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It is well known that different types of electoral systems create different incentives to cultivate a personal vote and that there may be variation in intra-party competition within an electoral system. This article demonstrates that flexible list systems - where voters can choose to cast a vote for the list as ordered by the party or express preference votes for candidates - create another type of variation in personal vote-seeking incentives within the system. This variation arises because the flexibility of party-in-a-district lists results from voters' actual inclination to use preference votes and the formal weight of preference votes in changing the original list order. Hypotheses are tested which are linked to this logic for the case of Belgium, where party-in-a-district constituencies vary in their use of preference votes and the electoral reform of 2001 adds interesting institutional variation in the formal impact of preference votes on intra-party seat allocation. Since formal rules grant Belgian MPs considerable leeway in terms of bill initiation, personal vote-seeking strategies are inferred by examining the use of legislative activity as signalling tool in the period between 1999 and 2007. The results establish that personal vote-seeking incentives vary with the extent to which voters use preference votes and that this variable interacts with the weight of preference votes as defined by institutional rules. In addition, the article confirms the effect of intra-party competition on personal vote-seeking incentives and illustrates that such incentives can underlie the initiation of private members bills in a European parliamentary system. ; DFG ; Gottlieb Daimler - and Karl-Benz-Foundation

Does representatives' legislative activity have any effect on their electoral performance? A broad theoretical literature suggests so, but real-world evidence is scarce as empirically, personal and party votes are hard to separate. In this article, we examine whether bill initiation actually helps MPs to attract preference votes under flexible list electoral systems. In these systems, voters can accept the party-provided rank order or vote for specific candidates, which allows a clear distinction between personal and party votes. The empirical analysis uses data on bill initiation by Belgian MPs in the period 2003-2007 to explain their personal vote in the 2007 elections. We find that particularly single-authored proposals initiated shortly before the upcoming elections are associated with a larger personal vote. ; DFG

Does representatives' legislative activity have any effect on their electoral performance? A broad theoretical literature suggests so, but real‐world evidence is scarce as empirically, personal and party votes are hard to separate. In this article, we examine whether bill initiation actually helps MPs to attract preference votes under flexible list electoral systems. In these systems, voters can accept the party‐provided rank order or vote for specific candidates, which allows a clear distinction between personal and party votes. The empirical analysis uses data on bill initiation by Belgian MPs in the period 2003–2007 to explain their personal vote in the 2007 elections. We find that particularly single‐authored proposals initiated shortly before the upcoming elections are associated with a larger personal vote.

Models of ideal point estimation usually build on the assumption of spatial preferences. This ignores legislators' non-policy incentives and is thus likely to produce implausible results for many legislatures. We study this problem in parliamentary systems and develop a model of roll call voting that considers both thepolicyand the non-policy,tacticalincentives of legislators. We go on to show how the relative weight of these policy and tactical incentives is influenced by the identity of the mover and characteristics of the motion. Analyses of two data sets of 2174 roll call votes in German state legislatures and 3295 roll call votes in the British House of Commons result in three main findings. First, we show that tactical incentives may be more important than policy incentives, and second, that the importance of tactical incentives varies with the importance of motions. Third, there are interesting twists: backbench private members' bills may reverse tactical incentives whereas proposals from anti-system parties are virtually always rejected by moderate parties, rendering these votes uninformative. Our findings have implications for ideal point estimation in parliamentary systems, as well as for research on separation of power systems.

Various strands of literature in comparative politics suggest that there is a differential impact of the type of government and their supporting legislative coalitions in parliamentary democracies, for example, in terms of their size and ideological heterogeneity, and on their potential to induce policy change. Most studies in this area focus on governments as agenda-setters, possibly neglecting the role of parliaments as a further key actor in policy making. In this article, we address the broader question as to how patterns of conflict within parliament effect legislative activity of governments and parliamentary actors. Through a simultaneous analysis of the success and event history of over 12,000 legislative bills in three parliamentary systems and one semi-presidential system from 1986 until 2003, we show how the interplay of actor motivations and institutional settings has a discriminating impact on the potential of both the government and parliament to induce policy change.

"In diesem Beitrag untersuchen die Autoren das Abstimmungsverhalten der Länder bei namentlichen Abstimmungen im Bundesrat im Zeitraum von der deutschen Wiedervereinigung 1990 bis zum Ende der Regierung Gerhard Schröders 2005. Sie gehen der Frage nach, ob und wenn ja, wann und in welchem Ausmaß der Bundesrat parteipolitisiert ist. Analytisch geht es um die Frage, wie ein durch originär sachpolitische Interessen motiviertes Verhalten von einem solchen unterschieden werden kann, das sich ausschließlich am strategischen Wettbewerb der Parteien um Wählerstimmen orientiert. Die Autoren entwickeln dazu eine Analysemethode, mit welcher der Zusammenhang zwischen sachpolitischen Länder- respektive Parteiinteressen und parteipolitischer Motivation, also etwa dem Druck, der durch die Parteilager ausgeübt wird, aufgelöst werden kann." (Autorenreferat)

Our knowledge about how voters decide which candidate(s) to vote for under preferential-list proportional representation (PLPR) systems remains limited. In particular, it is debated whether incumbent MPs enjoy an electoral advantage over outsiders also under PLPR. We argue that such an incumbency advantage critically depends on candidate visibility (in the media) and differs across voters with varying levels of political knowledge. Our empirical analysis combines candidate information with rich individual-level voting data collected via "mock ballots" in the 2014 Belgian PartiRep election study. We show that the vote premium linked to incumbency increases with increasing media visibility, and while high-visibility incumbents outperform incumbents among the entire electorate, low-visibility incumbents enjoy an advantage only among knowledgeable voters. The results contribute to a better understanding of candidate voting and the incumbency advantage in PLPR. They also have implications for campaign strategies and the regulation of media access.