The Personalization of Electoral Rules: How Shifting Influence From Selectors to Voters Affects Party Unity

Abstract

How does making electoral systems more candidate-centered affect party unity? Using a principal-agent perspective, this study makes three contributions to the literature on this topic. Conceptually, it suggests thinking about the incentives due to personalization as arising from a shift in electoral impact from party selectors to voters. Theoretically, it incorporates this notion into a spatial model of parliamentary voting that also considers principals’ monitoring capacities. From the resulting framework follows a rich set of observable implications, notably that candidate-centered electoral systems facilitate rather than undermine collective action within parliamentary parties under certain conditions. Empirically, this study then analyzes the 2010 reform of Sweden’s flexible-list proportional representation system, which changed the preference vote threshold. As expected, I find that when extreme (district-based) selectors disagree with the moderate bills supported by the party group leadership, personalized rules incentivize politicians to support these policies and vote in unison.

Mavericks or Loyalists? Popular Ballot Jumpers and Party Discipline in the Flexible-List PR Context

“…Recent research offers some crucial evidence in support of this expectation (Buisseret and Prato 2020;Carroll and Nalepa 2021;Folke and Rickne 2020;Däubler 2021). Put et al (2019), for instance, show that while there indeed is a robust, positive correlation between preference-vote tallies and candidates' subsequent ballot placement, popular candidates are seldom promoted from hopeless to safe ballot spots by political parties.…”