Democratic, yet representative? Selecting MPs in a multilevel polity

MPs play an essential role in the quality of representation in democracies. However, there is little evidence available on how political parties select them and the impact of that process on MPs' profiles. This chapter analyses two original surveys conducted in 2018 on samples of Spanish national, regional and local MPs, to respond to a number of key questions. Given their different political relevance: are parties more exclusive (less internally democratic) in how they select their representatives when this selection is for the national parliament than when it is for local councils or regional chambers? Do these mechanisms of selection of representation generate distinct MP social profiles? In this chapter we show that primaries generate an improvement in the descriptive representation of the population's younger and less educated groups. However, this inclusive method of selection produces unbalanced levels of gender representation, especially for women with family responsibilities. Interestingly, these differences fade at local level.