The Limits of Electoral Control: Evidence from Last‐Term Politicians

• Author: Karsten Mause,Benny Geys
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12136
• Date: 01 November 2016
• Published date: 01 November 2016

BENNY GEYS

Norwegian Business School Oslo and

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

KARSTEN MAUSE

University of M€

unster

The Limits of Electoral Control:

Evidence from Last-Term

Politicians

In modern democracies, politicians’ accountability is often linked to the disciplin-

ing mechanism of electoral control. For politicians in their final term, this mechanism is

impaired. Using a novel data set covering 910 members of the UK House of Commons

active within the period 1997–2010, we investigate how reduced electoral control affects

last-term MPs’ trade-off between work effort inside parliament, leisure, and outside

interests. Our main contributions lie in providing the first explicit consideration of (1)

MPs’ final-term intra-/extraparliamentary work balance and (2) MPs’ reasons for leaving

parliament (i.e., retirement, career change, electoral defeat). These extensions provide

important fresh insights concerning the boundaries of elections’ disciplining power.

The relation between citizens and elected representatives in con-

temporary democracies is often conceptualized as a principal-agent

relationship (Besley 2006; Mitchell 2000; Strøm, M€

uller, and Bergman

2003). Elections are thereby viewed as a crucial accountability and

incentive mechanism, since failure to deliver desired public policies may

induce voter retribution on Election Day. The underlying argument is

that “by basing their votes on evaluations of performance, voters may be

able to motivate off‌iceholders to pay attention to the interests of the elec-

tors” (Ferejohn 1986, 7). This not only places the issue of “electoral

control” at the heart of our conception of democracy (Ashworth 2012;

Barro 1973; Mayhew 1974), but it also naturally raises the question

about “how well electoral accountability actually works” (Diermeier and

Li 2013, 1).

In this article, we directly engage with this question by focusing on

one limitation of electoral control as a disciplining mechanism: Members

of Parliament (MPs) in their f‌inal term by def‌inition cannot be held to

account in the next election. At least from a rational choice perspective,

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 41, 4, November 2016 873

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12136

V

C2016 Washington University in St. Louis

this would imply that such last-t erm MPs will exert less effort to

satisfy their citizen-princ ipals (Besley and Larcinese 2011; Dabros

2015; Herrick, Moore, and Hibbi ng 1994; Lott 1990; Parker and

Dabros 2012). In line with such a so- called shirking proposition,

f‌inal-term MPs have repeatedly be en found to record lower parlia-

mentary activity (e.g., attendanc e in meetings and roll-call votes)

than MPs facing re-election const raints (Besley and Larcinese 2011;

Lott 1990).

1

This article makes two key contributions to this literature and

thereby provides important new insights concerning the boundaries of

elections’ disciplining power. First, last-period shirking is traditionally

understood only as “substituting leisure for work ... through neglect of

legislative responsibilities in the f‌inal term” (Parker and Dabros 2012,

790). In contrast, we take into account that there might also be substitu-

tion between intra- and extraparliamentary work efforts. This theoretical

extension builds on the fact that politicians—like all of us—have a

binding time constraint, such that time and energy devoted to intraparlia-

mentary work is no longer available for outside interests, and vice versa

(Arnold, Kauder, and Potrafke 2014; Eggers and Hainmueller 2009;

Gagliarducci, Nannicini, and Naticchioni 2010; Geys and Mause 2012).

However, this trade-off might change during one’s f‌inal term, leading

last-term MPs to strategically reposition their intra-/extraparliamentary

work balance (e.g., as an investment in a postparliamentary career)

(Dabros 2015; Parker 2008). This line of argument innovatively con-

nects the literatures on (1) politicians’ parliamentary activity (see above)

and (2) their extraparliamentary activities (for a review, see Geys and

Mause 2013) to obtain a more comprehensive assessment of the f‌inal-

term question. It also provides more precision about the conceptual def‌i-

nition of last-term shirking, since shirking is here to be understood as

any reduction in MPs’ intraparliamentary effort to satisfy their citizen-

principals, whether with the intention to increase leisure or outside inter-

ests. This new conceptualization has important empirical implications

since MPs simultaneously decide their inside/outside mix of work effort

(Arnold, Kauder, and Potrafke 2014), and ignoring either of these

choices may lead to biased inferences.

Second, unlike most previous research on the last-term question

(for partial exceptions, see Dabros 2015; Lott 1990; Parker and Dabros

2012), we explicitly differentiate between various motives for leaving

parliament (i.e., retirement, career change, or electoral defeat). We argue

that such differentiation is essential for two related reasons. On the one

hand, expectations regarding the last-term behavior of exiting MPs differ

depending on the reason for their exit (more details below). On the other

874 Benny Geys and Karsten Mause