In spite of widespread scholarly interest in the ‘personalization of politics’ thesis (see e.g. Colomer 2011; Karvonen 2010; Carey and Shugart, 1995) how district magnitude shapes the intra-party dimension of electoral competition continues to elude us. There is frequently a tension between what is in the electoral interest of the party and what is in the electoral interest of an individual candidate running under the party’s label. But research has largely missed the ‘theoretical link’ tying legislators’ behaviour to the mechanical and psychological effects of district magnitude (Shugart 2008: 50). The notion that district magnitude is a proxy for the competition among co-partisans has further been challenged: (1) the ratio of co-partisan competitors to the number of seats to be won does not increase with district magnitude (Crisp et al. 2007). (2) The incentive for parochial behaviour should be analytically separated from the notion of party-centred versus candidate-centred competition; the former is better captured by the size of a legislator’s electoral constituency, moreover (Grofman 2005). The basic analytic framework presented here will (1) discuss the mechanical effects of the rules governing the allocation of seats to candidates on the scope of intra-party competition; and (2) reflect on the psychological effects they have on legislators’ choice of action.
The argument will proceed in two parts. In the first section party and district level data is used to identify the mechanical effects of district magnitude on the scope of intra-party competition by seeking to translate indices of inter-party competitiveness across a wide range of electoral rules to the intra-party dimension (e.g. Grofman and Selb 2009; see also Shugart and Watt 2011, André and Depauw 2011). The second section will then demonstrate the psychological consequences of intra-party competitiveness for legislators’ propensity to favour running a personal campaign over running a party-centred campaign. For the latter purpose data will be used from the PARTIREP cross-national survey of regional and national legislators in fifteen European advanced industrial democracies.
REFERENCES:
André, A. and S. Depauw (2011). ‘Legislators’ Local Roots: What Explains the Effect of District Magnitude’, unpublished paper.
Carey, J. and M. Shugart (1995). ‘Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: a Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas’, Electoral Studies 14(4): 417-39.
Colomer, J. (2011). Personal Representation: The Neglected Dimension of Electoral Systems. London: ECPR press.
Crisp, B., Jensen, K. and Y. Shomer (2007). ‘Magnitude and Vote-Seeking’, Electoral Studies 26(4): 727-34.
Grofman, E. (2005). ‘Comparisons among Electoral Systems: Distinguishing between Localism and Candidate-Centered Politics’, Electoral Studies 24(4): 735-40.
Grofman, E. and P. Selb (2009). ‘A Fully General Index of Political Competition’, Electoral Studies 28(2): 291-6.
Karvonen, L. (2010). The Personalization of Politics: A Study of Parliamentary Democracies. London: ECPR press.
Shugart, M. (2008). ‘Comparative Electoral Systems Research: The Maturation of a Field and the New Challenges Ahead’, in Gallagher, M. and P. Mitchell (eds). The Politics of Electoral Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 25-55.
Shugart, M. and K. Watt (2011). ‘Patterns of Intra-Party Competition in Open-List and SNTV Systems’, unpublished paper.
