Legislative Studies Quarterly最新文献

We use data from Canadian legislatures to examine how legislative pension rules affect the propensity of incumbents to seek re-election. We predict that legislators with defined-benefits pensions are more likely to seek re-election than legislators without pensions. Once the legislator is vested (i.e., qualified) in the pension, however, this incentive disappears; indeed, pensions that accrue value quickly and can be collected at an early age, induce legislators to retire rather than seek re-election. Difference-in-differences estimates bear out these predictions: on average, legislators with defined benefits pensions are 11 percentage points more likely to seek re-election than legislators without pensions, whereas legislators who on vesting immediately qualify for a pension of 50% of their salary are 11 percentage points less likely to do so. These results show that legislative pensions alter the value that legislators place on re-election and, in doing so, they affect the accumulation of legislative professionalism and the strength of democratic accountability.

As appropriations earmarks return to Congress, every legislator faces a decision: pursue or refuse congressionally mandated federal spending projects. This decision is likely influenced by public messaging concerns. We theorize that both credit claiming for federal projects and position taking against spending projects (“pork busting”) can benefit legislators as they look to improve future electoral returns. We field a nationally representative survey experiment to estimate the effect of credit-claiming and pork-busting messages on the perceived effectiveness, fiscal responsibility, and overall approval of an unnamed member of Congress. We find that respondents are likely to penalize the representative's approval assessment when presented with an out-party message strategy. Conversely, respondents are likely to increase the representative's personal trait assessments when presented with an in-party message strategy. We expand on these results in an additional analysis and find that these trends persist when controlling for other partisan and demographic factors. We discuss our results in light of traditional expectations, potential mechanisms, and future directions for related research.

How do bureaucrats respond to legislators' demands for change in policy implementation? We distinguish between unified and divided government, where the degree of legislative oversight over bureaucratic autonomy is likely to differ, and we argue that how bureaucrats actually respond in varying executive-legislative relations depends on their incentives shaped by greater autonomy in implementation (unified government) versus closer monitoring by legislators (divided government). Analyzing two sets of original data from list and endorsement experiments with local bureaucrats in Korea (n = 4064)—one from the period of legislative auditing and the other from the nonauditing period—we find that bureaucrats are more likely to incorporate legislators' views into their decision-making under unified than under divided government. Furthermore, bureaucrats are more responsive to legislatures when their political ideology is congruent with that of a legislative majority than when it is incongruent, regardless of unified or divided government. Our findings have a clear implication: the importance of bureaucratic autonomy and preferences rather than monitoring as an effective tool to increase bureaucratic responsiveness.

Bicameralism is a nearly universal feature of American legislatures, yet its functional impact on legislative outcomes is uncertain. Proponents have claimed that bicameralism would produce better outcomes than unicameralism, as adding a deliberative element prevents the passage of faulty legislation. For bicameralism to work in this fashion, we argue lawmakers must have enough time and resources to meaningfully evaluate legislation produced by the other chamber. We find such behavior is most likely to take place in professionalized state legislatures, evidenced by a lower concurrence rate in the second chamber for bills passed by the first chamber. In state legislatures with less policy capacity, by contrast, the chambers act in a more parallel fashion, dividing the agenda and largely endorsing the other chamber's legislation.

Parliamentary speeches are an important communication channel for political parties. A growing amount of literature suggests that parties use them to send policy signals in party competition. Although this perspective has become more popular in the literature, there is a lack of studies that focus on issue competition. I take a step towards closing this research gap by using a text-as-data approach to analyze parliamentary speeches in the Austrian Nationalrat. The data set consists of more than 56,700 speeches given by MPs between 2002 and 2019. I apply a semi-supervised technique to classify the speeches at sentence level into 20 issue categories. The analysis shows that, despite the constraining parliamentary context (e.g., legislative agenda), parties put comparatively strong emphasis on their issue preferences. The magnitude of this effect, however, depends on a party's legislative agenda-setting power. These findings confirm the presence and specific nature of issue competition in parliamentary speeches.

Candidate-centered electoral systems create incentives for MPs to cultivate a personal vote among their constituents, which in turn should strengthen geographical representation. However, existing research has missed the theoretical distinction between the selection and incentives effects of electoral systems. Electoral rules influence who successfully runs for office (selection) and MPs' behavior once they have been elected (incentives). Focusing on the 2005 Italian electoral reform from a mixed to a proportional system, this article assesses the effects of the electoral system change on reelected MPs' attention to local issues in parliamentary questions and bills. The dual source of variation in electoral incentives (mixed system and reform) provides a unique opportunity to disentangle the impact of incentives and selection on MPs' behavior. Contrary to expectations, the results indicate that MPs formerly elected in single-member districts (SMDs) did not significantly decrease their attention to local issues after the reform. This suggests that electoral incentives alone are not enough to modify significantly the behavior of MPs experiencing the institutional change and that selection effects should be taken more into account when considering the impact of electoral systems. By differentiating two mechanisms through which electoral rules influence legislators' behavior, this finding contributes new knowledge to the ongoing debate about the consequences of electoral institutions and reforms.

When do interest groups target legislators to approach or lobby under strong presidentialism? This article explores two hypotheses. First, interest groups and lobbyists seek to access committee chairs with gatekeeping power, even in those jurisdictions where the executive holds (most) exclusivity to initiate legislation (Gatekeeping Hypothesis). Second, interest groups and lobbyists target legislators who introduce more bills on issues that concern them but only on policy areas outside the executive's exclusive sphere (Legislative Activity Hypothesis). We test these hypotheses with evidence from the Chilean Chamber of Deputies. We have coded and analysed 6479 lobbying audiences and over 2300 bills.

Previous research finds that nominating more centrist candidates increases vote share and win probability in congressional general elections. Yet party primary elections often nominate non-centrist candidates, increasing polarization between the American parties. We develop a model of choice in nomination politics that shows when and how actors respond to incentives of the general election. We then combine 200 million contribution records with data on 22,400 candidates in 7100 House primary elections from 1980 through 2016. We find that potential candidates and primary voters respond to general election incentives but do not find clear evidence for contributors or the winnowing process. Connecting these results back to our model, this implies that actors in the invisible primary either place higher value on in-party candidate ideology or have different beliefs about the general election than do primary voters. Our evidence adds to a body of research that suggests primary voters are a larger moderating force than elites in American party politics.

Prior studies have documented incumbency advantage for electoral candidates. A largely unrelated strand of literature has shown that perceived competence of candidates, as inferred from their physical appearance, also predicts their electoral success. We draw upon the framework of statistical discrimination and the dual-system theory of human cognition to understand the relationship between a political candidate's vote share, physical appearance, and incumbency status. Voters possess relatively richer information about incumbents compared to challengers. Perceived competence of candidates, as inferred from their physical appearance, is therefore expected to have a relatively weaker influence on voters' decisions to vote for incumbents. Data from Australian state elections support this prediction.