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In spite of widespread interest in the effects of electoral institutions, research has largely missed, or misspecified, the 'theoretical link' tying legislators' behaviour to the rules' formal properties. District magnitude, in particular, can operate through the number of candidates running under the same party label and the number of votes required to win (re)election. Using data from the PARTIREP cross-national legislator survey in 15 European democracies, the article demonstrates that district magnitude is a proxy of different processes in closed-list and open-list systems. The findings contribute to a better understanding of how the mechanical effects of electoral institutions translate into incentives on the part of legislators to cultivate a personal reputation. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

Electoral institutions shape the incentive that elected representatives have to cultivate a personal vote, a geographically concentrated personal vote in particular. But are electoral institutions able to make representatives do what they would not do otherwise and to make them not do what they otherwise would have done? Using data from the cross-national partirep MP survey, it is demonstrated that electoral institutions shape elected representatives' local orientation. That local orientation decreases as district magnitude grows -- regardless of what representatives think about political representation. But representatives' conceptions of representation do shape their uptake in the legislative arena from their contacts with individual constituents. The effect of the electoral incentive grows stronger as elected representatives think of representation as a bottom-up rather than a top-down process. Adapted from the source document.

How political representatives interact with constituents is contingent on the conditions under which they compete for re-election. It has been the assumption that intra-party competition shapes legislators' incentive to cultivate a personal reputation and thereby the incentive to engage in any constituency-oriented action that reputation may be built on. Using data from the PARTIREP cross-national survey among regional and national legislators in 12 European democracies, the assumption is proven to be inaccurate: focusing on more than one action at a time, it becomes clear that district magnitude increases the time representatives spend on some constituency-oriented actions and decreases the time they spend on others (even when the electoral incentive to nurture a personal reputation is strong). The article demonstrates that representatives' choice to engage in four constituency-oriented actions is related to the nature of these home styles and their electoral utility in a given context. Adapted from the source document.

Electoral institutions shape the incentive that elected representatives have to cultivate a personal vote, a geographically-concentrated personal vote in particular. But are electoral institutions able to make representatives do what they would not do otherwise and to make them not do what they otherwise would have done? Using data from the cross-national PARTIREP MP Survey, it is demonstrated that electoral institutions shape elected representatives' local orientation. Local orientation decreases as district magnitude grows - regardless of what representatives think about political representation. But representatives' conceptions of representation do shape their uptake in the legislative arena from their contacts with individual constituents. The effect of the electoral incentive grows stronger as elected representatives think of representation as a bottom-up rather than a top-down process. Adapted from the source document.

District magnitude structures the options open to voters and shapes the incentives legislators have to cultivate a personal reputation. But district magnitude can be a proxy of different 'mechanisms' tying to the electoral rules the one trait that is capable of attracting a personal vote across a wide range of electoral systems: that is, a legislator's local roots. For the first time, recent alternative measures regarding the underlying causal variable are tested using new data in the six countries. On the one hand, district magnitude is found to have the predicted differential effect on legislators' local office-holding in open-list and closed-list systems. Even as the number of legislators having held local office decreases as their electoral constituency grows in size, on the other hand it is intra-party competition that is the key. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

What are the patterns of legislator responsiveness to constituents in multi-level democracies, and what explains them? Previously, comparative research has been hampered by a lack of theory and a lack of data. The article first theorizes how constituency service may be explained by conventional arguments, such as electoral motivations and role orientations. It then considers how regionalization specifically might affect service responsiveness. Using data from the PARTIREP survey of legislators in eight multi-level democracies and six unitary democracies, the article demonstrates that national legislators devote less time to constituency service in multi-level than in unitary democracies; and that regional legislators devote more time than national legislators in multi-level democracies. While conventional arguments are important, the specific effects of regionalization are also significant in determining service responsiveness, establishing an agenda for future research of constituency service as a significant area in the study of multi-level democracy. Adapted from the source document.

Few studies have directly addressed constituent conceptions of the representative relationship. The assumption is that constituents have different preferences for elected representatives to be 'good constituency members' and that these preferences are plausibly related to their 'empowerment', their organizational capacity and parties' behaviour. Combining data from the 2009 PARTIREP Election Study (at the individual level) and the 2006 Local Politics Study (at the level of the local party organization) in Belgium, it is demonstrated that the representative relationship is interactive: although constituents' preferences and expectations ultimately shape the incentive structures for parties, they are in turn shaped by and large in reaction to what parties and politicians do. Adapted from the source document.

http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be/fiche/view/2657 ; Le fichier attaché à cette référence, version publiée de l'œuvre, est librement accessible, sans embargo, en accord avec les Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This article analyses the decision of Belgian voters to cast a preference vote on the occasion of the 2009 regional elections. And what appears is that preference votes could be given three meanings. First, preference voting appears to be a sophisticated voting behaviour more accessible to politically interested and involved voters. Less politically active voters more often limit themselves to marking their ballot on the top of the list without differentiating their support among candidates. Second, preference voting is very much a token of voter-candidate proximity. Voters are more likely to support candidates when they know one or several specific candidates directly or via the media. Finally, preference voting is also very much dependent on the structure of institutional incentives. The more influence a preference vote has on the process of intra-party seat allocation, the more likely voters are to make the effort. All in all, this article shows the diversity of motivations behind preference voting, and more importantly the different meanings it could take in elections. Adapted from the source document.

http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be/fiche/view/2657 ; Le fichier attaché à cette référence, version publiée de l'œuvre, est librement accessible, sans embargo, en accord avec les Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be/fiche/view/2726 ; Le fichier attaché à cette référence, version publiée de l'œuvre, est librement accessible, sans embargo, en accord avec les Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published