15:30 - 17:45
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Thomas Fleming
Discussant/s:
Alessandro Nai
Meeting Room F

Thomas Fleming
How Does Constituency-Level Partisan Dealignment Affect Parliamentary Behaviour?

Paul Bose
Political (self-)selection and competition: Evidence from U.S. Congressional elections

Corinna Kroeber, Jan Berz
Walking the line: Electoral cycles and the shift in legislative priorities among German Parliamentarians

Monika Mühlböck, Manuel Schwaninger
Risk Preferences and Outcome Bias in the Delegation Process

Lucia Motolinia
Cultivating a Personal Vote can Increase Legislative Cohesion: Evidence from Clientelistic Parties in Mexico
Walking the line: Electoral cycles and the shift in legislative priorities among German Parliamentarians
Corinna Kroeber 1, Jan Berz 2
1 University of Greifswald
2 Trinity College Dublin

In this paper, we argue that members of parliament (MPs) balance vote-seeking and policy-seeking incentives over the electoral cycle. We ask how and why MPs change the priorities of their legislative activities during legislative terms. To answer this question, we study a unique longitudinal dataset on committee membership and parliamentary questions in the German Bundestag together with survey data on issue salience in the German public. We argue that, as elections approach, they increasingly take issues of particular salience for the population into account. However, issue ownership and party competition moderate this relationship. While most previous research understand MPs' responsiveness as a static concept, we reveal that it varies over time. The results have important implications for political representation and the capacity of parliamentary elections to secure the responsiveness of elected officials.