The Impact of District Magnitude on the Legislative Behavior of State Representatives

Abstract

This study demonstrates that district magnitude (the number of officials elected from an electoral district) affects the behavioral choices and policymaking contributions of legislators. We theorize that legislators elected from districts of larger magnitudes focus much of their efforts on relatively low-cost, high-visibility activities that allow for easy credit claiming, while their colleagues from lower magnitude districts focus more on relatively high-cost, low-visibility work required to move policy proposals through the legislative process. We test our hypotheses using data recording the legislative activities of members of the Maryland House of Delegates, which elects its member from districts of different magnitudes. The results, which are mostly supportive, have implications for the impact of institutional structures on representation and policymaking.

The Impact of Electoral Arrangements on Minority Representation: District Magnitude and the Election of African American State Legislators

“…The state's constitution also requires political boundaries, such as counties, cities, or municipalities, be left intact whenever possible for state house districts. Both sets of requirements impose extraordinary constraints on legislators' abilities to manipulate district boundaries (Taylor, Herrnson, and Curry 2018). Indeed, the Maryland State Supreme Court redrew the state's post-2000 legislative districts after the state legislature was unable to accomplish this task.…”

Centralidad y productividad legislativa en la Cámara de Diputados Argentina, 1983-2019

“…Trabajos previos sobre el tema tienden a utilizar modelos de conteo para estimar el efecto que diferentes variables independientes tienen sobre la efectivi-dad legislativa de los miembros del congreso. El más común ha sido el modelo de regresión binominal negativa (Anderson et al 2003;Hasecke y Mycoff 2007;Cox y Terry 2008;Taylor et al 2018). Este camino, sin embargo, tiene una desventaja: no incluye un límite máximo lógico (upper bound) en la estimación.…”

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

“…Of course, in a scenario of an actual reform, several other variables not considered in our exercise would surely be altered too (Bosch, 2014). Changes in behaviour and strategies of voters and politicians are an example of these changes (Taylor et al 2018), as many authors have stressed too by referring to the psychological impacts of electoral rules and rule changing in the traditions of Duverger (1959) and Cox (1997Cox ( , 1999aCox ( , 1999b.…”