Is Personal Vote‐Seeking Behavior Effective?

• Author: Martin Brunner,Thomas Däubler,Thomas Bräuninger
• Date: 01 May 2016
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12119

THOMAS D€

AUBLER

THOMAS BR€

AUNINGER

University of Mannheim

MARTIN BRUNNER

University of Konstanz

Is Personal Vote-Seeking

Behavior Effective?

Does representatives’ legislative activity have any effect on their electoral

performance? A broad theoretical literature suggests so, but real-world evidence is

scarce as empirically, personal and party votes are hard to separate. In this article, we

examine whether bill initiation actually helps MPs to attract preference votes under flexi-

ble list electoral systems. In these systems, voters can accept the party-provided rank

order or vote for specific candidates, which allows a clear distinction between personal

and party votes. The empirical analysis uses data on bill initiation by Belgian MPs in the

period 2003–2007 to explain their personal vote in the 2007 elections. We find that par-

ticularly single-authored proposals initiated shortly before the upcoming elections are

associated with a larger personal vote.

Electoral systems shape politicians’ incentives to appeal to voters

on the basis of either the party label or their personal record. A broad lit-

erature has examined how electoral incentives trigger one or several

different forms of personal vote-seeking strategies available to all candi-

dates, such as strengthening local ties (Shugart, Valdini, and Suominen

2005) or running personalized campaigns (Bowler and Farrell 2011;

Zittel and Gschwend 2008). Incumbent MPs have an even larger array of

different strategies at their disposal. They can invest time in constituency

service (e.g., Bowler and Farrell 1993) or show concern for district inter-

ests in parliamentary work, for example by seeking particularistic

benef‌its through bill initiation (Crisp et al. 2004) or committee member-

ship (e.g., Stratmann and Baur 2002). The pursuit of a personal vote may

also be based on responsiveness to constituents’ policy interests which

can lead to higher levels of defection from the party line in parliamentary

votes (e.g., Hix 2004). While there is considerable empirical evidence

that electoral incentives explain variation in personal vote-seeking behav-

ior, very little is known about whether or not such behavior actually

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 41, 2, May 2016 419

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12119

V

C2016 Washington University in St. Louis

works, that is whether or not it helps candidates to improve their

personal vote.

In electoral systems that use f‌lexible lists, voters can choose to cast

a vote for the list of candidates as ordered by the party or express prefer-

ence votes for specif‌ic candidates within the list (Marsh 1985; Shugart

2005). Under such electoral rules, the incentives to seek a personal vote

vary within the system (depending on voters’ behavior), and we showed

that this variation inf‌luences MPs’ legislative activity (Br€

auninger, Brun-

ner, and D€

aubler 2012): MPs initiate more single-authored bills (and

fewer bills with copartisans they compete with) if their constituents are

more inclined to make use of the preference vote option and thus create

stronger incentives to cultivate a personal vote. In this article, we exam-

ine whether or not bill initiation actually pays off for MPs. Flexible-list

systems offer a fertile ground for examining this question, since there is

intraparty competition at the ballot, while the optional character of the

candidate vote at the same time allows us to separate personal from party

votes (cf. Crisp et al. 2013; Wauters, Weekers, and Maddens 2010). We

argue that the degree of legislative activity and the cosponsoring choices

of MPs matter and that effects are stronger for proposals initiated closer

to the next elections. The hypotheses are tested using the case of

Belgium. We f‌ind that especially single-authored bills submitted in the

last year of the parliamentary term contribute to an incumbent’s personal

vote.

In line with the idea that we should test as many observable impli-

cations of a theory as possible, our results complement and strengthen

the argument that personal vote-seeking incentives can underly individ-

ual legislative activity in parliamentary systems. The evidence in this

article suggests avenues for further research on this relationship, espe-

cially with regard to the underlying mechanisms that we can merely

suggest. The remainder of this article is organized as follows. The next

section reviews relevant literature on personal vote-seeking and the elec-

toral consequences of parliamentary behavior. We then introduce the

institutional context of Belgium and our theoretical arguments. In

subsequent sections, we present the data and empirical analysis. The

f‌inal section concludes.

Personal Vote-Seeking: Incentives, Behavior, Payoffs

This article analyses whether or not bill-initiation activity by legis-

lators attracts preference votes in subsequent general elections in a

f‌lexible-list electoral system. Our interest is linked to the broader

research question about the actual effectiveness of personal vote-seeking

420 Thomas D€

aubler, Thomas Br€

auninger, and Martin Brunner