Electoral Institutions, the Personal Vote, and Legislative Organization

Abstract

What is the relationship between electoral institutions and the internal organization of legislatures? Existing research on the U.S. Congress suggests that electoral incentives shaped by the candidate‐centered nature of congressional elections explain the emergence of strong committees in that legislature. Exploring the issue from a comparative perspective, it is argued that the impact of ballot structure on committee system structure is dependent on how legislators cultivate personal votes. Committees will be stronger when legislators supply fiscal legislative particularism (pork), but weaker when legislators cultivate support by delivering extra‐legislative constituency service. Statistical analysis, combining original data on committee design in 39 democratic legislatures with measures of ballot structure and mechanism to cultivate a personal vote (MCPV), confirms the expectation.

Parliamentary Voting Procedures in Comparison

“…10. Martin (2011) argues that for the type of committee structure chosen by parliaments the mechanism through which MPs try to garner personal votes is certainly an important mediating factor, but that when explaining voting procedures, if MPs mostly do constituency service they might equally wish to demonstrate their 'power' or their positions in open votes. See also the argument by Myerson (1993).…”

“…In almost all parliaments the rules governing the use of voting methods are laid down in parliamentary standing orders that are chosen and can be modified by the parliaments themselves (Martin 2011). This implies that the parliamentary actors who exercise control over the rules of procedure are able to design them in a way that helps to advance their goals.…”

“…As the use of voting methods is typically laid down in the chambers' rules of procedures and since chambers can usually choose and modify their cameral rules (Martin 2011), the choice of parliamentary voting procedures depends on the incentives that MPs have in a political system. Therefore, in order to explain the collective choice of voting institutions in parliaments, we need to take account of the MPs' strategic incentives.…”

Legislative Organisation and its Determinants in European Parliamentary Democracies

“…Döring's (1995) edited volume, Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, contains key comparative contributions, especially by Mattson and Strøm (1995) on the role of committees; by Mattson (1995) on individual MPs' rights; and by Saalfeld (1995) In recent years, new research has emerged which builds on such previous work, but also extends it in three distinct ways. First, original, formalised theories of legislative organisation in parliamentary democracies have been formulated to explain the origin and evolution of legislative institutions, in particular legislative committees (Hallerberg 2000;Martin andVanberg 2005, 2011), agenda power (Zucchini 2011) and parliamentary debate regulation (Proksch andSlapin 2012, 2015). While inspired by models of the US Congress, these theories are deeply rooted in the mechanics of parliamentary democracies.…”

Committee autonomy in parliamentary systems – coalition logic or congressional rationales?

“…This study is extended by Yläoutinen and Hallerberg (2008) to include parliaments in Eastern Europe. A more recent analysis by Martin (2011) argues that committees 'tend to be stronger where the electoral system provides incentives for personal vote gathering, but only when fiscal particularism is the [mechanism to cultivate a personal vote]' (Martin, 2011, p. 357). Martin and Vanberg (2011) demonstrated that committees with a strong policing authority can be found in those countries with frequent coalition situations.…”