Individualized Political Representation and its Prerequisites

本计划实证探讨竞选沟通作为选举机构与立法者立法行为之间的中介机制所扮演的角色。它认为，在立法环境中代表地方无党派选民的动机源于以候选人为中心的选举制度，并受到个性化竞选沟通的影响。因此，选择个性化竞选策略以赢得选票的政党可能会促进个人主义形式的立法行为，而不是集体主义形式的立法行为。本项目旨在通过对2009年德国联邦选举中成功候选人的竞选行为与2017年的立法行为相匹配的综合数据集，对德国案例的这一理论论点进行实证检验和证实。德国联邦议院。这组新数据来自2009年德国候选人研究中收集的现有数据和新收集的2009年成功候选人立法行为的综合数据（N=196）。德国的案例为准实验设计提供了一个自然环境，允许在选举激励水平上存在差异，同时保持第三个变量不变。

This planned project empirically explores the role of campaign communication as a mechanism mediating between electoral institutions and legislators legislative behavior. It perceives incentives to represent local non-partisan constituencies in legislative contexts to originate from candidate-centered electoral systems and to being mediated by personalized campaign communication. As a consequence, parties that opt for personalized campaign strategies in order to win votes might facilitate individualistic forms of legislative behavior compared to collectivist ones. This project aims to empirically tests and corroborate this theoretical argument for the German case on the basis of an integrated set of data matching the campaign behavior of successful candidates in the 2009 German Federal Elections with their legislative behavior in the 17. German Bundestag. This new set of data draws from existing data collected in the context of the 2009 German Candidate Study and newly collected comprehensive data on the legislative behavior of successful candidates in 2009 (N=196). The German case provides a natural environment for a quasi-experimental design allowing for variance at the level of electoral incentives while keeping third variables constant.