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Candidate Nomination Procedures and Quality of Government

This paper explores empirically the relation between candidate nomination procedures and quality of government. Using a panel data of Latin American countries, I find robust evidence that the quality of government is higher during the mandate of primary-nominated presidents. I also document higher levels of popular trust in the president and different composition of government spending associated to the use of primaries. There is, however, no significant differences in other fiscal and monetary policies. The empirical strategy exploits within country variation and controls for relevant covariates at country and party level. Using an instrumental variable approach with measures of party electoral advantage as instruments produces similar results. The findings are consistent with primaries increasing pre-electoral incentives among candidates to improve policy design, and suggest that party institutions matter for governance.