Competing Risks, Competing Rationale: How Do Legislators Leave their Seat in the German Bundestag?

Whether, when and how do Members of the German Bundestag (MP) leave their office and what are the determinants of the different types of exit? All these questions are crucial for scholars of legislative behavior and political representation. Investigating the different patterns of outgoing MPs contributes to the understanding how MPs behave to mitigate the risks of losing the seat, why certain MPs are less vulnerable for involuntary exits or more likely to leave voluntarily. Studies of other legislatures show that the electoral failure is neither the only nor necessarily the main source of legislative turnover but previous studies on Germany focused solely on electoral defeat of incumbents. This neglects the important process of re-nomination and career ambitions for understanding the careers of MPs. In my paper, I analyze the reasons for five different types of leaving office: 1) failure in the nomination process, 2) failure in the election, 3) involuntary withdrawal due to scandals, 4) voluntary withdrawal with a subsequent job inside or outside politics and 5) voluntary retirement. These types include involuntary and voluntary exits as well as exits during a legislation term and at the time of a general election. To explain the different types of voluntary or involuntary outflow, the paper draws on various strands of theoretical literature including ambition theory, electoral system and party system incentives from legislative turnover research as well as party organizational factors that are relevant for MPs’ career decisions and different types of exit. MP’s primary goal is re-election in order to fulfil their other goals. Politicians constantly compete with intra- and inter-party challengers for the legislative seat and other political positions. MPs strategically behave to mitigate this risk of a failure in re-nomination and re-election but MPs also to move to higher positions. To achieve their goals, German politicians accumulate positions in different institutions and on different levels. For instance, positions in the party organization on district level as well as offices in local politics allow them to keep a local base against potential challengers. Moreover, positions in the parliament, like chair of a committee, gain them visibility and specialization that are likely to foster their electoral prospects as well as their chances for a career outside the parliament. We know little how the different strategies of MPs affect their duration in parliament and how they exactly drop out. To investigate the determinants of the different types, I draw on various data resources. I use information on voluntary withdrawals provided by the German Bundestag, electoral defeats by the Federal Election Commissioner, and own investigations in regional newspapers to code nomination failures and voluntary retirements for all MPs leaving the Bundestag since 1990. This yields information on about 1,500 exits from the German Bundestag. I merge this information with available data on legislators’ characteristics and the competitive context and include MPs that did not dropped-out. Hypotheses on the determinants of different types of exit are then tested with a competing-risk model.