Electoral Rules and Legislators’ Personal Vote-seeking

Abstract

The policy positions parties choose are central to both attracting voters and forming coalition governments. How then should parties choose positions to best represent voters? Laver and Sergenti show that in an agent-based model with boundedly rational actors a decision rule (Aggregator) that takes the mean policy position of its supporters is the best rule to achieve high congruence between voter preferences and party positions. But this result only pertains to representation by the legislature, not representation by the government. To evaluate this we add a coalition formation procedure with boundedly rational parties to the Laver and Sergenti model of party competition. We also add two new decision rules that are sensitive to government formation outcomes rather than voter positions. We develop two simulations: a single-rule one in which parties with the same rule compete and an evolutionary simulation in which parties with different rules compete. In these simulations we analyze party behavior under a large number of different parameters that describe real-world variance in political parties' motives and party system characteristics. Our most important conclusion is that Aggregators also produce the best match between government policy and voter preferences. Moreover, even though citizens often frown upon politicians' interest in the prestige and rents that come with winning political office (office pay-offs), we find that citizens actually receive better representation by the government if politicians are motivated by these office pay-offs in contrast to politicians with ideological motivations (policy pay-offs). Finally, we show that while more parties are linked to better political representation, how parties choose policy positions affects political representation as well. Overall, we conclude that to understand variation in the quality of political representation scholars should look beyond electoral systems and take into account variation in party behavior as well.

Aiming higher: the consequences of progressive ambition among MPs in European parliaments

“…personal vote seeking based on the PartiRep data we use does not find such an effect but instead shows that district magnitude decreases personal vote seeking throughout (André et al, 2014). Based on this finding we do not pursue the interactive argument advanced by Carey and Shugart.…”

“…Single member districts give all MPs incentives to present themselves as individuals to build a personal vote. Larger districts, by contrast, make it more likely that individual MPs are perceived solely as members of their parties and thus have few incentives to present themselves as individuals (Cain et al, 1987;Zittel and Gschwend, 2008;André et al, 2014). 6 We focus on the binary distinction between single member and multi member districts because it provides clear theoretical expectations whereas one may doubt whether differences on higher levels, say between districts of 17 and 18 members, still affect personal vote seeking.…”

“…Second, electoral systems allowing voters to cast votes for individual candidates instead of parties give MPs incentives to pursue a personal campaign (Carey and Shugart, 1995;Karvonen, 2010;André et al, 2014). While such a campaign is mainly designed to win votes for the party in SMD systems, it entails an additional element of intra-party competition in proportional systems with open lists and the Single Transferable Vote system because in these constellations candidates can improve their electoral prospects by outscoring co-partisans (Martin, 2010).…”

“…André et al (2014) use the same variable to analyze the effects of electoral rules on personal voteseeking.14 The strongest correlation exists between single member districts and primaries with r = 0.38.The consequences of progressive ambition among European MPs 37 at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773915000260 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core.…”

Constituency Preferences and Assignment to Agriculture Committees

“…To attract personal votes that increase their chances of re-election, representatives in legislatures with personal vote systems should be more likely to seek assignment to committees with influence over policies affecting their constituents' economic interests than representatives elected in non-personal vote systems. In line with these arguments, previous research has found that representatives elected under electoral rules incentivizing personal vote seeking are more constituency oriented than those elected under rules that deemphasise individual candidates (André, Freire, and Papp, 2014;Stratmann and Baur, 2002;Heitshusen, Young, and Wood, 2005;André, Depauw, and Martin, 2016b). If representatives elected under electoral rules inhibiting identification of individual representatives are less constituency-oriented, they will be less likely to seek assignment to committees helping them to represent their constituents' preferences.…”