Working as a team: Do legislators coordinate their geographic representation efforts in party-centred environments?

Geese, Lucas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5085-5029 and Martínez-Cantó, Javier (2023) Working as a team: Do legislators coordinate their geographic representation efforts in party-centred environments? Party Politics, 29 (5). pp. 918-928. ISSN 1354-0688

Preview

PDF (13540688221098157) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (702kB) | Preview

Abstract

Why do legislators engage in geographic representation in party-centred electoral systems, where they face weak re-election incentives to cultivate a personal vote? Existing research offers cross-pressuring incentive structures and intrinsic localism motivations as individual-level factors to explain this puzzle. In this article, we propose an alternative argument based on the principle of collective action within party-internal structures of labour division. We argue that legislators elected in the same multi-member district and under the same party label (party delegations) share collective vote-seeking incentives to collaborate with each other in order to strike a balance between the collective benefits and individual costs of constituency-oriented activities. Results from a comparative study of written parliamentary questions in Germany and Spain support our argument. Specifically, the study suggests that individual localism attributes interact with the team composition of party delegations to shape constituency-orientated behaviour.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	24 May 2022 15:03
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2023 10:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/85120
DOI:	10.1177/13540688221098157

Downloads

Actions (login required)

View Item