Does Electoral Reform Change MPs’ Behavior? Evidence from Romania

Abstract

The article illustrates that legislators’ constituency orientation can be enhanced through electoral system personalization, even in political systems that have used the party-centered closed list proportional representation for several elections. Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment, created by the 2008 electoral reform in Romania, the study investigates the frequency and determinants of parliamentary questions dealing with constituency issues and whether the reform has stimulated different forms of responsiveness toward constituents. The analyses run on a matched sample of legislators show that while the reform has not modified the proportion of all constituency questions, it has increased substantially the share of questions inspired by allocation responsiveness. Moreover, the effects of some determinants of constituency orientation changed after the reform: previous socialization in local politics loses its significance while we also observe an increased negative effect of non-local candidatures.

Geographical Representation Under a Single Nationwide District: The Case of the Netherlands

“…However, the distribution is highly skewed: most MPs only ask a few questions about their district, while a few ask many (Russo 2011, 293). A highly skewed distribution of local questions is also visible in other countries (e.g., Chiru 2021; Zittel, Nyhuis, and Baumann 2019). In Germany, 6.2% of questions asked during the 17th legislative term had a reference to the district of the MP who asked the question, which is closer to the Dutch figure of 5.4% questions about an MP's province of residence, although we have to note that Dutch provinces have more inhabitants than German constituencies (Zittel, Nyhuis, and Baumann 2019).…”

The Electoral Connection Revisited: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…In so doing, the articles are highly complementary as they allow for studying political processes related to the personal vote across the legislative and the electoral arenas. Thus, while Arter (2021) illustrates how candidate selection districts influence campaigning, intra-party competition and the ability of politicians to win votes, Russo (2021) and Chiru (2021) focus on how candidate selection attributes make legislators allocate more or less time to constituency service. Similarly, Poyet (2021) and Papp (2020) devote significant attention to understanding how issue salience interacts with district pressures in the two arenas.…”

“…Mihail Chiru (2021) brings to light a case of electoral system personalization that did trigger behavioural consequences in the direction expected by the reformers. Thus, he is able to show that after the 2008 electoral reform in Romania, which replaced the partycentred closed-list PR with an original mixed electoral system, legislators' constituency orientation has been modified: they started engaging more in allocation responsiveness than before.…”