Electoral Institutions and Distributive Policies in Parliamentary Systems: An Application to State Aid Measures in EU Countries

Franchino, Fabio; Mainenti, Marco

doi:10.1080/01402382.2012.757081

Cited by 22 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our interest is linked to the broader research question about the actual effectiveness of personal vote‐seeking behavior. Earlier work has shown that intraparty competition is the driving force behind personal vote‐seeking behavior (Carey and Shugart ; Crisp et al ; Franchino and Mainenti ). This literature, however, almost exclusively looks at the link between electoral incentives and the occurrence of personal vote‐seeking behavior but ignores the question of whether or not such behavior works.…”

Section: Personal Vote‐seeking: Incentives Behavior Payoffsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Personal Vote‐Seeking Behavior Effective?

Däubler

Bräuninger

Brunner

2016

Legislative Studies Qtrly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Does representatives' legislative activity have any effect on their electoral performance? A broad theoretical literature suggests so, but real‐world evidence is scarce as empirically, personal and party votes are hard to separate. In this article, we examine whether bill initiation actually helps MPs to attract preference votes under flexible list electoral systems. In these systems, voters can accept the party‐provided rank order or vote for specific candidates, which allows a clear distinction between personal and party votes. The empirical analysis uses data on bill initiation by Belgian MPs in the period 2003–2007 to explain their personal vote in the 2007 elections. We find that particularly single‐authored proposals initiated shortly before the upcoming elections are associated with a larger personal vote.

show abstract

Section: Personal Vote‐seeking: Incentives Behavior Payoffsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Personal Vote‐Seeking Behavior Effective?

Däubler

Bräuninger

Brunner

2016

Legislative Studies Qtrly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Previous research has shown that ballot structure affects incentives for politicians to compete within parties on the basis of personalized campaigning, constituency work and particularistic spending (e.g. Bowler and Farrell 2011;Carey and Shugart 1995;Crisp et al 2004;Franchino and Mainenti 2013). Hix (2004), in contrast, has examined the role of electoral systems in shaping the loyalty of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to national delegations as opposed to European party groups in parliamentary votes (see also Meserve et al 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ballot structure, list flexibility and policy representation

Däubler

Hix

2017

Journal of European Public Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is a growing body of research on the impact of the electoral system "ballot structure" on the behaviour of politicians. We offer a clear, ordinal, and rules-based three-way coding (closed, flexible, open) of the electoral systems used in European Parliament elections, taking into account both the ballot type and the intra-party seat-allocation rules. For the notoriously difficult group of flexible list-systems, we show how these operated in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections, and introduce an additional behavioural distinction between "weakly flexible" and "strongly flexible" subtypes at the party-list-level. We then illustrate how the type of ballot used in an election can influence individual policy representation by looking at the vote-splits between MEPs in the European People's Party in a vote on tackling homophobia.

show abstract

“…Other studies that have investigated the impact of these electoral institutions on spending, such as those of Hallerberg and Marier (2004) and Rickard (2012b), do not subject Carey and Shugart’s expectations to testing. Closer to our interest, Franchino and Mainenti (2013) found that EU governments spend less on state aid when high district magnitude is associated with ballot control, party-based voting and pooling. In these circumstances, fewer measures are also adopted.…”

Section: Geographically Targeted Measures Electoral Systems and Compmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…Third, this procedure has been consolidated over the past few decades (Cini and McGowan 2008, 175; Aydin and Thomas 2012, 533–537; Kassim and Lyons 2013, 8–9). Data on EU state aid are now comprehensive in terms of coverage of transactions and economic sectors and are highly comparable across countries as they fall under common EU legal criteria (Franchino and Mainenti 2013).…”

Section: Data and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is growing evidence that electoral institutions systematically shape the incentives of politicians to provide distributive policies (e.g. Persson and Tabellini 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004; Milesi-Ferretti et al 2002; Hallerberg and Marier 2004; McGillivray 2004; Cao et al 2007; Edwards and Thames 2007; Chang 2008; Zahariadis 2010; Rickard 2012a, 2012b; Franchino and Mainenti 2013; see also Carey and Hix 2013). In this article, we argue that these institutions also influence the propensity to comply with international laws.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The electoral foundations to noncompliance: addressing the puzzle of unlawful state aid in the European Union

Franchino¹,

Mainenti²

2015

J. Pub. Pol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Electoral institutions shape the incentives of governments to rely on distributive measures and to comply with international obligations because of the misalignment they may engender between the collective objectives of a government party and the individual objectives of its members in the legislature. We use this argument to explain the puzzle of unlawful state aid measures in the European Union (EU). Existing theories of EU compliance and implementation offer no convincing explanation to their persistence and patterns. Using data from 2000 to 2012, we find that an increase of district magnitude improves compliance. However, compliance decreases with higher magnitude where either party leaders have no control over the ballot rank or other electoral rules strengthen the incentives to search for a personal vote. We also provide evidence for the effects of electoral reforms on compliance. These results have implications for the broader literature on compliance with international regimes.

show abstract

Electoral Institutions and Distributive Policies in Parliamentary Systems: An Application to State Aid Measures in EU Countries

Cited by 22 publications

References 34 publications

Is Personal Vote‐Seeking Behavior Effective?

Is Personal Vote‐Seeking Behavior Effective?

Ballot structure, list flexibility and policy representation

The electoral foundations to noncompliance: addressing the puzzle of unlawful state aid in the European Union

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About