Incentives dominate selection – Chamber-changing legislators are driven by electoral rules and voter preferences

Marco Portmann, David Stadelmann and Reiner Eichenberger

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 193, issue C, 353-366

Abstract: The role of electoral incentives vs. selection is ideally analyzed in a setting where individual legislators are selected to decide on policies under different electoral rules and where voter preferences on policies can be precisely measured. This is the first paper to look at such a situation. The institutional setting of Switzerland allows us to observe the behavior of legislators who change from a proportionally-elected chamber to a majority-elected chamber of parliament with their electorate being the same in both chambers. Voter preferences are revealed in referenda. We identify behavioral changes of legislators who are chamber-changers in comparison to other legislators due to the respective electoral rules along three dimensions, all measured at the level of individual legislators: representation of revealed voter preferences for policies, party loyalty, and interest group affiliations. The evidence suggests that electoral incentives explain the behavioral response of chamber-changers towards voter preferences to such an extent that there remains no relevant role for selection. After having changed from a proportionally-elected chamber to a majority-elected chamber, chamber-changers cater more intensely for the preferences of the voter majority (including the median voter), become less loyal towards their party and adapt their lobby group affiliations towards more district-oriented interests.

Keywords: Preference representation; Incentives; Electoral systems; Voting; Responsiveness; Legislative behavior; Electoral connection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121004546
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Incentives dominate selection: Chamber-changing legislators are driven by electoral rules and voter preferences (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:193:y:2022:i:c:p:353-366

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.10.023

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().