Legislator activities in parliament and electoral performance in a mixed-member electoral system. The case of post-transition Hungary, 1990-2010

Students of legislative behaviour appear to agree with Mayhew’s starting point, and consider MPs as “single minded seekers of re-election”. Consequently, most of the things MPs do in the present are attributed to their individual desire to future re-election. However, within the premises of legislative studies, little attention has been paid to whether MP behaviour in parliament indeed affects electoral performance. The question regarding the link between behaviour and performance might not only justify our basic assumptions in legislative studies, but contribute to the discussion on the personal accountability of individual MPs. A steady relationship between MP behaviour and electoral performance would suggest that a certain type of legislative accountability mechanism is in place. If MPs are judged individually on the basis of their performances as legislators, they are indeed encouraged to perform better to gain extra votes at the next elections. Contrarily, no correlation between MP behaviour and their electoral fate would indicate that MPs are not held personally accountable for their actions while in office. Lessening the gap in the literature, the main question of the paper is whether there is a connection between activities carried out by legislators and their performances at the next elections. I wish to investigate this matter in a mixed-member electoral system permitting multiple candidacy which produces at least two types of MPs with different sets of incentives to act. To establish the effect of parliamentary activities on electoral outcome, I use parliamentary activity panel data from five electoral terms.