The Cosponsorship Patterns of Reserved Seat Legislators

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Taishi Muraoka
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12271

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LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 45, 4, November 2020

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12271

TAISHI MURAOKA

Harvard University

The Cosponsorship Patterns of

Reserved Seat Legislators

This study analyzes the bill cosponsorship behavior of reserved seat leg-

islators in the Pakistan National Assembly, where special legislative seats are re-

served for women and religious minorities. It offers a critical case because two

theories on reserved seat legislators—the theory of electoral incentives and the

theory of institutional weakness—lead to opposite predictions about the extent

to which such legislators will engage in bill cosponsorship, with the former (latter)

predicting the negative (positive) effect of reserved seats. I find that women and

minorities in reserved seats initiate a greater number of bills and cosponsor bills

with a larger number of peers than nonreserved male legislators. Using network

analysis, I also show that reserved legislators tend to play a role in bridging differ-

ent partisan blocs of legislators within the cosponsorship network. These empiri-

cal patterns provide support to the theory of institutional weakness, rather than

to the theory of electoral incentives.

The adoption of various forms of quotas for women and mi-

norities has been one of the most important institutional develop-

ments in modern legislatures (Bird 2014; Krook and O’Brien 2010;

Reynolds 2005). Scholars have examined the impact of quota sys-

tems in several different ways. Some have explored whether quo-

tas have successfully increased the descriptive representation of

historically marginalized groups (Krook 2010; Schwindt-Bayer

2009). Others have assessed the effect of quotas on policy outputs,

asking whether quotas have improved the substantive represen-

tation of minorities (Clayton and Zetterberg 2018; O’Brien and

Rickne 2016; Sterken and Zia 2015). Still others have focused on

the symbolic aspects of quotas and explored how these institu-

tions have changed voters’ perceptions and behavior (Barnes and

Córdova 2016; Clayton 2015).

One important type of quota is reserved seats, in which spe-

cial legislative seats are set aside for historically underrepresented

groups that would otherwise find it difficult to gain a seat in a par-

liament (Bird 2014; Reynolds 2005). Unlike other forms of quotas

© 2019 Washington University in St. Louis

556 Taishi Muraoka

(e.g., party quotas), reserved seats often provide marginalized

groups with avenues of representation that circumvent the exist-

ing party system (Htun 2004). Although a large number of studies

have examined the impact of reserved seats on descriptive, sub-

stantive, and symbolic representation (Chauchard 2014; Dunning

and Nilekani 2013; Hänni 2017; Kroeber 2017; Lublin and Wright

2013), little is known about the policymaking behavior of legisla-

tors elected via reserved seats (Crisp et al. 2018).

The main goal of this study is to understand the bill cospon-

sorship behavior of reserved seat (RS) legislators. To do so, I test

the validity of two competing theories on the legislative incentives

of RS legislators. The theory of electoral incentives, on the one

hand, suggests that the behavior of RS legislators is different from

that of nonreserved seat (non-RS) legislators because the former’s

electoral considerations make them responsive to different selec-

tors (Bird 2014; Crisp etal. 2018). For example, if reserved seats

are designed to strengthen party leaders’ control over the appoint-

ment of these seats, legislators who fill those seats may have strong

incentives to refrain from using their legislative autonomy because

it may violate party discipline. In such a case, RS legislators should

engage in bill cosponsorship less actively than non-RS legislators.

On the other hand, the theory of institutional weakness suggests

that the legislative behavior of RS legislators is different from that

of non-RS legislators because of the former’s institutionally dis-

advantaged status (Barnes 2016). This theory emphasizes that just

like female legislators, RS legislators face various institutional bar-

riers due to their small numbers and lack of historical represen-

tation. The theory provides that to overcome this problem, they

should make use of bill cosponsorship more extensively and co-

operate with a wider range of peers than non-RS legislators. This

study seeks to identify the theory that best captures the collabora-

tive behavior of RS legislators through bill cosponsorship.

To answer this question, I focus on the case of the Pakistan

National Assembly, where a relatively large number of reserved

seats are set aside for women and non-Muslim minorities (Hindus,

Christians, Ahmadi/Paree, and others). Pakistan is a country in

which women and religious minorities are severely marginalized,

and they are discriminated against by society at large (Ispahani

2017; Yasmeen 1999). Hence, it is a context in which descriptive

representation may potentially have a large impact on improving

the lives of these groups. Although the role of RS legislators has

been a critical question in the literature on Pakistan’s legislative