Legislative Behavior Research Articles

Local roots and rebellion: Constituency connections and legislative behaviour of British MPs, 2010–21

Abstract This study explores the relationship between the local roots of Westminster MPs and parliamentary party discipline, a central principle of the British system of responsible party government. While recently the local base of MPs has attracted increasing academic attention, only little effort has been put into investigating how this might influence the political behaviour of parliamentarians. In order to do so, this study utilizes a comprehensive database on the local base of British parliamentarians, which includes data on all Westminster MPs from 2010 to 2021, supplemented with information on parliamentary dissent. Contrary to theoretical assumptions and existing international studies, localness is shown to have no positive influence on MPs propensity for parliamentary rebellion. This suggests that the increasing recruitment of local candidates does not challenge the traditional functionality of the responsible party system of government, yet nor should localness be seen as a panacea for the perceived representational deficits of British democracy.

The institutionalisation of parliamentary party groups. Towards a concept

ABSTRACT Notable efforts have been made to apply the institutionalisation concept to legislatures, parties and party systems. In contrast, parliamentary party groups (PPGs) were either side-lined or bundled under the concept of institutionalised parliaments and parties, which implies some conceptual confusion. However, PPGs should be treated as distinct topic given their role in stabilising the parliamentary business in all modern assemblies. Encouraging research to close that gap, we introduce a framework to study the institutionalisation of PPGs for which we use illustrations from various polities. We suggest that highly institutionalised groups exhibit stable personnel, coherent legislative behaviour, structural differentiation, well-established procedural routines, and autonomy in terms of policy decision-making, leadership selection, and resources. Also, we examine PPGs as embedded institutions and provide a conceptual map for varying relationships with the institutionalisation of parliaments and parties. Finally, we point to a widely unexplored field for comparative research including investigations on democratisation.

Legislative behavior in the French Senate: A new dataset from the Fifth Republic

Legislative behavior in the French Senate: A new dataset from the Fifth Republic

Speech targeting and constituency representation in open-list electoral systems

This study investigates the localistic behavior of legislators elected under open-list proportional representation (OLPR), focusing on the impacts of district magnitude, intra-party competition, electorate size, and the presence of a national tier. We examine the Ecuadorian case, where institutional reformers implemented a national tier to offset the parochial tendencies of lower-tier provincial legislators yet retained OLPR for both tiers. Our study, which analyzes a 12-year dataset of congressional speeches, challenges the expectation that national-tier members are less localistic than their provincial counterparts and shows that electoral incentives drive legislators’ geographical focus. Contrary to conventional expectations, we find no evidence that increased intra-party competition is associated with more localistic behavior. However, there is consistent support for the hypothesis that smaller electoral constituencies amplify localistic behavior.

Political Divisions in Large Cities: The Socio-Spatial Basis of Legislative Behavior in Chicago and Toronto

Political Divisions in Large Cities: The Socio-Spatial Basis of Legislative Behavior in Chicago and Toronto

Analysis of Executive and Legislative Behavior in Planning the Stunting Program in Maros District

Analysis of Executive and Legislative Behavior in Planning the Stunting Program in Maros District

What determines the vote-seeking behavior of legislators in South Korea?

Pre-existing studies suggest that legislators in small districts tend to be more responsive to the electorate than those in large districts, as accountability is typically clearer in a smaller setting. However, it is not clear whether the relationship between district size and legislators' constituency-oriented spending holds in other electoral settings (e.g., South Korea), where pork barrel benefits tend to be determined at the administrative unit, not the electoral district. The present study hypothesizes that as the number of legislators in an administrative unit increases, they are less likely to try to appeal to the voters. Additionally, this study examines the moderating effects of partisan homogeneity and legislators' seniority. The results from the statistical analysis of data from Korean National Assembly members confirm our hypothesis: the number of legislators in an administrative unit turns out to be negatively associated with their vote-seeking behavior. Such a relationship tends to be strong in administrative units co-represented by multiple parties and weak among newly elected legislators.

Protest and Legislative Behavior in Perilous Times

Abstract A long-standing tradition in the study of social movements documents the multitude of ways protest “matters” for policy and politics. LaGina Gause's book, The Advantage of Disadvantage makes a contribution to this literature. Gause develops a formal theory of the influence of protest on legislative behavior and representation and tests it with data from a range of empirical sources. She finds that protest is most effective for disadvantaged groups. What is admirable here is the attempt to integrate the study of social movements with the study of legislative behavior. But limitations that result from an exclusive reliance on quantitative analysis ultimately weaken the strength of her claims. That said, given the proliferation of protest movements around the world, we need to better understand how movement politics influence legislative politics. This is especially true for the mature democracies of the West where Far Right, nationalist, racist, and fascist movements seek to move from fringe to center by manipulating the institutions of electoral politics to undermine democracy itself. The review article concludes with thoughts on an expanded inquiry into the dynamics of contention of today's rightwing political movements.

Political accountability and legislative behavior in Africa: evidence from the 2019 Kenyan Sugar Bill in the context of the political economy of sectoral policy

ABSTRACT Recent research on African legislatures, once considered rarely autonomous, has found that some broad-scale mass movements, including pro-poor campaigns, hold legislators accountable. This article meanwhile examines the conditions under which narrow local constituency issues, shaping partisan differences, can hold relevant representatives and parties accountable while prioritizing over executive pressures and clientelist personal gains. I argue that this sort of political accountability in legislatures can be observed concerning sectoral policy interests, which, in Africa, are often geographically concentrated along ethnicity and party support lines. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches including interviews, news coverage reviews, and a statistical analysis of legislative debates on the 2019 Sugar Bill in Kenya, I show that the growing and collective efforts of sugar farmers to influence their local representatives and parties to support the legislation, tying them to the same electoral fate, prompt legislators to speak in favor of their local interests. This implies that sector-based policy concerns, when addressed by organized policy backers, are used as an effective mechanism for maintaining party unity and accountability in the legislature.

CompLaw: A Coding Protocol and Database for the Comparative Study of Judicial Review

Abstract A growing theoretical literature identifies how the process of constitutional review shapes judicial decision-making, legislative behavior, and even the constitutionality of legislation and executive actions. However, the empirical interrogation of these theoretical arguments is limited by the absence of a common protocol for coding constitutional review decisions across courts and time. We introduce such a coding protocol and database (CompLaw) of rulings by 42 constitutional courts. To illustrate the value of CompLaw, we examine a heretofore untested empirical implication about how review timing relates to rulings of unconstitutionality (Ward and Gabel 2019). First, we conduct a nuanced analysis of rulings by the French Constitutional Council over a 13-year period. We then examine the relationship between review timing and strike rates with a set of national constitutional courts in one year. Our data analysis highlights the benefits and flexibility of the CompLaw coding protocol for scholars of judicial review.

Legislative Effectiveness in the American States

We develop State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) for state legislators across 97 legislative chambers over recent decades, based on the number of bills that they sponsor, how far those bills move through the lawmaking process, and their substantive importance. We assess the scores through criterion and construct validation and reveal new insights into effective lawmaking across legislators. We then offer two illustrations of the immense opportunities that these scores provide for new scholarship on legislative behavior. First, we demonstrate greater majority-party influence over lawmaking in states featuring ideological polarization and majority-party cohesion, and where there is greater electoral competition for chamber control. Second, we show how institutional design choices—from legislative rules to the scope of professionalization—affect the distributions of policymaking power from state to state.

House Members on the News: Local Television News Coverage of Incumbents

AbstractThe accountability relationship between voters and elected members of Congress (MCs) hinges on the potential for citizens to learn about legislator behaviour. In an era of declining local newspapers, local television coverage of MCs potentially fulfils this important role. However, few studies have comprehensively examined the determinants of contemporary MC coverage by local television news broadcasts. In this paper, we leverage a vast database of local television news broadcast transcripts spanning two years to identify which factors explain MC coverage. We find that MCs receive little coverage outside the general election campaign season. Media market and campaign-specific factors are associated with more exposure when coverage occurs. Finally, we find that within competitive elections, incumbents receive only a marginal advantage in coverage. These findings provide a springboard to explore further questions regarding Congress, local media, and political accountability.

Distributive policies in cities: legislative behavior of city councilors in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba

RESUMO Introdução: Analisamos o efeito das variáveis territoriais e da capacidade fiscal municipal nas proposições legislativas e na destinação das políticas distributivas pelas Câmaras dos Vereadores de quatro municípios selecionados da Região Metropolitana de Curitiba. Perguntamo-nos se há associação entre proposições legislativas de caráter distributivo de iniciativa de vereadores e características socioeconômicas, demográficas e fiscais dos municípios estudados. Materiais e métodos: Foram analisadas proposições legislativas de diferentes tipos tais como indicações, requerimentos e projetos de lei de iniciativa de vereadores. Classificamos essas proposições entre distributivas e não distributivas. Foram analisados também dados geográfico-territoriais, demográficos, socioeconômicos e fiscais de Mandirituba, São José dos Pinhais, Fazenda Rio Grande e Campo Largo. Empregamos estudo de casos comparados, estatística descritiva e análise de correlação para estimar a relação entre as variáveis dos municípios e as variáveis legislativas no período entre 2012-2019. Resultados: Os resultados demonstraram que a capacidade fiscal e as características territoriais municipais são fatores que podem orientar o comportamento político e a produção legislativa municipal, sendo que vereadores do município de Mandirituba, menos urbanizado, com piores indicadores socioeconômicos e menor capacidade fiscal produziram mais políticas distributivas comparativamente aos municípios de São José dos Pinhais, Fazenda Rio Grande e Campo Largo, mais urbanizados, com melhores indicadores e mais capazes fiscalmente. Discussão: Os achados apontam para uma explicação complementar às encontradas na literatura para as variações da proposição de políticas distributivas. Para além da conexão eleitoral, a destinação dessas políticas pode estar relacionada ao desenvolvimento socioeconômico e fiscal, às características demográficas e às necessidades desiguais e demandas específicas dos municípios. O estudo corrobora a literatura sobre a importância da incorporação do território nas análises da política e dos resultados das políticas públicas.

Governing Through Gridlock: Bill Composition under Divided Government

AbstractWhat is the effect of divided government on issue attention in state legislatures? Much of the research on divided government examines how it affects the enactment of significant legislation but does not consider other effects on legislative behavior. In this article, I propose a new theory of the relationship between divided government and legislative activity. Regardless of partisan control, reelection-minded legislators face pressure to deliver benefits to voters, yet divided government can make substantive policy change difficult. As a result of these competing pressures, under divided government legislators increasingly turn their focus to bills that benefit their local constituents, which are seen as easier to enact and allow them to engage in advertising, credit claiming, and position taking. Consistent with this theory, I find that under divided government, legislators introduce bills at the same rate, but the type of legislation introduced shifts away from statewide policy changes and towards district-specific legislation.

An Analysis of Voting and Legislative Behavior

An Analysis of Voting and Legislative Behavior

Polarization and Place‐Based Representation in US State Legislatures

Recent scholarship has shown that legislators with deeper local roots and other preexisting place‐based attachments to their districts enjoy far‐reaching electoral advantages over their more “carpetbagging” colleagues. In this article, we consider how local roots, and its intersection with legislative polarization, influences legislative behavior, using a dataset of nearly 5,000 state legislators and novel measures of their local roots. We hypothesize that state legislators with deep local roots in their districts should be less ideologically polarized than their less‐rooted colleagues. This is precisely what we find. Using Shor‐McCarty ideology measures, we show that the most locally rooted legislators are 16% less ideologically extreme than their unrooted counterparts. These effects are comparable to or exceed those of district partisanship, chamber seniority, or other legislator characteristics. Collectively, these findings show that legislators’ local roots not only affect their electoral fortunes, but also have major implications for legislative activity and party polarization.

How ballot access laws increase primary competition and decrease party unity

How do electoral institutions affect primary competition and legislative behavior? This paper examines the understudied electoral rule known as ballot access laws, advancing the novel theory that denying ballot access to minor candidates forces these outsiders into major parties. I find that in American states that adopt high ballot access thresholds experience higher rates of ideological heterogeneity and primary competition, and those that reduce their thresholds experience a reduction in heterogeneity and competition. Using an original dataset on state-level changes to ballot access thresholds from 1990 to 2018, I find that an increase in the number and type of primary competition leads to an increase in heterogeneity within both party caucuses. This paper adds to the literature on legislative behavior and electoral institutions, demonstrating institutions role in shaping electoral competition and the ideology of those represented in office.

Effect of Campaign Contributions on Legislator Behavior: Intra–Dairy Industry Interest Group Competition

Effect of Campaign Contributions on Legislator Behavior: Intra–Dairy Industry Interest Group Competition

No Kin in the Game: Moral Hazard and War in the US Congress

Why do wars occur? We exploit a natural experiment to test the longstanding hypothesis that leaders declare war because they fail to internalize the associated costs. We test this moral hazard theory of conflict by compiling data on 9,210 children of 3,693 U.S. legislators who served in Congress during the four conscription-era wars of the 20th century: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. We test for agency problems by comparing the voting behavior of legislators with draft-age sons versus draft-age daughters. We estimate that (i) having a draft-age son reduces legislator support for pro-conscription bills by 10-17%; (ii) support for conscription increases by a quarter as a legislator's son crosses the upper age threshold; and (iii) legislators with draft-age sons are more likely to win reelection when the draft is less popular. These results are consistent with a political agency model in which voters update their beliefs about politicians' motives when they make unpopular legislative decisions. Our findings provide new evidence that agency problems contribute to political violence, and that elected officials can be influenced by changing private incentives.

Social mobility and education policy: a district-level analysis of legislative behavior

Abstract A vast literature has examined how perceptions of mobility shape demand for redistribution. These studies generally refer to contemporaneous tax policies demanded by those directly impacted. But social mobility is often measured as changes across generations. To account for these intergenerational effects, our analysis focuses on educational policies. We examine how social mobility at the district level explains legislative support for inclusive education policies. We first develop an electoral competition model where voters are altruistic parents, politicians are office seeking and the future economic status of the children is affected both by the degree of income mobility and by public education policies. We then analyze a newly compiled dataset of roll-call votes on California education legislation matched with electoral district levels of income mobility. In line with the model, our analysis suggests that upward mobility in a district negatively predicts legislative support for redistributive education bills.