10:00 - 11:30
Panel Session 3
Room: Zoom
Moderator/s:
Mats Ahrenshop
Unbreakable legacies? Redistricting, Political Capital and the Personal Vote
Brenda Van Coppenolle 1, Carlos Velasco Rivera 2
1 University of Essex, Colchester
2 IAST, Toulouse

Political dynasties are a puzzling feature of democracies. Political capital, including the personal vote, can be shared in families and may explain why political dynasties endure. This paper provides the first causal evidence of an institutional reform that can remove these electoral advantages and break family legacies. We exploit Britain's Redistribution of Seats Act, mandating the abolition of constituencies below a population threshold. We find little evidence that redistricting affected incumbents' immediate electoral success. Yet those whose seats were abolished were less likely to have relatives entering the House of Commons afterwards. The differences are not driven by fewer immediate successions in the next election, but by having fewer new relatives running and elected over the short-run, i.e. up to 1918. Our paper highlights an understudied long-term consequence of redistricting: increased competition by shifting the distribution of power across generations.


Reference:
Fr-P3-03
Session:
Political Economy, Public Policy and Administration
Presenter/s:
Brenda Van Coppenolle
Topic:
EU Politics
Presentation type:
Oral presentation
Room:
Zoom
Moderator/s:
Mats Ahrenshop
Date:
Friday, 19 June
Time:
10:30 - 10:45
Session times:
10:00 - 11:30

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