Speechmaking and the Selectorate: Persuasion in Nonpreferential Electoral Systems

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which legislators use legislative debates to engage in localism activities to cater to the interests of their selectorate in nonpreferential electoral systems. We define localism activities as the delivery of tangible and intangible benefits to a geographically confined constituency that is instrumental to legislators’ re-selection. Our primary argument is that legislators whose selectorate operates at the local level make more speeches with parochial references. Results show strong support for this assertion. Furthermore, we find that high district magnitude leads to higher levels of localism. We use a mixed-methods research design, combining an original data set of 60,000 debates in Portugal with qualitative evidence from elite interviews. We make a methodological innovation in the field of representation and legislative studies by using a Named Entity Recognition tool to analyze the debates.

Unpacking the politics of legislative debates

“…First, Fernandes et al (2020) analyse the impact of candidate selection institutions on speechmaking. Focusing on the Portuguese case, a least likely case for legislators to take the floor and make constituency-focused speeches, the authors find that legislators whose selectorate operates at the regional or local level have delivered more speeches with localism elements.…”

Going Local: Parliamentary Questions as a Means of Territorial Representation in the Italian Parliament

“…Shomer (2009), studying the Israeli case, did not find empirical evidence linking intraparty selection methods with legislative vote-seeking behaviour. A more recent study on Portugal (Fernandes et al, 2020) found that parliamentarians selected locally often represent their districts, despite being elected with a nonpreferential electoral system. Hypothesis 1 (H1): Decentralised candidate selection systems increase the attention devoted to the territorial constituency.…”

“…The indisputable prominence of collective representation, however, should not obscure the fact that representation also has an important dyadic component. When looking at the attitudes and behaviour of parliamentarians, empirical scholars note that some Members of Parliament (MPs) define their role as constituency members (Brouard et al, 2013;Searing, 1994) and devote some of their activity both within parliament (Borghetto et al, 2020;Däubler, 2020;Fernandes et al, 2020;Marangoni and Tronconi, 2011;Martin, 2011;Russo, 2011;Zittel et al, 2019) and outside (Brouard et al, 2013) to speak on behalf of their districts. This apparent paradox -the idea that in European countries, dyadic representation is not theoretically important and the empirical finding that a substantial proportion of MPs devote some time and effort to represent their districts -can be resolved by remembering the lesson learnt from Eulau and Karps (1977): representation has to do with being responsive to both policy and non-policy matters.…”

Unequal Geographic Representation in a Mixed-Member Electoral System: Evidence from the German Bundestag

“…Legislators in multimember districts do not target all areas of the district equally but focus their efforts on specific sub-constituencies (André and Depauw 2018;Crisp and Desposato 2004). Evidence of local representation can also be found in patterns of political speech (Fiva, Halse, and Smith 2019;Fernandes, Won, and Martins 2020). Moreover, geographic representation may have concrete effects on policies.…”