National political parties are deemed to hold sway over their MEPs. Such influence has been increasingly attributed to their power in the selection processes, whereby parties can reward or punish outgoing parliamentarians. Yet, the patterns underlying this mechanism remain unclear. Actual processes of selection have never been thoroughly empirically explored, not least due to their complexity and opacity. This paper takes on to examine how national parties draw their lists for European elections. The new dataset records the candidate selection methods used in 191parties of the 28member states ahead of the 2014European elections. Formal rules are collected through an expert questionnaire. Informal practices prevailing are accounted for through a MEP survey and interviews. In order to classify the processes thus unveiled, the paper relies on an analytical framework distinguishing the eligibility criteria, the selectorate and the decentralisation dimensions of the selection. Findings allow in particular for cross-party and cross-national comparisons.
