Geographic Representation in Party‐Dominated Legislatures: A Quantitative Text Analysis of Parliamentary Questions in the German Bundestag

Abstract

Political representation in European democracies is widely considered partisan and collectivist. This article, however, stresses that there is more to the representative process in European democracies than just its textbook version. It emphasizes the role of geographic representation as a complementary strategy in party‐dominated legislatures that is characterized by two distinct features. First, legislators employ distinct opportunities to participate in legislative contexts to signal attention to geographic constituents without disrupting party unity. Second, these activities are motivated by individual‐ and district‐level characteristics that supplement electoral‐system‐level sources of geographic representation. We empirically test and corroborate this argument for the German case on the basis of a content analysis of parliamentary questions in the 17th German Bundestag (2009–13). In this analysis, we show that higher levels of localness among legislators and higher levels of electoral volatility in districts result in increased geographic representation.

The Personal Sources of Responsiveness. Introduction to a Special Section

“…This resonates with a broader literature that envisions locally rooted legislators to be more inclined to be responsive to geographic interests (e.g. Tavits ; Zittel et al ). The analysis offered by Van de Voorde and de Vet comes with a grain of salt in this regard since they only find attitudinal but no behavioral effects of dual mandates.…”

“…They however demonstrate distinct behavioral patterns that indicate conscious efforts to publicly voice issues in the legislative arena that are of concern for distinct constituents. In the short run, this signals attention to affected constituents to either accommodate or mobilize concerns; in the long run, this might affect other MPs, media reports, and interest group activities, and thus have an effect on public policy (for similar findings see Martin 2011; Saalfeld and Bischof 2013;Zittel et al 2019). Parliamentary questions generally are well suited to explore individual level responsiveness from a comparative perspective since most European national parliaments allow for this form of by and large unconstrained individual participation in the legislative process (Rozenberg and Martin 2017).…”

Parliamentary Questions as an Instrument for Geographic Representation: The Hard Case of Portugal

“…It focused on Portugal, a country in which an MP's chances of re-election depend greatly on the decisions of party elites, so the dyadic relationship between MPs and their constituencies should be less likely. On the other hand, as Fernandes et al (2017) and Zittel et al (2019) suggest, some form of constituency service may still bring electoral pay-offs for the party even in countries characterised by a non-preferential electoral system, and strategic leaders should be eager to leverage the local ties and visibility of their MPs as a means of strengthening the party label. Additionally, previous studies on Portugal had already detected evidence of behaviour with a constituency focus (e.g.…”

“…Carey () argues that political parties and electoral constituencies are the two most important actors competing for the attention of MPs. This results in two ideal‐type forms of representation: partisan representation, which ‘portrays legislators as members of teams that collectively represent socially‐cohesive national coalitions of voters‘; and dyadic representation, which views MPs ‘as individual agents accountable to local, and thus geographically‐defined, constituencies‘ (Zittel et al : 682).…”

“…In western European parliamentary democracies, parties tend to be the main focus, with the extent to which constituencies can compete for the attention of MPs being dependent on several factors (see Fernandes et al ; Zittel et al ). As Däubler eloquently puts it:

‘MPs may want to work especially on issues important to the party constituency because: (1) they find these issues important per se; (2) they are in closer contact with party constituents than with other parts of the citizenry; (3) the candidate selectorate strongly cares about these matters; or (4) citizens may vote for the party or the candidate as a reward for tackling those issues.

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