Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French Parliament

Nicolas Gavoille

Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS from Condorcet Center for political Economy

Abstract: This paper studies the characteristics of the ghost deputies of the French National Assembly, i.e. deputies who do not have any o?cial recorded activity over a whole year. Using a rich dataset providing various information about all deputies from 1959 to 2012, the results indicate that the typical ghost deputy is an old man with a low level of schooling, member of a large party which does not support the government and who is elected in jurisdiction with a low level of political competition. However, personal characteristics are less and less correlated with performance over the years. Finally, ghost deputies face more di?culties to achieve reelection, but are penalized only at the ?rst round, voters exclusively considering national factors at the second round.

Keywords: Bad politicians; Legislative activity; French politicians; Leg-islative elections; Vote-Popularity function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eur, nep-lma and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament (2018)
Working Paper: Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament (2018)
Working Paper: Who are the 'ghost' MPs? evidence froM the french ParliaMent (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tut:cccrwp:2017-03-ccr

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