The effect of multiple-office holding on the parliamentary activity of MPs in the Czech Republic

When even the prime minister sits on the municipal council. Analysing the value of ‘localness’ and Finnish MPs’ incentives to ‘cumulate’ in an open-list voting system

“…Perhaps, the dominant strand has analysed the impact of MP localness on legislative performance (Sällberg and Hansen 2020). In France, for example, the cumul has been widely implicated in the weak legislative performance of National Assembly deputés when evaluated in terms of their attendance at plenaries and committee sessions (Navarro et al 2012;Brouard et al 2013;Daoulas 2021) although, plainly, absenteeism of this kind is not the only or necessarily the best measure of legislative efficiency (Hajek 2017; van der Voorde 2020; Van de Voorde and de Vet 2020). In the Irish Republic the conventional wisdom held that the legislative performance of Dáil TDs suffered because a strongly parochial orientation prioritised constituency service based on the dual mandate over work in parliament (Chubb 1957;Marsh 2007;Martin 2010).…”

Mavericks or Loyalists? Popular Ballot Jumpers and Party Discipline in the Flexible-List PR Context

“…Past research on candidate selection suggests that exclusive forms of candidate selection, like this one, tend to produce loyal party soldiers (Hazan and Rahat 2010). Second, political parties enjoy wide discretionary powers over political appointments within the legislative arena and can use these to empower trusted party insiders (Hájek 2019; 2017). What is more, political parties often serve as gatekeepers to those bill proposals that are likely to attract majority support and the know-how concerning both the drafting and timing of a successful bill proposal (Däubler, Christensen, and Linek 2018; Mansfeldová 2011).…”

Is All Politics Indeed Local? A Comparative Study of Dual Mandate‐Holders’ Role Attitudes and Behaviours in Parliament

“…Some authors have focused on the electoral implications, examining the assumed electoral bonus of dual mandate‐holding (Foucault ; Ragouet and Phélippea ; Van de Voorde ). Others have directed their efforts towards the behavioural consequences such as their time‐allocation (François and Weill ; Hájek ). Logically, dual officers are obliged to devote some time to their local mandate and are, as such, unable to fully concentrate on their parliamentary duties and obligations.…”

“…Logically, dual officers are obliged to devote some time to their local mandate and are, as such, unable to fully concentrate on their parliamentary duties and obligations. Empirical evidence tends to confirm that they are generally less active in parliament, although the negative correlation was primarily detected among deputies with a local executive function (François and Weill ; Hájek ; Van de Voorde ). Such individual choices in time‐allocation might have grave institutional consequences.…”

“…Early scholars have approached the topic from a normative perspective (Debré ; Mény ) or attempted to determine the scope of cumul des mandats – the more popular term of dual mandate‐holding – by describing the number of local officers in parliament (Caille ; Knapp ). Only recently scholars have started to question the consequences of dual mandate‐holding in terms of electoral outcomes (Foucault ; Ragouet and Phélippea ), parliamentary activity and time‐allocation (Bach ; François and Weill ; Hájek ). What remains particularly underdeveloped is to what extent dual mandate‐holders feel personally responsible for the needs of their locality and are able to convert this localized attitude into substantive parliamentary behaviour.…”