Voters’ Knowledge of Their Representatives: The Direct and Conditioned Effects of Parliamentary Work

Abstract

This article examines factors that influence voters’ knowledge of their representatives, a key element in securing the responsiveness and accountability of parliamentarians. We argue that the parliamentary work of MPs (Members of Parliament) benefits incumbents through increased name recall, and that this relationship is conditional on: the incumbents’ candidacy; the voters’ political competence; and their ideological proximity with their representatives. Combining data on French MPs’ activities with a 2007 CSES post‐election survey enables us to test our hypotheses, while controlling for confounding factors. The empirical analysis demonstrates that some parliamentary activities increase the voters’ capacity to recall the name of their MPs. The latter are therefore incentivised to be responsive to and serve their constituents. However, we also find that voters’ political competence and ideological proximity with their MP alter the relationship between parliamentary work and name recall. This may potentially introduce some biases in the democratic process of accountability.

Productivity-based retrospective voting: Legislative productivity and voting in the 2019 European Parliament elections

“…The strategic allocation of rapporteurships and/or their more obscure status might offer a tentative explanation for this null finding. Other work has found some ambivalent effects of rapporteurships on voting behaviour (François and Navarro 2020).…”

“…Higher attendance levels are also prized by voters (Däubler et al, 2018). There is further evidence that information on legislative productivity does get out, since knowledge of parliamentarians increase with legislative productivity (François and Navarro, 2020). The flourishing of web pages ranking politicians according to their productivity in the legislature is a case in point (Edwards et al, 2015).…”

Personalised Representation in a Weak and Party-Controlled Legislature: Policy Responsiveness in the French Parliament

“…Hence, the work in parliament ought to have only a limited impact on an MP's notoriety, inciting him or her to invest time and resources in his or her district in order to cultivate the personal vote required for his or her re-election (Brouard et al, 2013;Brouard and Kerrouche, 2014). This picture has been, however, recently challenged (François and Navarro, 2020), showing that work in parliament does influence an MP's name recognition. France is thus a good case for assessing how MPs take into consideration the demands of their constituents in weak and party-centred legislatures.…”

“…Comparative literature has shown that the incentives emanating from the electoral system can even be greater than in many proportional systems (Pilet et al, 2012). The recent literature on the electoral incentives thus challenges the conception of the Assemblé Nationale as a least likely case for district-oriented responsiveness and decentralised personalisation (François and Navarro, 2020). This leads to a paradoxical situation.…”

“…The research on district work shows that MPs advertise their parliamentary activities mainly when they are related to a local issue (Costa and Poyet, 2016;Poyet and Siefken, 2018). In addition, some of the single activities having a significantly positive impact on MPs' name recognition are the ones identified by the comparative literature as having the highest likelihood of being used for the purpose of policy responsiveness, namely written questions and private member's bills (François and Navarro, 2020). There are thus good reasons to argue about an electoral connection or, at least, the use of parliamentary tools for cultivating a personal vote.…”