Candidate recruitment and former rebel parties. (July 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ishiyama, John; Marshall, Michael
• Is Part Of: Party politics. Volume 21:Number 4(2015:Jul.)
• Page Start: 591
• Page End: 602
• Publication Date: 2015-07
• Subjects: Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) -- post-civil-war parties -- rebel parties; Political parties -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; 324.2
• DOI: 10.1177/1354068813487125
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1354-0688

Abstract

What kinds of candidates do former rebel groups that transform into political parties recruit to their electoral banner after a civil war? Although there has been a growing literature on the transformation of rebel groups into political parties, there is remarkably little literature on the candidates they recruit to run in elections. Using a unique dataset that codes individual level candidate characteristics, we examine the kinds of candidates that a former rebel group, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), recruited to run in the single-member plurality districts in the first Constituent Assembly Election in 2008 after the end of the Nepalese civil war. In particular, we examine two key questions: Who did the CPN(M) recruit to run under the banner of the party? Where did they nominate different kinds of candidates? The results suggest that the Maoists recruited candidates based on characteristics of the districts, not unlike what would be expected of most parties. Highly placed party officials were nominated in districts that were relatively 'safe', whereas the party nominated candidates that were non-party elites who had been recruited after the end of the civil war in districts that were 'competitive'.