Do electoral district size and diversity affect legislative behaviour?

David M Willumsen,Christian Stecker,Klaus H Goetz

doi:10.1080/10361146.2018.1537390

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses how the size and socio-economic diversity of their electorate affect parliamentarians’ legislative behaviour. We study the Australian senate, which wields considerable legislative influence and is marked by large differences in the size and socio-economic makeup of the districts that senators represent. We demonstrate that as the size of their district increases, senators ask more questions and introduce more bills and amendments. By contrast, senators become less active as the diversity of their electoral district increases. The paper thus establishes that size and diversity of electorates have significant effects on legislative behaviour.

Highlights

A central task of elected politicians is representing the interests of their voters
We focus on the Australian senate, which offers an interesting variation in electoral district size2 and socio-economic diversity
An incidence rate ratio of 1.1 for an independent variable means that an increase of one in that variable leads to a 10% increase in the expected number of activities, while an incidence rate ratio of .8 means that an increase of one in that variable leads to a 20% decrease in the expected number of activities

Summary

Introduction

A central task of elected politicians is representing the interests of their voters. They may pursue this task out of a normative conviction or due to purely vote-seeking reasons and may need to balance it with partly competing necessities such as catering to special interest or local selectorates (Carey 2007). In any representative democracy, individual elected politicians will pursue their voters’ interest to some degree. While it may be feasible to cater to the views of a small number of voters with homogenous interests, more diverse and more numerous electorates complicate parliamentarians’ representational activities. We focus on the Australian senate, which offers an interesting variation in electoral district size and socio-economic diversity. We review the literature on the effects of district size and diversity on representation, outline our theoretical framework, and present our hypotheses.

Theory and hypotheses

Data and operationalisation

Results

Conclusion

This is true even in the case of most particularistic spending

Notes on contributors