Democratization, Candidate Selection, and Left Parties in Latin America.

Comparative analyses of candidate selection are few and far between because of the high costs associated with cross-national intra-party data collection, on one hand, and the complicated politics behind candidate selection and political recruitment. This paper represents an initial inquiry into how the institutions of political life may shape the character of party selection rules. By shifting to a comparative and case-based examination of left parties' selection practices, I hope to identify some systematic patterns to those practices. As the paper demonstrates, the associations between institutional environment and rule choice are inconsistent at best. This paper thus may raise more questions than it answers about where rules come from and what underlying political realities they reflect. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]