world elections. Leveraging city-level exposure to police brutality, I find that the share of Black candidates running in municipal elections increases in cities after a fatal police shooting of a Black resident, suggesting that racial violence politicizes group consciousness among the Black community, which, in turn, influences their desire to enter politics. However, exploring individual cases of who those candidates are and when they appear on a ballot reveals that Black candidates emerge for both intrinsic and strategic reasons: political veterans emerge immediately after the incident as they take advantage of increased minority voter turnout and open seats, whereas political newcomers arise several years later as they require more resources. The empirical findings challenge the conventional wisdom that attributes minority under-representation to strategic calculations alone. Instead, they highlight the importance of examining both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations at each stage of the emergence process to fully understand why racial minorities run for office. In doing so, this research offers new insights into the nuanced dynamics of minority candidate emergence and, in turn, minority representation in the United States.

Although more women are successfully breaching the social, economic and political barriers that can prevent them from participating as electoral candidates, few women campaign for elected office. A dearth of female candidates may be understandable, given research demonstrating that women tend to avoid competition and competitive environments. Thus, elections – competitive by design – may attract fewer women than men. This thesis posits that the inherent competitiveness of electoral politics may deter women from campaigning for office. However, this work also forwards that competitive sport socialization during adolescence may prepare women for electoral competition. This paper examines the results of a self-administered survey mailed to 449 female candidates for municipal office. The survey investigated candidates’ adolescent experiences in competitive sports and attitudes relating to internal political efficacy. The results appear to demonstrate a strong correlation between competitive sport socialization and either positive or neutral evaluations of political competition. / x, 163 leaves ; 29 cm

This dissertation examines how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations? Do parties react differently at different levels of government? And finally, how do VNSAs capture political selection across at different levels of government? I argue that in regions where there is high "uncertainty," candidate selection becomes highly important for both party leaders and DTOs. Second, I argue that as violence increases and the number of DTOs also, criminal organizations, as risk-averse actors, will capture candidate selection. I posit that as violence increases, there is a greater likelihood that candidates will have criminal connections. To test my theory, I use the case of Mexico. Violence in Mexico and the presence of criminal organizations across the country has experienced a great deal of variation since the 1990s. In Chapter 2, I find that violence affects the gubernatorial candidate selection of the PRI, PAN and PRD. In high violence states, parties select gubernatorial candidates with long experience in subnational politics compared to other types of experiences. In chapter 3, however, I find that at the municipal level not all the parties respond equally to violence. As a municipality becomes more violent, the PRI and PAN party leaders are more likely to select mayoral candidates who were either state or federal deputies or candidates who were both. In contrast, the PRD is likely to recruit state deputies as a function of violence, but not national deputies or candidates who were deputies at both the state and federal level. Interestingly, I find that as the municipality becomes more violent, party leaders are less likely to recruit inexperienced candidates. This result suggests that parties do indeed respond to levels of violence. Finally, in Chapter 5, I show that criminal organizations capture candidate selection to reduce uncertainty. As utility-maximizing actors, DTOs seek to influence the selection of candidates as a function of violence. At the state level, criminal organizations are more likely to capture candidate selection in states with the presence of multiple DTOs. Party capture is more likely to happen in states where more than one DTO are fighting to control the turf. I show that criminal organizations at the state level equally capture all parties. This finding reveals that DTOs are diversifying their political connections. While under the dominant party regime, they colluded with PRI officials, under the new political Mexican democratic configuration, DTOs are establishing other political relationships with different political parties.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 1901, three German American candidates ran for the office of mayor in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The winner, Henry Berghoff, had emigrated from Germany as a teenager. This thesis examines the election discourse in the partisan press for signs of ethnic tension. The first chapter places Fort Wayne in historical context of German immigration and Indiana history. The second and third chapters investigate the editorial pages for evidence of ethnic tension. I also reference a few articles of an editorial nature outside of the editorial pages. The second chapter provides background information about the election and examines indications of the candidates’ ethnicity and references to the German language papers. The third chapter considers the editorial comment about Germany, the intertwining of ethnicity and the issues, and ethnic name-calling. In order to identify underlying bias for or against Germany and to better understand the context of the references to German ethnicity, the fourth chapter explores the portrayal of Germany in the Fort Wayne papers.