This study analyzes whether the personality traits of Members of Parliament (MPs) affect their attitudes toward the representation of gender equality issues. Based on the Big Five personality traits, we argue that Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness shape MPs' positions toward gender equality policies through two different pathways. The first pathway proposes a direct connection. While Openness is expected to positively affect MPs' support for gender equality, Conscientiousness is assumed to have a negative impact. The second pathway runs indirectly, linking Openness and Conscientiousness to preferences toward gender equality through the effect of these personality traits on MPs' general ideological positions. Using data from a survey of elite politicians in Germany and Switzerland, the results of a causal mediation analysis show a positive direct effect of Openness that holds independent of a mediating influence of political ideology. The analysis deepens our understanding of gender equality legislation and the MPs engaging in it.
{"title":"Personality and political representation—How personality traits shape MPs' attitudes toward gender equality","authors":"Daniel Höhmann, C. Kroeber","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12475","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyzes whether the personality traits of Members of Parliament (MPs) affect their attitudes toward the representation of gender equality issues. Based on the Big Five personality traits, we argue that Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness shape MPs' positions toward gender equality policies through two different pathways. The first pathway proposes a direct connection. While Openness is expected to positively affect MPs' support for gender equality, Conscientiousness is assumed to have a negative impact. The second pathway runs indirectly, linking Openness and Conscientiousness to preferences toward gender equality through the effect of these personality traits on MPs' general ideological positions. Using data from a survey of elite politicians in Germany and Switzerland, the results of a causal mediation analysis show a positive direct effect of Openness that holds independent of a mediating influence of political ideology. The analysis deepens our understanding of gender equality legislation and the MPs engaging in it.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141927561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Simon Hug, Frédéric Varone, Luzia Helfer, S. Walgrave, Karolin Soontjens, Lior Sheffer
Political representation can be described as a process brought about via an electoral and a perceptual path. Drawing on original survey data on the perceptual accuracy of elected representatives in Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, this study explores whether and how the two paths are connected. It shows, first, that representatives who more accurately perceive voters' opinion are more likely to be re‐elected, suggesting that perceptual accuracy impacts the electoral path to representation. Second, representatives who are electorally safe hold less accurate perceptions of voters' policy preferences, meaning that the electoral path impacts the perceptual path. In all, the study provides evidence for the role of politicians' perceptual accuracy in their electoral career: voters sanction those representatives who are not sufficiently acquainted with their preferences, and representatives who fear to be voted out of office put more effort in getting acquainted with what voters want.
{"title":"The role of politicians' perceptual accuracy of voter opinions in their electoral career","authors":"Simon Hug, Frédéric Varone, Luzia Helfer, S. Walgrave, Karolin Soontjens, Lior Sheffer","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12471","url":null,"abstract":"Political representation can be described as a process brought about via an electoral and a perceptual path. Drawing on original survey data on the perceptual accuracy of elected representatives in Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, this study explores whether and how the two paths are connected. It shows, first, that representatives who more accurately perceive voters' opinion are more likely to be re‐elected, suggesting that perceptual accuracy impacts the electoral path to representation. Second, representatives who are electorally safe hold less accurate perceptions of voters' policy preferences, meaning that the electoral path impacts the perceptual path. In all, the study provides evidence for the role of politicians' perceptual accuracy in their electoral career: voters sanction those representatives who are not sufficiently acquainted with their preferences, and representatives who fear to be voted out of office put more effort in getting acquainted with what voters want.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141798138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social relations have the potential to shape who assumes policy leadership positions in legislative politics. Applying a relational event modeling framework, this paper investigates if homophily and reciprocity predict patterns of collaboration between lawmakers as they negotiate proposed legislation. Specifically, it examines if members of the European Parliament (EP) who serve as rapporteurs or shadow rapporteurs are more likely to select into working with colleagues who share their personal attributes or with whom they have previously collaborated. It conceives of EP policy‐making as an evolving two‐mode network comprised of legislators and jointly produced policy documents as nodes, and (shadow‐) rapporteurships as ties. Conditional logistic regression analyses confirm that previous collaboration, shared native language and gender, as well as policy expertise, increase the likelihood of MEPs becoming (shadow‐)rapporteurs. In contrast, party loyalty shows no clear, unambiguous effect.
{"title":"Who works with whom? Collaboration ties in legislative policy‐making networks","authors":"Frank M. Häge, Nils Ringe","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12470","url":null,"abstract":"Social relations have the potential to shape who assumes policy leadership positions in legislative politics. Applying a relational event modeling framework, this paper investigates if homophily and reciprocity predict patterns of collaboration between lawmakers as they negotiate proposed legislation. Specifically, it examines if members of the European Parliament (EP) who serve as rapporteurs or shadow rapporteurs are more likely to select into working with colleagues who share their personal attributes or with whom they have previously collaborated. It conceives of EP policy‐making as an evolving two‐mode network comprised of legislators and jointly produced policy documents as nodes, and (shadow‐) rapporteurships as ties. Conditional logistic regression analyses confirm that previous collaboration, shared native language and gender, as well as policy expertise, increase the likelihood of MEPs becoming (shadow‐)rapporteurs. In contrast, party loyalty shows no clear, unambiguous effect.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141799812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asbel Bohigues, Jennifer M. Piscopo, Amy Alexander
Do women perceive corruption differently from men and why? Using elite survey data from over 3000 Latin American legislators nested in 49 country‐years, we explore who perceives corruption as an important national problem. We find that women legislators place more importance on corruption than men. We further examine three potential mechanisms to understand why: support for effective states, power marginalization, and corruption salience. We explore whether these mechanisms work through pathways of moderation or mediation. We find little support for hypotheses that gender interacts with these factors, but we do find that gender mediates who supports effective states and who is marginalized from power. In both the moderation and mediation analyses, we continue to find an underlying, robust effect of being a woman on rating corruption's importance. Thus, while debate over mechanisms remains, gender is foundational to explaining elites' corruption perceptions. Women consistently perceive corruption as more important than men.
{"title":"The foundational effects of gender: Exploring Latin American Elites’ perceptions of corruption","authors":"Asbel Bohigues, Jennifer M. Piscopo, Amy Alexander","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12468","url":null,"abstract":"Do women perceive corruption differently from men and why? Using elite survey data from over 3000 Latin American legislators nested in 49 country‐years, we explore who perceives corruption as an important national problem. We find that women legislators place more importance on corruption than men. We further examine three potential mechanisms to understand why: support for effective states, power marginalization, and corruption salience. We explore whether these mechanisms work through pathways of moderation or mediation. We find little support for hypotheses that gender interacts with these factors, but we do find that gender mediates who supports effective states and who is marginalized from power. In both the moderation and mediation analyses, we continue to find an underlying, robust effect of being a woman on rating corruption's importance. Thus, while debate over mechanisms remains, gender is foundational to explaining elites' corruption perceptions. Women consistently perceive corruption as more important than men.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141804769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on approximately 4000 face‐to‐face interviews with lower house members from seventeen Latin American countries, this article demonstrates how partisan considerations shape legislators' preferences for power‐sharing institutions. Distributive models argue that reforming parties derive preferences based on potential advantages in power allocation, yet the role of individual legislators remains underexplored. The evidence reveals that legislators favor institutional arrangements that maximize their party's influence. Representatives from larger parties prefer electoral rules that reduce the number of parties in the House, while incumbent lawmakers support a stronger executive. Notably, party positions often shift following changes in electoral fortunes: Parties become more favorable of proportional representation after losing seats and advocate for reinforced congressional authority upon leaving office.
{"title":"Institutional opportunism: How electoral fortunes shape preferences for power‐sharing institutions in Latin America","authors":"Santiago Alles","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12472","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on approximately 4000 face‐to‐face interviews with lower house members from seventeen Latin American countries, this article demonstrates how partisan considerations shape legislators' preferences for power‐sharing institutions. Distributive models argue that reforming parties derive preferences based on potential advantages in power allocation, yet the role of individual legislators remains underexplored. The evidence reveals that legislators favor institutional arrangements that maximize their party's influence. Representatives from larger parties prefer electoral rules that reduce the number of parties in the House, while incumbent lawmakers support a stronger executive. Notably, party positions often shift following changes in electoral fortunes: Parties become more favorable of proportional representation after losing seats and advocate for reinforced congressional authority upon leaving office.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141818448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
An essential component of a representative's job centers on deciding where to allocate scarce resources. How do legislators attempt to allocate spending across the geographic units of their constituencies, and what determines a legislator's success in securing these resources? To answer these questions, we create a new dataset of all earmark requests made by U.S. senators in the 117th Congress. This data was recently made available as part of reforms, allowing researchers to examine both requests and outcomes. We show that senators prioritize seeking earmarks for areas of their constituencies critical to their electoral success. We then match these requests to earmarks funded by the Appropriations Committee and show that a legislator's institutional standing and the behavior of their same‐state colleague—but not electoral concerns—shape whether projects are successfully funded. We provide insight into a behind‐the‐scenes aspect of representation and illuminate the strategic dynamics that shape federal spending.
{"title":"Geographic representation and requests for federal funds in the U.S. senate","authors":"Jaclyn Kaslovsky, Andrew R. Stone","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12464","url":null,"abstract":"An essential component of a representative's job centers on deciding where to allocate scarce resources. How do legislators attempt to allocate spending across the geographic units of their constituencies, and what determines a legislator's success in securing these resources? To answer these questions, we create a new dataset of all earmark requests made by U.S. senators in the 117th Congress. This data was recently made available as part of reforms, allowing researchers to examine both requests and outcomes. We show that senators prioritize seeking earmarks for areas of their constituencies critical to their electoral success. We then match these requests to earmarks funded by the Appropriations Committee and show that a legislator's institutional standing and the behavior of their same‐state colleague—but not electoral concerns—shape whether projects are successfully funded. We provide insight into a behind‐the‐scenes aspect of representation and illuminate the strategic dynamics that shape federal spending.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141644167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A widespread assumption in political science research and among the public is that politicians from marginalized groups, including women, disadvantaged racial–ethnic groups, and younger adults, are more leftist than their counterparts. However, empirical evidence to substantiate this claim is generally scarce. In this letter, we analyze three decades of individual‐level elite data from Latin America and find that MPs from marginalized groups tend not to differ ideologically from MPs from dominant groups, nor is their inclusion associated with posterior changes in their party's ideology. These results challenge common misconceptions about elite ideology and contribute to bridging two lively literatures on the ideological and inclusionary transformations shaping current Western democracies.
{"title":"Historically marginalized groups and ideological representation in legislatures","authors":"Iris E. Acquarone, Gonzalo Di Landro","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12466","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12466","url":null,"abstract":"A widespread assumption in political science research and among the public is that politicians from marginalized groups, including women, disadvantaged racial–ethnic groups, and younger adults, are more leftist than their counterparts. However, empirical evidence to substantiate this claim is generally scarce. In this letter, we analyze three decades of individual‐level elite data from Latin America and find that MPs from marginalized groups tend not to differ ideologically from MPs from dominant groups, nor is their inclusion associated with posterior changes in their party's ideology. These results challenge common misconceptions about elite ideology and contribute to bridging two lively literatures on the ideological and inclusionary transformations shaping current Western democracies.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141654957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates how legislators respond to an electoral reform by adjusting their positions with respect to co‐partisans and rivals. Using cross‐sectional legislative roll calls over 20 years, we study how the dynamics of blue‐green confrontation are influenced by Taiwan's electoral reform from Single Non‐Transferable Votes (the SNTV) to Single‐Member Districts (SMD). Contrary to existing literature, our empirical evidence shows that the reform significantly fragmented legislator positions within their party and in relation to members from opposing parties, leading to an increase in contentious legislation and higher levels of both inter‐ and intra‐party distance. In the years following the reform, the political confrontation between the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party gradually diminished, eventually returning to levels seen before the reform. Moreover, our analysis reveals that the 2008 reform had heterogeneous effects on different parties, with each party displaying varying levels of resilience in response. This finding contributes to electoral system literature, providing policy implications for democratic countries contemplating electoral reforms.
{"title":"Electoral reform and fragmented polarization: New evidence from Taiwan legislative roll calls","authors":"Yen‐Chieh Liao","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12459","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates how legislators respond to an electoral reform by adjusting their positions with respect to co‐partisans and rivals. Using cross‐sectional legislative roll calls over 20 years, we study how the dynamics of blue‐green confrontation are influenced by Taiwan's electoral reform from Single Non‐Transferable Votes (the SNTV) to Single‐Member Districts (SMD). Contrary to existing literature, our empirical evidence shows that the reform significantly fragmented legislator positions within their party and in relation to members from opposing parties, leading to an increase in contentious legislation and higher levels of both inter‐ and intra‐party distance. In the years following the reform, the political confrontation between the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party gradually diminished, eventually returning to levels seen before the reform. Moreover, our analysis reveals that the 2008 reform had heterogeneous effects on different parties, with each party displaying varying levels of resilience in response. This finding contributes to electoral system literature, providing policy implications for democratic countries contemplating electoral reforms.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141680958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Do private interests predict politicians' rhetoric? Focusing on housing policy, we compare issue emphasis and positions of landlord politicians and politicians who do not own multiple properties. Ireland provides a unique opportunity to study legislating landlords' behavior as housing has become one of the most important political issues. We construct a novel dataset of politicians' homeownership status between 2013 and 2022, a period characterized by rising rent and property prices. We fine‐tune a transformer‐based machine learning model and apply text scaling and sentiment analysis to identify issue salience and positions on housing in over 870,000 tweets and parliamentary questions. Contrary to our expectations, landlord politicians do not avoid the topic of housing, nor do they take different positions. We also find that government status does not influence this relationship. The results imply that private financial interests do not influence rhetoric on housing policy.
{"title":"Legislating landlords: Private interests, issue emphasis, and policy positions","authors":"Stefan Müller, Jihed Ncib","doi":"10.1111/lsq.12458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12458","url":null,"abstract":"Do private interests predict politicians' rhetoric? Focusing on housing policy, we compare issue emphasis and positions of landlord politicians and politicians who do not own multiple properties. Ireland provides a unique opportunity to study legislating landlords' behavior as housing has become one of the most important political issues. We construct a novel dataset of politicians' homeownership status between 2013 and 2022, a period characterized by rising rent and property prices. We fine‐tune a transformer‐based machine learning model and apply text scaling and sentiment analysis to identify issue salience and positions on housing in over 870,000 tweets and parliamentary questions. Contrary to our expectations, landlord politicians do not avoid the topic of housing, nor do they take different positions. We also find that government status does not influence this relationship. The results imply that private financial interests do not influence rhetoric on housing policy.","PeriodicalId":47672,"journal":{"name":"Legislative Studies Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141359150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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