This paper studies the efforts of politicians to reply to citizens’ individual requests. A purely vote-seeking logic shall lead candidates to respond only to voters of the district. But studies on black politicians in the US have shown that politicians may be intrinsically motivated. They may be responsive to citizens living outside their electoral district but sharing the same racial identity.
Hee, we study whether the interaction between intrinsic and electoral motivations is also present in multimember elections. We have run a field experiment on the occasion of the 2014 elections. Candidates running in Brussels were sent mails from fictive voters residing within and outside Brussels, and varying the linguistic identity of the mail sender. We find that Brussels politicians are purely vote-seeking. They reply much more to mails sent from Brussels residents and reply very rarely to voters residing outside the district. Language identity does not make any difference.
