Organizational cohesion and unequal political selection: evidence from Tunisia's secular-Islamist competition

Abstract

Political selection patterns can diverge across party traditions and social cleavages within the same country. This article examines unequal political selection between Tunisia’s main Islamist and secular parties during the foundational 2018 local elections and evaluates whether disparities in candidate quality help explain electoral outcomes. Pairing an original candidate survey with a contemporaneous household survey in a case-control design, it finds that the secular party engaged in relatively negative selection: although secular citizens were more educated on average, the secular party fielded less competent candidates than its Islamist rival. Drawing on interviews and a conjoint experiment with party officials, the analysis shows that weak organizational cohesion within the secular party produced a fragmented selection process in which elites prioritized factional loyalty and status quo over competence and integrity. The findings highlight the central role of intraparty organization in shaping who enters politics and offer broader insights into secular–religious party competition in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond.