Presidential Recruitment: Selection of Presidential Candidates in Africa, Asia, and Latin America

This article explores the selection of presidential candidates in relation to the degree of openness and inclusiveness of candidacy and selectorates in Latin America, Africa and Asia. How candidates are selected is expected to affect their legitimacy as candidates: candidates nominated in systems with little restrictions on candidacy and candidates selected in open competition with other candidates were hypothesised to be more representative and legitimate than others. The analysis of data from Latin America, Africa and Asia reveals that presidential candidate selection has become more inclusive during the past thirty years in all three regions under study. The article attempts to identify the main reasons why so-called ‘democratization’ of presidential candidate selection is a trend in Third Wave democracies. It concludes that an institutionalised party system, a ban on presidential re-election and regional factors, are among the most important variables in explaining the choice of presidential candidate selectio