Legislature Integration and Bipartisanship: A Natural Experiment in Iceland

Matthew Lowe and Donghee Jo

No 9452, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Nearly all legislatures segregate politicians by party. We use seating lotteries in the Icelandic Parliament to estimate the effects of seating integration on bipartisanship. When two politicians from different parties are randomly assigned to sit together, they are roughly 1 percentage point more likely to vote alike. Despite this effect, other-party neighbors do not affect general bipartisan voting, as measured by the likelihood that a politician deviates from their party leader’s vote. Furthermore, the pair-level similarity effect is temporary, disappearing the following year. The pattern of results support cue-taking and social pressure as mechanisms for the effects of proximity.

Keywords: polarization; integration; intergroup contact; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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