Constituency Service Research Articles

Parliamentarians and the covid-19 pandemic: insights from an executive-dominated, constituency-oriented legislature

ABSTRACT Because parliaments are the cornerstone of representative democracy, we know a significant amount about how they operate in ordinary times. Covid-19 presented extraordinary challenges to the functioning and operation of national parliaments. This article explores the impact of Covid-19 on parliament from the point of view of its members. We report results from a survey of Irish parliamentarians, exploring members’ perceptions of their engagement in law-making, government oversight, and constituency representation. The results suggest an interesting paradox: Parliamentarians felt less able to perform their legislative and oversight functions but – with the aid of new technologies – felt better able to perform their representative and constituency roles. The wider implication is that Covid-19 intensified existing patterns of executive legislative relation: in the Irish case at least, the (electoral) incentives to undertake constituency work motivated continued constituency service, while the weakness of parliamentary oversight of the executive intensified.

The Partisan Vote: Shared Partisanship and Constituent Service in the U.S. Congress

The theory of the “personal vote” assumes that constituent service, or the process by which members of Congress help their constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy, is a component of representation that transcends partisanship. However, recent research suggests that affective polarization and negative partisanship may discourage constituents from reaching out to ask for help from cross-partisan legislators. Using a conjoint experiment, I show that shared partisanship has a strong effect on constituents’ decisions about which of their legislators to contact for assistance. However, positive in-party affect is unrelated to these preferences, suggesting that negative partisanship is responsible for this result. Gender and seniority also matter for constituents’ preferences even when accounting for shared partisanship. The results suggest that legislators’ ability to build a “personal vote” by performing constituent service may be weakened in an era of strong partisanship.

The security of politicians: towards a research agenda

Abstract Members of Parliament (MPs) are increasingly experimenting with a variety of measures to protect their personal security. This trend is particularly evident at the local level, with MPs adjusting their constituency service on security grounds in ways that likely affect how they interact with constituents. Despite potentially significant representative implications, these enhanced security measures have yet to be problematized in detail. This article calls for a new research agenda to address this deficit. Exploring some of the anecdotal evidence, we highlight potential trade-offs arising from a more securitized constituency service experience, noting, in particular, costs pertaining to (1) accessibility, (2) symbolism, and (3) resources. We conclude by sketching out the broad parameters of a multi-method, multi-level, and multi-disciplinary research agenda on the security of politicians.

What do voters want from their legislators? evidence from ghana

Abstract Legislators make trade-offs when allocating their time and resources to their multiple tasks of representation, legislation, executive oversight, and constituency service. Furthermore, they must decide how much effort to exert or the balance to strike when undertaking a specific function. Existing research provides limited insights into citizens’ preferences over these officeholder multifaceted decisions in sub-Saharan Africa. I offer novel insights into citizens’ preferences using a conjoint survey experiment of Ghanaians to address this knowledge gap. My findings are threefold. First, I find that citizens put more ‘weight’ on constituency-related activities than parliamentary work. Second, in the constituency, citizens value political representation activities more than constituency services. Third, they weigh public-good-oriented constituency services higher than private ones. The research contributes to our understanding of citizen–legislator accountability relationships in sub-Saharan Africa.

Understanding service ecosystem dynamics: a typology

PurposeThe service environment is becoming increasingly turbulent, leading to calls for a systemic understanding of it as a set of dynamic service ecosystems. This paper advances this understanding by developing a typology of service ecosystem dynamics that explains the varying interplay between change and stability within the service environment through distinct behavioral patterns exhibited by service ecosystems over time.Design/methodology/approachThis study builds upon a systematic literature review of service ecosystems literature and uses system dynamics as a method theory to abductively analyze extant literature and develop a typology of service ecosystem dynamics.FindingsThe paper identifies three types of service ecosystem dynamics—behavioral patterns of service ecosystems—and explains how they unfold through self-adjustment processes and changes within different systemic leverage points. The typology of service ecosystem dynamics consists of (1) reproduction (i.e. stable behavioral pattern), (2) reconfiguration (i.e. unstable behavioral pattern) and (3) transition (i.e. disrupting, shifting behavioral pattern).Practical implicationsThe typology enables practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of their service environment by discerning the behavioral patterns exhibited by the constituent service ecosystems. This, in turn, supports them in devising more effective strategies for navigating through it.Originality/valueThe paper provides a precise definition of service ecosystem dynamics and shows how the identified three types of dynamics can be used as a lens to empirically examine change and stability in the service environment. It also offers a set of research directions for tackling service research challenges.

Do Islamist Parties Reach More Women? Party Institutionalization and Constituency Service in Algeria

ABSTRACT Why do Islamist parties succeed electorally? Some scholars posit that Islamists’ success stems from their ability to institutionalize constituent relations and serve marginalized citizens. I test this hypothesis using an original survey of 782 Algerian citizens focusing on constituency service interactions with legislators. I argue and show empirically that Islamist parties’ more institutionalized constituency service practices allow them to reach citizens outside of their existing networks and those from groups that are marginalized from patronage networks with the state (e.g. women) to a greater extent than non-Islamist parties. By offering evidence of Islamists’ responsiveness to citizens from diverse backgrounds, this study suggests that authoritarian states’ reliance on clientelism leaves them vulnerable to challenges by opposition movements that can mobilize around religion and serve as intermediaries for citizens.

Constituency Service and Valence Voting in Semi-Competitive Elections: Theory and Evidence of China

Constituency Service and Valence Voting in Semi-Competitive Elections: Theory and Evidence of China

Communication as a Cultural Development Tool for Driving Effective Provincial Constituent Services: A Case Study of Chimbu (Simbu) Province in Papua New Guinea

Utilizing a cross-sectional qualitative design, this study examined how the Chimbu provincial government systems in Papua New Guinea (PNG) employed communication strategies as cultural tools in the delivery of services to constituents in remote rural areas. Participants were asked to reflect on the effectiveness of governmental communication strategies in engaging local communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite weaknesses, the study finds that the PNG government employed a comprehensive communication strategy to control infections in communities. It provided concise messaging to ensure local communities adhered to Covid-19 protocols, such as hand washing, social distancing, masking, and vaccinating while collaborating with other agencies to enhance messaging. The study also demonstrates how both the government and opposition collaborated for public safety during the pandemic.

Spatial Distance and Representation in Closed PR List: Revisiting the U-Curve Argument

Abstract The authors are testing the patterns of geographical representation in single nationwide district closed-list PR systems, in the framework of an earlier study made by Latner and McGann (2005), who suggested that MPs mostly reside in central metropolitan areas, as well as in distant regions, to the detriment of descriptive representation of areas adjacent to the capital. In this way, spatial distance serves as an incentive for parties to nominate lists comprised mostly of candidates from metropolitan urban centres who can easily reach the mid-distance municipalities for campaigning and constituency service, but also of those candidates residing in peripheral regions in which there is some sort of political or ethno-cultural saliency, prompting the voters to prefer their local candidates over capital city politicians. Authors are offering a novel approach of measuring and comparing spatial distance to the data on representation of local administrative units and regional subdivisions of four countries (Montenegro, Netherlands, Serbia and Slovakia). While the findings indeed indicate overrepresentation of capital cities and underrepresentation of neighbouring areas, the representation of peripheral areas is not significantly pronounced and seemingly depends more on a contextual case-to-case basis than on a general pattern related to spatial distance producing political or ethno-cultural saliency.

Constituency Service and Representation: The Effects of Remoteness and Social Deprivation

ABSTRACT This note examines and tests the determinants of constituency service in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies. We argue that socio-demographic factors lead towards differences in the provision of constituency service. We use a new data set of meetings between legislators, constituents, and groups to provide evidence for two main hypotheses. First, Chilean deputies from more remote districts devote a higher proportion of their meetings to addressing local or personal issues from constituents (Centre-Periphery Hypothesis). Second, deputies from districts in worse socio-economic situations also provide relatively more constituency services of this type (Social Deprivation Hypothesis).

What Explains Voter Preferences in Transitional Tunisia? The Role of Particularistic Benefits

ABSTRACT What explains electoral support for Islamist parties? Existing literature assesses the role of programmatic appeals, in the form of religious ideology and economic programs, but lacks the data needed to test the role of particularistic benefits in shaping voter choice. Drawing on an original survey of 1,202 Tunisians conducted in 2012, I test the role of programmatic and particularistic benefits in explaining voter choice in Tunisia’s 2011 Constituent Assembly and 2014 parliamentary elections. I argue that, due to its greater party organizational capacity, Ennahda provided more constituency service than other parties and was more successful in attracting new supporters by 2012 as a result. In 2011, Ennahda voters were more religious and economically marginalized than non-Islamist voters. Yet by 2012, Ennahda developed a voter base drawn both from those who are ideologically committed to its religious program as well as those who requested constituency service from an Ennahda member. By showing that programmatic and particularistic appeals explain voter support for Islamist parties, this research extends the literature on Islam and politics and illustrates the importance of party capacity for developing a voter base in transitional contexts.

The Presence of Political Parasocial Interaction in the Websites of U.S. Senators

The growing trend of parasocial activity in the digital age raises the question of its role in the relationship between website interface and website user, with specific regard to parasocial activity in politics and the implications of the former. To address this gap, I conducted a QUAL-QUAN content analysis on the campaign websites of each member of the U.S. Senate to identify trends in website interface design that may foster parasocial interaction. Consequently, I validated the findings of the content analysis through a qualitative comparative analysis that utilized accredited sources as a model for what constitutes parasocial interaction. My results were conclusive, with certain website components (call-to-action, social media content, biographical content, newsletter forms, and constituent services) appearing with significant frequency across all campaign websites. When compared with the models of the accredited sources, they revealed that the placement and content of these website components can be purposed to foster parasocial interaction between website interface and website user. However, the results may have been influenced by political bias or the errors of manual content analysis of various website components at a large scale. On a broader scope, this paper hopes to draw attention to a less commonly analyzed form of media, the website, in the field of research on parasocial activity. Furthermore, it may serve as a basis for reflection on the possible effects of the presence of political parasocial interaction on websites on the website user, and the United States’ political processes in an increasingly digital era.

Blurred lines between electoral and parliamentary representation: The use of constituency staff among Members of the European Parliament

Parliamentarians receive public funding to employ local staff in the constituency. Local staff help members of parliament to execute their representative duties, but can also become an electoral asset. Drawing on theories of personal vote-seeking we study local staff as an example of constituency service. Modelling within-individual changes in local staff size among 1174 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), we find that the number of local staff increases before both European and national elections, and more so in candidate-centred than party-centred systems. Despite a single European Parliament (EP) staff system, EU citizens are represented differently depending on where they elect their members and the electoral system that applies. Attempts to mend the EU’s democratic deficit by strengthening MEPs’ contacts with citizens through local staff potentially means that European public money is used to fund EP incumbents’ electoral campaigns. We discuss the implications of our findings for the democratic functioning of the European multi-level system.

Heavy Lifting: Emotional Labor and Election Administration

The American democratic system depends on the regular execution of free and fair elections, delivered by front-line public workers. Local election officials (LEOs), their staff, and temporary election workers are tasked with providing excellent constituent service and expertise with a high degree of professionalism. Following the 2020 U.S. presidential contest, the very institution of elections has been under attack. This exploratory study investigates the impact of emotional labor on election workers in this atmosphere. The authors uncover the presence and nuances of emotional labor in election administration and raise questions about what this means for the future of election administration.

Take (Her) to the Limit: Term Limits do Not Diminish Women's Overperformance in Legislative Office

Women in political office outperform men in legislative activity and constituent services. Scholars have identified two potential explanations for this overperformance: women are higher quality candidates when they run for office and women face elevated voter expectations to win elections. We use the presence of term limits to examine how these two justifications for women's overperformance produce downstream effects. While designed to strike a blow to entrenched systems of power, term limits reduce the time that legislators spend on constituent service and legislative output, including bill sponsorship, votes, and committee work. We use the effects of term limits as a tool for understanding the two paths to women's overperformance, using data on over 6000 legislators serving in term‐limited states. We find more evidence for the quality candidate hypothesis than the voter expectations hypothesis. While term limits degrade men's performance in office, women officeholders continue to overperform even under this institutional constraint. Our findings that women's overperformance is more likely due to their higher quality have implications for efforts to increase the representativeness of political bodies, the quality of representation in state legislatures, and the gendered consequences of institutional reforms.

Distributive politics as behavioral localism: Evidence from a vignette experiment in Hungary

Recent literature on friends-and-neighbors voting focused on explaining citizens’ motives behind supporting local candidates; the cue-based account suggests that local ties signal accountability, constituency service orientation, and policy representation. Localism was also posited to serve as a cue for distributive politics, but assumptions of voters making inferences about receiving tangible benefits once a politician from their own stock is elected were not corroborated empirically. Drawing on a survey experiment ( N = 2000) fielded in Hungary, the paper provides a test of pork barrel politics and clientelism serving as manifestations of behavioral localism; that is, if voters formulate expectations of politicians engaging in aforementioned practices based on their local roots. Respondents in treatment and control group were shown the same candidate profile, fictive politicians differing only in their local roots. Results demonstrate that respondents who were told that the candidate was born and living in their hometown were more likely to believe that the politician will “bring home the bacon” as opposed to those confronted with a randomly selected Hungarian settlement as the candidate’s birthplace and residence. Findings refine our understanding of friends-and-neighbors voting, as well as voters’ expectations about likely non-programmatic behavior of elected candidates.

Geographic Legislative Constituencies: A Defense

Many democracies use geographic constituencies to elect some or all of their legislators. Furthermore, many people regard this as desirable in a noncomparative sense, thinking that local constituencies are not necessarily superior to other schemes but are nevertheless attractive when considered on their own merits. Yet, this position of noncomparative constituency localism is now under philosophical pressure as local constituencies have recently attracted severe criticism. This article examines how damaging this recent criticism is, and argues that within limits, noncomparative constituency localism remains philosophically tenable despite the criticisms. The article shows that noncomparative constituency localism is compelling in the first place because geographic constituencies foster partisan voter mobilisation, and practices of constituency service help to sustain deliberation among constituents and within the legislature and promote the realisation of equal opportunity for political influence. The article further argues that it is unwarranted to criticise geographic constituencies for being biased against geographically dispersed voter groups, for causing vote-seat disproportionality, and for being vulnerable to gerrymandering. The article also discusses the criticisms that local constituencies may pose risks of inefficiency and injustice in resource allocation decisions, may lead legislators to neglect the common good, and may limit citizens’ control over the political agenda. Whilst conceding that these objections may be valid, the article argues that they do not outweigh the diverse and normatively weighty considerations speaking in favour of noncomparative constituency localism. Finally, the article’s analysis is defended against several variants of the charge that it exaggerates the benefits of geographic constituencies.

Making a Case for Political Technical Communication (Pxtc)

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that the accelerated adoption of political technology during the COVID-19 pandemic evinces exigency for a rhetorically grounded framework to teach, research, and practice political technical communication (PxTC) as a sub-discipline. As a starting point, I use a rhetorical genre studies approach to identify political social actions that separate political communication technologies into four distinct genres: election, electioneering, constituent services, and punditry.

Party leadership, electoral reform, and mandate-divide

AbstractPrevious studies had no consensus on whether a ‘mandate-divide’ exists between district and party-list legislators under the mixed-member system. I argued that previous studies ignored the role of the party. This article aims to explore the legislative consequences of the 2005 electoral reform and the role of parties in Taiwan. I analyzed the roll-call votes, considering abstention and absence as potential defection, along with interviews. The data cover from the fifth to eighth Legislative Yuan, two periods each before and after the electoral reform. The findings show that district legislators tended to defect from the party line than list proportional representation (PR) members in pre- and post-reform periods. However, district legislators only tended to be absent from the voting than list PR members after the electoral reform. Mandate-divide was present throughout the period, but differences were more salient before the reform. Besides, evidence stressing the influence of parties was revealed in the interviews. Party leaders enforce various punishments to enforce party discipline. The role of party became more important after the electoral reform. District legislators have higher absence rate after the electoral reform because they need to engage more in constituency service or avoid expressing their position on controversial issues. The ruling party tends to sanction the absence when they have majority in parliament.

Policymaking, Constituency Service, and the Pandemic: How Working Remotely Transformed U.S. State Legislators’ Representative Roles

ABSTRACT We surveyed U.S. legislators in 36 states in order to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic – and the related shift to remote work – affected legislators’ representative roles. Our results offer suggestive evidence that remote work during the pandemic diminished policymaking activities while increasing constituency service. Respondents reported decreased ability to move projects forward in the legislature and in their districts, and increased workloads overall. Nonetheless, legislators seem committed to their roles as elected representatives.