According to Webb et alt. (2011) one of the consequences of the “presidentialization” of parliamentarian politics has been the reduction of salience of potential leaders’ internal party career for getting their nomination as candidates for chief executive offices, what affects their political survival as well. This suggestion fits nicely with Katz and Mair’s thesis (2002) about the current decline of parties’ “central office”. However, other studies (Van Biezen 2000) suggest this may not be the case in New Democracies. Still many of these claims have not been empirically tested. Here we focus on the Spanish presidentialized regional governments, and use a new database of party’s candidates built by the author. We thus analyze to what extent a fundamental institutional resource can explain political leaders’ chances of reselection as candidates (an indispensable condition of their office-holding survival).
