Legislatures: Identifying Representation in Delegation and Decision-Making

This Section combines Panels in the area of legislative studies that address the question of representation in different arenas of the legislative process. This encompasses topics from candidate selection to party strategies in the legislative game to decision-making within parliament. Specifically a better comprehension of the links between voters, parties, and legislators in times when many voters have disengaged from political life, is of central concern in the Section. Panels: Party strategies in different legislative contexts (Chair: Tom Louwerse, Discussant: Bjørn Erik Rasch) This Panel seeks Papers addressing the question of political parties’ strategies both in their function of seeking votes as well as in their goal of seeking government office in parliamentary regimes. Papers dealing with the priorities that parties set with regard to these goals are especially welcome. Unexplored data opportunities in legislative studies (Chair: Tamaki Ohmura, Discussant: Christian Stecker) With the growing availability and processing opportunities of digital documentation of parliamentary activities, both old and new questions of representation and decision-making can be addressed in a novel manner. This Panel primarily seeks empirical Papers using the new data opportunities and Papers addressing the appropriateness of different data sources to answer questions of representation in parliamentary democracies. Delegation and accountability in parliaments: establishing agency loss and preference representation (Chair: tbd, Discussant: Daniel Smith) This Panel addresses agency loss and preference representation from several perspectives: Can agency loss be observed and measured? And when and to which extent does it substantively impact the representation of voters’ preferences? Individualized Representation in European Parliaments (Chair: Thomas Zittel, Co-Chair: Dominic Nyhuis, Discussant: Shane Martin) Legislative research indicates a renewed interest in the representative functions of individual legislators in European parliaments. This Panel welcomes contributions that focus on new methods and concepts to analyse the behaviours of legislators in their representative functions such as text-based analyses of parliamentary questions or speeches. The Panel furthermore welcomes Papers that focus on the prerequisites of individualized representation in European parliaments. It is especially interested to explore the impact of electoral and party organizational factors and to disentangle their relative importance. Lastly, the Panel welcomes contributions that might explore the effects of individualized forms of behaviour on party unity and legislative decision-making. Roll Call Voting and Party Cohesion in Legislatures (chair: Shane Martin, discussant: David Willumsen) This Panel brings together several Papers exploring historical and contemporary data on roll call votes and the potential tension between individual members’ voting behaviour and party strategy: - Blurring the Party Line: Multiple Affiliations and Party Choice in the French Third Republic (Alexandra Elizabeth Cirone) - Parties, Legislators, and the Origins of Proportional Representation (Gary W. Cox, Jon H. Fiva, Daniel M. Smith) - Strategic Roll Call Vote Requests (Fang-Yi Chiou, Bjørn Høyland, Simon Hug) - Cue-Taking in Legislative Voting (Max Goplerud) - The Politics of Leadership Selection and Party Discipline in Parliamentary Democracies (Cristina Bucur) The role of localness in legislative politics (Chair: Audrey Vandeleene, discussant: Mihail Chiru) Political elites, party selectorates and voters alike, all seem to value locally embedded politicians, even if for different reasons. Although the local origin of candidates or elected representatives may be critical to various dimensions of our political systems this topic has received little academic attention. Our Panel welcomes contributions that address questions such as: under what institutional conditions do selectorates and voters favour local candidates? Is there a trade-off between the selection of locally embedded politicians who can win votes and party discipline in Parliament? Are legislators with a record in local politics more parochial and interested in constituency service than in policy specialization? Parliamentary Turnover in Europe and the World: Normative Yardsticks and Empirical Explanations (Chair: Athanassios Gouglas, discussant: Luca Verzichelli) As a topic of scientific research turnover has being attracting attention since the seminal work by Charles Hyneman (1936) on US state level legislatures in the 1930s. The topic witnessed a revival in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to the debate on term limits in the USA. Since 2012 turnover has attracted the attention of the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) mainly due to concerns about extremely volatile parliamentary personnel in developing democracies. Today, turnover remains primarily an American topic. Internationally comparative research, as well as single country research remains very limited. Fundamental questions to be answered: Is there an optimal level of turnover and what is the normative yardstick against which we measure it? How did turnover develop in time and what explains variability across-levels, across time? The waxing and waning of parliamentary power in the EU: the changing role of the EP and national parliaments in the EU Policy Process (chair/discussant: tbd) While the formal role of the EP in the EU's legislative process has been fixed since the expansion of the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP) in the Lisbon Treaty, the rapid decline in the number of formal legislative initiatives under the Junker Commission and the continued reliance on early agreements with the Council have dramatically reduced the centrality of the legislative process of the EP. At the same time, attempts by national parliaments to play a greater role in the EU's policy-making process continue to grow, despite significant organizational and political obstacles. Both of these dynamics are occurring within the broader context of recent increases in the number of elected representatives from Eurosceptic parties, within both the EP and many national parliaments, who are often focused on opposition and obstruction rather than policy-making. This Panel seeks empirical and theoretical Papers addressing these developments. Section Chairs: Cristina Bucur: Cristina Bucur is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at University of Oslo. Her research interests focus on executive-legislative relations and intraparty politics. Her work has been published in journals such as Party Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Comparative European Politics, and French Politics. Thomas Saalfeld: Thomas Saalfeld is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bamberg and Convenor of the ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments. His publications include The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies (with Shane Martin and Kaare W. Strøm).