The classification of electoral systems: Bringing legislators back in

Constituency Pressures on Committee Selection: Evidence from the Northern Ireland Assembly and Dáil Éireann

“…Although this finding should be subjected to greater scrutiny to confirm whether the results seen here are generalisable to other legislatures, this finding suggests that even if more electorally-secure legislators exhibit less constituency effort, constituency pressures to deliver particularistic goods may still compel them to pursue committee assignments that benefit their constituents -and in turn themselves as well. Given that similar personal vote-seeking motivations exist in other electoral systems besides first-past-the-post and STV (Carey and Shugart, 1995;André, Depauw, and Martin, 2016), we would expect similar results to those seen here in other candidate-centred electoral systems. This, however, needs to be explored in future research.…”

“…TDs and MLAs are elected via the single-transferable vote (STV) system. Similar to other candidatecentred electoral systems (Carey and Shugart, 1995;André, Depauw, and Martin, 2016), the ability to rank candidates according to preference in STV systems encourages TDs and MLAs to seek appointment to committees that further their re-election prospects -in line with distributive theory (Martin, 2010a). While the STV system provides TDs and MLAs with incentives to pursue their constituents' particularistic interests, this behaviour may be limited by the gatekeeping role played by parties when determining which members to select to committee.…”

“…While the disciplined parties in both legislatures may work to prevent constituency pressures from influencing committee selection, members of both chambers are elected using the single-transferable vote (STV) system. The ability to rank candidates in STV systems encourages the sort of personal vote-seeking behaviour that characterises legislatures in the US (Martin, 2010a;André, Depauw, and Martin, 2016). As a result, STV encourages members in both houses to seek appointment to committees furthering their reelection prospects.…”

Constituency Preferences and Assignment to Agriculture Committees

“…To attract personal votes that increase their chances of re-election, representatives in legislatures with personal vote systems should be more likely to seek assignment to committees with influence over policies affecting their constituents' economic interests than representatives elected in non-personal vote systems. In line with these arguments, previous research has found that representatives elected under electoral rules incentivizing personal vote seeking are more constituency oriented than those elected under rules that deemphasise individual candidates (André, Freire, and Papp, 2014;Stratmann and Baur, 2002;Heitshusen, Young, and Wood, 2005;André, Depauw, and Martin, 2016b). If representatives elected under electoral rules inhibiting identification of individual representatives are less constituency-oriented, they will be less likely to seek assignment to committees helping them to represent their constituents' preferences.…”

Key electoral institutions and rules influencing proportionality and partisan bias in Spanish politics

“…Specific predictions for real countries in concrete situations often fail because many analyses are based on too strict assumptions about the capacity of political actors to interpret the incentives provided by current electoral rules and act in accordance (Audrey and Martin, 2016). On other occasions, when the influence of a specific electoral rule is empirically investigated, the problem stems from the usual research strategy most authors employ to compare electoral outcomes across countries that have different versions of the said specific rule being tested (Clark and Golder, 2006).…”