From Institutional Incentives to Parliamentary Behavior? Institutional and Behavioral Personalism Across 30 Democracies

The institutional approach posits that political institutions shape behavior by creating opportunities and incentives for certain actions while constraining others (North, 1990; Hall and Taylor, 1996; Ostrom, 2005). This has also been argued in the context of personalism, claiming that institutional arrangements that grant legislators greater opportunities and incentives for individual behavior may encourage them to cultivate personal reputation, seek personal visibility, and advance individual goals. Conversely, institutions that concentrate power at the party level and foster collegiality are more likely to encourage legislators to align their behavior with the party and act as team players. This paper examines whether institutional personalism in electoral systems and parliamentary institutions is associated with behavioral personalism among MPs across 30 democracies. Behavioral personalism is measured through the share of legislation originated in parliament and the lack of parliamentary party group cohesion. The exploratory findings provide only partial support for the expected relationship. Electoral system personalism shows no association with lower PPG cohesion and a negative association with parliament-originated legislation, while parliamentary personalism is associated with lower PPG cohesion but only weakly with parliament-originated legislation. A closer examination of the parliamentary mechanisms shows that more personalized rules governing MPs’ parliamentary career advancement are positively associated with a greater share of parliament-originated legislation and show a weaker association with lower cohesion. The configurational analysis of both institutional variables reveals no uniform progression from institutional to behavioral personalism.