09:30 - 11:10
P1-S15
Room: 0A.08
Chair/s:
Lucas Martins Novaes
Discussant/s:
Aliz Toth
Electoral Reform and Geographically-Targeted Questions in Parliamentary Oversight: Evidence from Taiwan
P1-S15-4
Presented by: Yen-Chieh Liao
Yen-Chieh Liao
University of Birmingham
Electoral systems significantly shape legislators' expressions of constituency service. Drawing on 148,764 written questions submitted to Taiwan's Legislative Yuan between 1999 and 2019, this paper examines how the electoral reform from single non-transferable vote (SNTV) to single member district mixed-member majoritarian (SMD-MMM) affected legislators' incentives to pursue particularistic benefits for their constituencies. To evaluate the impact of this electoral reform, I employed regression analysis controlling for district and legislator attributes, alongside state-of-the-art transformer architectures fine-tuned with pork barrel-annotated legislation. The findings reveal that the electoral reform had complex effects on legislators' asking of pork barrel questions during ministerial oversight. While the overall likelihood of pork barrel questions decreased under SMD compared to SNTV, the effects varied substantially across district-level socioeconomic conditions. Specifically, legislators from districts with higher population density, income levels, and unemployment rates show stronger tendencies toward pursuing particularistic benefits, reflecting intensified electoral accountability pressure under the SMD system compared to SNTV.
Keywords: Electoral systems, parliamentary questions, single non-transferable vote (SNTV), single member district mixed-member majoritarian (SMD-MMM)

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