Personal vote-seeking in flexible list systems: How electoral incentives shape Belgian MPs' bill initiation behaviour
Personal vote-seeking in flexible list systems: How electoral incentives shape Belgian MPs' bill initiation behaviour
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1475-6765.2011.02047.x
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发表时间：
2012-08-01
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Daeubler, Thomas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Braeuninger, Thomas;Brunner, Martin;Daeubler, Thomas
众所周知，不同类型的选举制度会产生不同的激励因素来培养个人投票，而且在选举制度内，党内竞争可能会有所不同。这篇文章表明，灵活的名单制度，选民可以选择投票的名单排序的党或表达偏好的候选人投票创建另一种类型的变化，在系统内的个人投票寻求激励。这种差异的产生是因为选区政党名单的灵活性源于选民实际上倾向于使用偏好票，以及偏好票在改变原始名单顺序时的正式权重。假设进行测试，这是链接到这种逻辑的情况下，比利时，在一个区的政党选区不同，在他们使用的偏好票和2001年的选举改革增加了有趣的制度变化的正式影响，偏好票对党内席位分配。由于正式规则给予比利时国会议员相当大的回旋余地，在法案的启动，个人寻求投票的策略推断，通过检查使用的立法活动作为信号工具，在1999年至2007年期间。结果表明，个人投票寻求激励不同的程度上，选民使用的偏好票，这个变量与偏好票的权重所定义的制度规则相互作用。此外，文章还证实了党内竞争对个人寻求选票的激励的影响，并说明了这种激励可以成为欧洲议会制度中私人议员法案发起的基础。
It is well known that different types of electoral systems create different incentives to cultivate a personal vote and that there may be variation in intra-party competition within an electoral system. This article demonstrates that flexible list systems where voters can choose to cast a vote for the list as ordered by the party or express preference votes for candidates create another type of variation in personal vote-seeking incentives within the system. This variation arises because the flexibility of party-in-a-district lists results from voters' actual inclination to use preference votes and the formal weight of preference votes in changing the original list order. Hypotheses are tested which are linked to this logic for the case of Belgium, where party-in-a-district constituencies vary in their use of preference votes and the electoral reform of 2001 adds interesting institutional variation in the formal impact of preference votes on intra-party seat allocation. Since formal rules grant Belgian MPs considerable leeway in terms of bill initiation, personal vote-seeking strategies are inferred by examining the use of legislative activity as signalling tool in the period between 1999 and 2007. The results establish that personal vote-seeking incentives vary with the extent to which voters use preference votes and that this variable interacts with the weight of preference votes as defined by institutional rules. In addition, the article confirms the effect of intra-party competition on personal vote-seeking incentives and illustrates that such incentives can underlie the initiation of private members bills in a European parliamentary system.