Electoral Systems and the Personal Vote

Abstract

Electoral incentives, it has long been argued, drive the behaviour of legislators (Mayhew 1974; Strøm 1997). Central to their electoral calculations is the relative value of personal over party reputations in securing re-election and the key to this relative value is intra-party competition, Carey and Shugart (1995) famously argued. Where intra-party competition is present, legislators have to emphasize those traits and engage in those activities that set them apart from other candidates. Their incentive to cultivate a personal vote increases as the number of co-partisan competitors grows. Where there is no intra-party competition, on the other hand, the importance legislators attach to a personal reputation decreases with the number of co-partisans. Although numerous studies were inspired by Carey and Shugart’s (1995) hypothesis, none of them have been successful in identifying the mechanism(s) linking formal electoral rules to legislators’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote (Shugart 2008: 50). The hypothesized differential effect rests upon the assumption that, depending on the electoral environment, voters will become more or less likely to support candidates exhibiting particular ‘personal vote-earning attributes’ and behaviours. In turn, political parties seeking to maximize their vote and seat-share are assumed to select candidates engaging in actions corresponding with the shortcuts voters employ and will reserve them the best positions on the list. The panel seeks to address the effects of electoral systems on the intra-party dimension. We invite papers focusing on how formal electoral rules translate into incentives for legislators to emphasize certain attributes and prioritize particular actions in and outside parliament over others. Papers linking electoral rules to voters’ decision-making processes and motives, on the one hand, and to the composition of party lists, on the other, are also welcomed. Priority will be given to comparative studies, but case-studies and theoretical papers will be considered as well.

Title	Details
Preferential Voting in Denmark	View Paper Details
Personal Representation, Ballot Structure and Satisfaction with Democracy in the European Union	View Paper Details
Preference Votes: the Dutch electoral system and the meaning of a personal vote	View Paper Details
Voting for Locals? Personal Vote in Spanish General Elections	View Paper Details
Does Candidate-Centred Proportional Representation with Open List breed Local Electoral Politics SMD-like?	View Paper Details
Electoral Rules and Legislators’ Personal Vote-Seeking in European Democracies	View Paper Details
Choosing a Style of Representation: The Role of Institutional and Organisational Incentives	View Paper Details