Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

1-2022

Abstract

In most democracies, members of parliament (MPs) are elected either through a party list or by a district. We use a discontinuity in the German electoral system to investigate the causal effect of a district election on an MP’s conformity with the party line. A district election does not affect roll-call voting behavior causally, possibly due to overall high adherence to party-line voting. Analyzing the parliamentary speeches of each MP allows us to overcome the high party-line discipline with regard to parliamentary voting. Using textual analysis and machine learning techniques, we create two measures of closeness of an MP’s speeches to the party line. We find that district-elected members of parliament do not differ, in terms of speeches, from those of their party peers who have been elected through closed party lists. However, both speeches and voting correlate with district characteristics, suggesting that district elections allow districts to select more similar candidates rather than changing MPs’ behavior.

Keywords

Party line, Textual analysis, Regression discontinuity, Parliamentary speeches, Voting

Discipline

Behavioral Economics | Political Economy | Political Science

Research Areas

Applied Microeconomics

Publication

European Journal of Political Economy

Volume

71

First Page

1

Last Page

28

ISSN

0176-2680

Identifier

10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102070

Publisher

Elsevier

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102070

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