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Selecting Presidential Candidates in European Semi-presidential Democracies

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Democratizing Candidate Selection

Abstract

This chapter surveys presidential candidate selection procedures in European semi-presidential democracies. It first presents the legal candidacy requirements and information on presidential candidates in Europe’s 17 semi-presidential democracies. It then provides a detailed analysis of party processes in five countries (France, Romania, Poland, Portugal, and Ireland) in order to evaluate whether the 2008 economic crisis triggered more participatory forms of candidate selection. We find that party elites maintain a great degree of control over the selection of their presidential candidates. Moreover, there is little evidence that the European economic crisis has, in any systematic way, triggered more participatory candidate selection procedures.

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Correspondence to Cristina Bucur .

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Bucur, C., Field, B.N. (2018). Selecting Presidential Candidates in European Semi-presidential Democracies. In: Cordero, G., Coller, X. (eds) Democratizing Candidate Selection. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76550-1_3

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