Electoral Institutions.pdf

8/11/2019 Electoral Institutions.pdf

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SHANE MARTINDublin City University

Electoral Institutions,

the Personal Vote, and

Legislative Organization

What is the relationship between electoral institutions and the internal organiza-tion of legislatures? Existing research on the U.S. Congress suggests that electoralincentives shaped by the candidate-centered nature of congressional elections explain theemergence of strong committees in that legislature. Exploring the issue from a compara-tive perspective, it is argued that the impact of ballot structure on committee systemstructure is dependent onhowlegislators cultivate personal votes. Committees will bestronger when legislators supply fiscal legislative particularism (pork), but weaker when

legislators cultivate support by delivering extra-legislative constituency service. Statisti-cal analysis, combining original data on committee design in 39 democratic legislatureswith measures of ballot structure and mechanism to cultivate a personal vote (MCPV),confirms the expectation.

Scholars of legislative politics have long recognized the potentialfor electoral rules to impact not just the behavior of individual legislators

but the design of legislative structures. One of the principal theories ofAmerican politics suggests that incentives for incumbents to cultivate

personal votes explain the emergence of strong standing committees asthe most significant organizational feature of the modern Congress (Katzand Sala 1996; Shepsle and Weingast 1987).1 Members of Congress,faced with the need to cultivate personal votes, create strong standingcommittees to decentralize power, allowing them to deliver electorallyrewarding, geographically targeted, particularistic spending. The widerimplication of this distributive theory of congressional organization isthat candidate-centered electoral systems should result in legislatureswith strong committees. While the candidate-centered electoral system issaid to produce strong committees in Congress, other personal voteelectoral environments exist alongside legislatures with weak committeesystems.This observation calls into question the degree to which a causal

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXXVI, 3, August 2011 339DOI: 10.1111/j.1939-9162.2011.00018.x 2011 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa


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connection between electoral rules and legislative structures can begeneralized.

This article argues that the connection between electoral systemsand committee structures is more complicated than existing accounts

provide for. The core suggestion is that a key component of the rela-tionship between electoral systems and legislative organization has

been overlooked.Howlegislators cultivate personal votes matters. Thearticle demonstrates that the mechanism to cultivate a personal vote(hereafter, MCPV) shapes legislators preferences over institutionaldesign. Committees will be stronger when personal vote seeking leg-islators supply fiscal particularism (pork) but weaker when legislatorscultivate personal support by delivering extra-legislative constituencyservice.

This research has broader consequences for scholarship on theimpact of electoral rules, particularly in research where the personal voteis used to explain policy outcomes (see, for example, Hallerberg andMarier 2004). In much of the existing research the personal vote has

become synonymous with fiscal particularism. We aim to undermine theuniversalism of this claim, arguing instead that the level of incentive tocultivate a personal vote has systematically different consequencesdepending on the mechanisms used by politicians to cultivate personalvotes.

This research also contributes to a significant and growingresearch agenda that adapts theories of Congressional organization tohelp better understand the legislative process in other settings. Suchapproaches have the double benefit of testing the generalizability oftheories of American politics while also helping to explain previouslyunexplained patterns of institutional design in other legislatures.Despite the rich body of literature seeking to explain the centrality of

committees in Congress, virtually no research has sought to generalizethe electoral system-committee system connection to other settings.This article addresses that gap by looking, theoretically and empirically,at the relationship between ballot structure and committee systemstrength in 39 different democracies.

In the next section, the extant literature linking electoral systemsand legislative structures is reviewed briefly. Subsequently, the rationalefor differentiating MCPVs and the theoretical significance of doing sofor our understanding of how electoral systems help shape internal leg-

islative structures are presented. Next, the data, including a new measureof committee strength in 39 national legislatures, is introduced and usedto test the theoretical proposition.The article concludes with a discussionof the broader implications of this research.

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Background: Electoral Systems, the Personal Vote,and Legislative Structures

How individual legislators act to increase their likelihood of reelec-tion has been the subject of much scholarly interest. Among the earliestand most familiar is Mayhews (1974) assertion that members of the U.S.House of Representatives seek to achieve their electoral goals by provid-ing particularistic benefits and services to their constituents.The personalvote, defined as the part of a candidates vote that is based on his or herindividual characteristics or record (Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1987),can be critical to gaining reelection. A range of different mechanismsexist to enhance the personal vote, but all typically revolve around build-ing a reputation among constituents for providing benefits or services tothe district or individuals within the district.

The degree to which the personal vote matters depends on theelectoral system. In a seminal contribution, Carey and Shugart (1995)suggest that different electoral systems provide different incentives tocultivate personal votes. They show how electoral systems can be char-acterized meaningfully based on the extent to which they require indi-vidual legislators to build a personal reputation in order to be reelected.Legislators elected via party-centered ballots have the least incentive torespond actively to individual constituents and are thus less likely tofocus on building and maintaining a direct link with the electorate.Where ballot structures are candidate-centered, electors decide betweenindividual candidates and, therefore, the need to cultivate personal votesis greatest in these types of electoral systems. Typically, this involvesresource-intensive reputation building by the member in his or her dis-trict, in keeping with what Searing (1994) identifies as the role and

behavior of a good constituency member. Strategies to build personal

votes include undertaking casework for individual constituents (Cain,Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1987; Heitshusen, Young, and Wood 2005). Otherexamples of district-focused work which enhances the personal voteinclude providing fiscal particularism, achieved through earmarks that

benefit a members district but which are paid for out of general taxationfunds.

While we have long understood the role of electoral rules inshaping the party system, scholars of national legislatures outside theUnited States have only recently begun to probe more closely the rela-

tionship between electoral system design and the behavior of individualmembers once elected (see, for example, Carey 2007, 2009; Cox andRosenbluth 1993; Depauw and Martin 2009; Farrell and Scully 2007;Hix 2004; Lancaster 1986; Lancaster and Patterson 1990; Scully and

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Farrell 2003; Sieberer 2010; Stratmann and Baur 2002). Legislatureswith members elected and/or seeking reelection under different electoralrules provide an interesting opportunity to test the effect of electoral ruleson legislative behavior. Lancaster and Patterson (1990) find evidence thatGerman legislators elected under single-member plurality perceive it asmore important to provide geographically targeted projects than do PRlegislators in the same chamber. Stratmann and Baur (2002), also lookingat the German Bundestag, find that committee assignments of pluralityand PR legislators are systematically differentplurality German legis-lators seek committee assignments where they can reward geographically

based constituents, whereas PR legislators tend to stay away from thesecommittees.

The most compelling argument for a link between electoral systemsand legislators preferences over internal legislative structures, as distinctfrom behavior, is provided by scholars of the U.S. Congress who havelong posited a relationship between the electoral system used to elect theHouse of Representatives and the shape of legislative structures withinCongress. More specifically, strong legislative committees within Con-gress are associated with the candidate-centered electoral environmentand the related need for members of Congress to cultivate a personal votein order to secure reelection. Katz and Sala (1996), for example, arguethat with the emergence of theAustralian ballot and the resulting need forincumbent members to cultivate a personal vote, legislators looked tocommittees as a means of creating policy changes (and redistributive

benefits) for which they could claim credit in their home districts. Inexplaining the strength of committees in Congress, Shepsle and Weingast(1987) explore the role of committees in meeting the electoral needs ofmembers of Congress. They argue that strong committees exist because,in effect, committees serve to allow members to cultivate personal votes.

Members choose to organize the legislature not around strong parties butaround committees with strong property rights that allow members safe-guard policy issues of most concern to their constituents and ultimatelydistribute particularistic spending projects to their districts. Figure 1depicts the conventional view of the relationship between personal voteand committee structures. As the incentive to cultivate the personal voteincreases, so too should the strength of committees in the legislature (perthe electoral connection argument).

Despite such evidence, there is a, perhaps detrimental, weakness to

the argument that candidate-centered electoral systems produce legisla-tures with strong committees: the observation does not hold when weexplore committee structure and electoral systems in other countries.Qualitative studies of other political systems have demonstrated that

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while candidate-centered electioneering produces strong committees inthe United States, other candidate-centered systems, with the same oreven stronger incentives to cultivate a personal vote, produce weak leg-islative committees in other countries. For example, under the SingleTransferable Vote electoral system, Irish legislators face significantincentives to cultivate personal votes, not least because they mustcompete with copartisans for the same seats in parliament.2 Yet, the Irish

parliament has a long tradition of weak committees (MacCarthaigh2005). Arguments that this difference is due to the presidential nature ofAmerican government and the parliamentary nature of other regimes

become less compelling when we observe strong committees operatingwithin parliamentary regimes and more generally when significant varia-tion in committee system structures across legislatures operating under

parliamentarism is detected (Mattson and Strm 1995). We are left witha puzzle: are committee structures really the result of legislators elec-toral needs, and if so, what explains the variation in committee structureseven when incentives produced by the electoral systems do not vary?

FIGURE 1Conventional Relationship between

Ballot Structure and Committee System

Strong

WeakElectoral System

Weak Personal Vote Strong Personal VoteIncentives Incentives

CommitteeStrength



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Personal Vote-Cultivating Mechanisms

To understand better the relationship between ballot structure andlegislative organization, it is necessary to recognize the consequencesof different mechanisms to cultivate a personal vote (MCPV). Thisapproach builds on the existing understanding of legislative behavior: itassumes that legislators are goal oriented. The proximate goal is to gainreelection, and the design of internal legislative structures, such as com-mittee systems, will be shaped by the incumbents electoral needs. To bereelected, legislators need to expend effort on cultivating votes. In thecase of candidate-centered electoral systems, legislators must work tocultivate personal votes in their geographical district. Legislators whoneed to cultivate personal votes have access to different MCPVs but theexact nature of these vote-gathering mechanisms vary from legislature tolegislature. The contribution of this research, and where it departs fromthe existing literature, is in recognizing that differences in how legislatorscultivate votes ultimately determines legislators preferences over inter-nal legislative structures.

To understand how MCPV may differ from polity to polity, it isworth comparing and contrasting how legislators in the United Statesand the United Kingdom cultivate personal votes. In the United States,incumbents rely on a number of mechanisms: these include obtainingfederal tax dollars for spending projects within the districtcommonlyreferred to as pork barrel projects, earmarks, or more formally as fiscallegislative particularism, undertaking casework for individual constitu-ents or groups within the district and a range of other activities, such asarranging tours of federal buildings, nominating Congressional interns,and attending public meetings and other events in their district. In theUnited Kingdom, legislators do not typically secure or seek to secure

particularistic spending projects for their district (Norris 1997; Nortonand Wood 1993). Instead, British MPs devote considerable time to extra-legislative constituency service, which, according to Norris (1997) hasfour components: dealing with constituency casework, holding meetingsor surgeries with individual constituents, attending local party meet-ings, and attending other functions in their constituency. Notably absentfrom this list is work to secure pork spending projects for their district.Where the executive has budgetary authority and the sole right to intro-duce what are often referred to as money bills (bills with a spending

element), it becomes impractical for individual legislators to cultivatepersonal votes by means of fiscal particularism. As others have demon-strated, British MPs, like legislators in many countries, have no oppor-tunity to generate fiscal particularism for their districts (Cain, Ferejohn,

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and Fiorina 1987). As a result, British MPs rely on extra-legislativemechanisms to enhance their reputation with constituents.

In contrast to the above evidence, existing research, while identi-fying different patterns of constituency activity, has tended to treat all

personal vote gathering strategies as being the same in terms of conse-quence. Here, not only do we draw attention to the obvious differences

between legislative particularism and extra-legislative parochialism(service to a district or constituent that is not based on securing publicspending projects) but highlight the need to explore the consequences ofdifferent MCPVs, particularly as it applies to members preferences overinternal legislative organization.

Legislators elected under candidate-centered ballot structures areobligated by virtue of the electoral system to focus on cultivating per-sonal votes, but the MCPV ultimately determines how the legislature will

be organized. To clarify, let us think deductively about two differentlegislative settings, the first where individual legislators can target fiscal

particularism to their geographical districts and a second scenario wherebudgetary rules and the executive-legislative relationship make it impos-sible or unlikely that individual legislators will be able to impact spend-ing plans. In the first, we would expect legislators to cultivate a personalvote by securing particularistic spending, in the second we would expectthe members to be focused on providing alternative, nonfiscal, parochial

benefits to constituents. Where individual legislators can target particu-laristic benefit to their constituents, there is every reason to expect thelogic of the electoral connection theory to hold. Where committees

provide opportunities for reputation building with constituents, and theelectoral system is candidate centered, legislators will have an incentivenot just to participate in committee work but to ultimately ensure anincumbency advantage by building a strong committee system where

legislators property and distributional rights can be used to ingratiatethem with their geographical constituency.The key point here, as stressedin earlier work (Shepsle and Weingast 1987), is that this relationship

between cultivating personal votes and strong committees holds becauseindividual members can use committees to build personal votes in theirdistrict.

Absent the opportunity for gaining credit back home for legisla-tive particularism, individual legislators will think more carefully aboutallocating their limited time and scarce resources to committee work,

especially given that time-intensive extra-chamber activity are morelikely to enhance their opportunities for reelection. Focusing on constitu-ency service leaves little time for legislators to perform nonparochiallegislative roles such as active involvement in committee work.



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Frequently, legislative committees perform the role of assessing pro-posed legislation and holding the executive to account. In many legisla-tive settings, committee work relates to issues of national policy which

provides little opportunity for individual legislators to differentiate them-selves in terms of constituent interests and build personal reputationswith individual constituents. A strong committee system may be elector-ally costly to a member who would be better served, in terms of enhanc-ing their personal vote, focusing on local politics outside the legislativesetting. In political systems where the MCPV is nonlegislative and there-fore more reliant on brokerage or other forms of direct voter contact,members have little incentive to sit on committees. On the contrary,committee work could actively interfere with personal vote gatheringactivities such as spending time in the constituency, meeting constituentsor undertaking constituency casework. Ultimately, where the design ofcommittee systems is determined by the legislature itself, and wherecommittees provide no avenue for particularistic spending credit taking,we would not expect to see the emergence of strong committees. Seeingno electoral benefit to committee work, members will shy away fromhaving strong committees to which they would be expected to dedicatetime, effort and other scarce resources.

This argument is displayed graphically in Figure 2 and can becontrasted with the conventional perspective, as shown in Figure 1. InFigure 2, the relationship between ballot structure and committee systemisconditionalon the MCPV. In essence, ballot structure interacts withMCPV to determine the shape of legislative structures. Where the MCPVis fiscal particularism, or where fiscal particularism is an important toolto cultivate personal votes, and the electoral system is candidate centered,we should expect to find strong committees. Indeed, as the predictedresults show, we might expect committee systems to be stronger, the

more significant the personal vote, assuming the MCPV is some form ofgeographically targeted legislative particularism. Where the MCPV issome form of extra-legislative constituency service, the effect of ballotstructure on committee system design is the opposite: the greater theincentive to cultivate personal votes the weaker the committee system.

In summary, we expect to find stronger committee systems inlegislatures where members are expected to cultivate a personal vote bymeans of providing particularistic spending and relatively weaker com-mittees in systems where the available mechanism to cultivate personal

votes is extra-legislative in nature. This hypothesis will be empiricallytested in the next section. Before turning to the empirical tests, we firstdiscuss three issues of central importance: first, what determines theMCPV available to a legislator? Second, we discuss whether the two

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MCPVs are, or need to be, mutually exclusive. Finally, we traceexactly how individual legislators preferences translate into legislativeinstitutions.

Why personal vote mechanisms vary from country to country isbeyond the scope of this article, although in future research we intend tolook more closely at the causes of cross-national variation in MCPV.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons to explicitly treat the availableMCPV as being exogenous to the legislature.The key players in our story(members of the legislature) typically do not have the ability to changethe rules of the game concerning which MCPV are available to them.Research on legislative rules and executive-legislative rules highlightsthe presence of a constitutional or higher-law provision stipulating exclu-sive executive authority over fiscal matters in many countries (Wehner

2010). Given the number of veto players needed to change constitutional/higher-law provisions, it seems fair to assume that, in most cases at least,individual legislators have little or no control over whether or not the

political system permits legislative particularism.3

FIGURE 2The Interactive Effect of Mechanism to Cultivate a Personal Vote on

the Relationship between Ballot Structure and Committee System

Strong

WeakElectoral System

Weak Personal Vote Strong Personal VoteIncentives Incentives

CommitteeStrength Mech

anism=Le

gislativeP

articularism

Mechanism=Extra-legislativeService



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It should be noted that legislators frequently have more than oneMCPV available to them. In many political systems, Japan and theUnited States being the clearest examples, legislators rely on a combi-nation of fiscal particularism and extra-legislative MCPVs. The distinc-tion to be made is between systems where the MCPV is solely extra-legislative and systems where fiscal particularism or a combination offiscal particularism and extra-legislative are used by legislators toenhance their personal vote. Certainly, it may be the case that committeeswould be strongest in purely particularistic political systems. Not beingaware of a political system where fiscal particularism is the only MCPVemployed, we consider only two different forms of MCPVone wherefiscal particularism is absent and one where fiscal particularism is presentalongside extra-legislative mechanisms.

Finally, let us consider why it is appropriate to treat committeesystem structures as being endogenous to the legislature, given that wetreat MCPV as being exogenous. It is the standard assumption in much ofthe literature on legislative institutions that the design and shape of theseinstitutions are fashioned by their members. In the majority of politicalsystems, the design of legislative committees appears to be set out in that

parliaments standing orders, and these standing orders typically allowthe membership of the chamber to amend and alter structures and pro-cesses. An exception is the French Republic, where the Constitution ofthe Fifth Republic sets out broad parameters for the structure and opera-tion of National Assembly committees. Yet even in the case of France,legislators have been able to impact the functioning and shape of com-mittees. They have, for example, overcome the constitutional limit ofhaving only five committees by creating a number of subcommittees thateffectively operate as committees.Although the French National Assem-

bly should serve as a case where committee design is exogenous,

members have altered the workings and structures of committees in theFrench legislature.

The Irish case further illuminates the degree to which a committeesystemcanbechangedbytheparliamentitselfbutwhereboththeelectoralsystem and rules governing the ability of individual legislators to producefiscal particularism are exogenous. The Irish constitution, which can only

be amended through the referendum process, stipulates in Article 16.2.5that members shall be elected by proportional representation by means ofthe single transferable vote. Interestingly, referendums in 1959 and 1968

to change the electoral system, proposed by the dominant Fianna Filparty, failed and the electoral system remains as originally designed in1937. The Irish constitution also effectively prevents legislative particu-larism. Article 17.2 of theConstitution of Irelandstipulates that:

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Dil ireann shall not pass any vote or resolution, and no law shallbe enacted, for the appropriation of revenue or other public moneysunless the purpose of the appropriation shall have been recom-mended to Dil ireann by a message from the Government signed

by the Taoiseach.4

In contrast, the organization of Dil ireanns committee system isa matter for the chamber itself. Indeed, the Irish committee system hasundergone significant changes in organization, structure and signifi-cance, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s (MacCarthaigh 2005).5

Data and Method

To test the argument that personal vote electoral systems inducestrong committees only under conditions allowing for fiscal particular-ism, each of the three key variables are quantified: committee systemstructure, incentive to cultivate a personal vote, and the prevalence orabsence of fiscal legislative particularism (MCPV). Included in theanalysis are all countries with a population over 300,000 that have beendemocracies for 15 or more years. Due to data limitations, Switzerland,Cape Verde, Uruguay, and Benin have been excluded. The remaining 39democracies provide a variety of electoral institutions, legislative struc-tures, and MCPV.

In the regression analysis, the dependent variable is the structure ofcommittees in the legislature, or more precisely, the degree to whichcommittees in the legislature are strong. A strong committee system isdefined as one that is structurally equipped with the ability to impact thelegislative process. Although committees have received significant atten-

tion in scholarly research, little comparative work exists which providesa cross-national measure of committee systems strength. A new dataseton committee structures covering each of the 39 national legislatures isgenerated with the help of expert surveys and a content analysis of eachlegislatures standing orders. The variableCommitteeis a 7-point indexof the strength of the committee system in each of the 39 legislaturesincluded in this study (see appendix for more details). The focus is oncross-national differences in committee structure at a particular period oftime. Because of data limitations, the issue of temporal changes in com-

mittee structure within parliaments is not considered, although we wouldnot expect to see a great degree of over-time variation given that com-mittee structures are, like other political institutions, sticky and relativelyconstant over time.



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To measure the degree to which incumbents must respond to theparticularistic needs of individual constituents, Carey and Shugarts theo-retical framework on the personalvote and electoral formulas is employed(Carey and Shugart 1995). They propose focusing on three differentcharacteristics of electoral formulas common to all electoral systems: (1)

ballot, which measures the degree to which parties control access to theballot and, in the case of list systems, a candidates ranking on that ballot,(2) pool, which measures the extent to which candidates are elected byvirtue of their party label or by virtue of their personal ability to attractvotes, and (3) vote, which measures whether or not electors cast one ormultiple preferences, based on the assumption that if electors can expressonly one preference then legislators will have a greater incentive to serveconstituents individual needs. Combining each of these three characteris-tics, Carey and Shugart (1995) arrive at an index of particularism, whichforms the basis of our variable,Ballot Structure.6 Data are from Johnsonand Wallacks (2010)Database of Electoral Systems and the PersonalVote. Additional data for countries not included in that database weresourced from the International Institute for Democracy and ElectoralAssistance (IDEA) Database on Electoral System Design.

We interact ballot structure with the level of fiscal particularismpresent in the polity. Recall that fiscal particularism is one of two possibleMCPVs. Operationalizing this variable is no easy task, given that nocomparative measure of fiscal particularism is available. In existingstudies, the electoral system is often taken as a proxy for particularismthe argument being that candidate-centered electoral systems will lead tofiscal legislative particularism (Lancaster 1986). Given that the argumentin this article expressly rejects the universalism of this causal link, it isnecessary to think more critically about how to derive a more nuancedmeasure of legislative particularism. Due to the often hidden nature of

legislative particularistic spending, it is difficult to obtain a very precisecross-national measure of the phenomenon. The variableMCPV (Fiscal

Particularism)attempts to capture whether or not legislative particular-ism is a significant feature of incumbents attempts to cultivate a personalvote. It takes one of two values: 0 if legislative particularism has the

potential to be a significant feature of the polity and 1 if earmarking isincapable of being, or unlikely to be, a significant feature of the legisla-tive process in that country. The values for each country for the variable

MCPV(Fiscal Particularism)were coded from an analysis of the bud-

getary powers of national legislatures. In particular, we focused on thepower of the legislature to amend the annual budget proposed bythe executive. Logically, the ability of the legislature to amend the budgetand add spending programs is a necessary condition for particularistic

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spending to be an element of the political system. Data for legislativebudgetary power is taken from the OECD/World BankStudy of Budget-ary Practices and Procedures (2003). A country is coded as havinglegislative particularism only if there is no restriction placed on the powerof the legislature to change the balance and composition of the budget.For countries included in this sample but for which the OECD/WorldBank provides no data, information was collected through correspon-dence with the relevant national parliaments and subsequently coded.Using the budgetary powers of a legislature is not a perfect measure ofthe degree to which legislative particularism is present in a polity. It is,however, the best available proxy at this time and one of the first attemptsto categorize the degree of pork barrel politics in different politicalsystems without relying on the general characteristics of the electoralsystem as a proxy for the likelihood of fiscal particularism.

A number of other factors that may be responsible for the emer-gence and maintenance of a strong committee system within the legis-lature are controlled for. The variable Cameral Structure identifieswhether the legislature is unicameral or bicameral. It may be that com-mittee systems emerge in some legislatures to manage cameral relations,and thus bicameral structures may be associated with strong committees(Diermeier and Myerson 1999). Conventional accounts of legislativestructures draw conclusions about the role of the legislature in the wider

political system. To account of this, the variablePresidentialmeasureswhether the polity is presidential or parliamentary. Conventionally, moreindependent legislatures are associated with the separation of powersunder presidentialism. As committees are a defining feature of stronglegislatures, it not wholly inconceivable that the form of government(presidential or parliamentary) may have a role to play in explaining howsignificant a role committees play within the legislature.

The variable Propensity for Legislative Minority measures theportion of time where the government/executive did not enjoy a formallegislative majority. To measure the propensity for government form,the form of government was recorded for a 20-year period (19902009).The variable has two different characteristics depending on whetherthe political system is presidential or parliamentary. In a parliamentarysystem, Strm (1990) suggests a link between minority governmentasituation where the government does not control a majority of seats in thechamberand the strength of committee systems, although he uses

committee system strength to explain minority government formation.Under presidentialism, divided government occurs where the presidencyis controlled by a party different from the party controlling one or morechambers of the legislature. It could be argued that legislatures will be at



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their peak of efficiency under divided government. Thus, under eitherparliamentarism or presidentialism, an executive facing a legislaturewithout majority support may foster a stronger committee system.7

The relationship between the above variables is estimated usingordinary least squares regressions with robust standard errors.8 To test forthe conditional effect of MCPV, we estimate models with an interactionterm equal to the product ofBallotandMCPV. Both ballot structure andMCPV are included in the model along with the interactive term, asadvised by Brambor, Clark, and Golder (2006). The coefficient on theinteraction term is expected to be positive. In other words, greaterincentives to cultivate a personal vote increase committee strengthwhen legislators have the ability to provide legislative particularism. Inthe next section, the results of this statistical analysis are presented andanalyzed.

Results and Analysis

As argued above, legislators incentives to cultivate a personal voteare unlikely to have an unconditional effect on committee strength. Theempirical evidence suggests that this is the case. Figure 3 plots the rela-tionship between personal vote and committee strength, conditional onthe presence or absence of particularism as a MCPV. The plot on the rightside in Figure 3 includes only countries where legislative particularism is

present. Here, we can see a positive relationship between committeestrength and the personal vote. In contrast, the left plot, which includesonly countries without legislative particularism (i.e.,MCPVequals zero),depicts a more scattered (and perhaps negative) relationship between

ballot structure and committee structure.These plots provide some initial support for the argument that the

effect of personal vote incentives on committee strength is conditional onlegislators ability to provide fiscal particularism. Recall that the incen-tive to cultivate a personal vote is expected to have a positive effect oncommittee strength only when legislators have the ability to provide

particularism. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics and the resultspresented in Table 2 provide further evidence in support of the coreargument.

The unconditional effect of ballot structure on committee strengthis statistically insignificant, as reported by the estimated coefficient (and

corresponding standard errors) on Ballot Structure in Model 1 ofTable 2. However, the conditional effects ofBallot Structureare consis-tent with the argument advanced here and statistically significant atconventional levels. Models 25 in Table 2 include an interaction term

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FIGURE 3Relationship between Personal Vote and Committee Strength

Dependent on Mechanism to Cultivate Personal Votes

AUSTRALIA

AUSTRIA

BAHAMAS

BEL

BOTSWANA

BULGARIA

CANADA

COSTA RICA

CYPRUS

CZECH REPUBLIC

DENMK

ESTONIA

FINLAND

FRANCE

GREECE

HUNGARY

ICELAND

IRELAND

ISRAEL

LATVIA

LUX

MALTA

MAURITIUS

NETHERLANDS

NZ

NORWAY

POLAND

PORTUGAL

SLOVAKIA

SLOVENIA

SPAIN

SWEDEN

UK

CHILE

GERMANY

ITALY

JAPANLITHUANIA

UNITED STATES

0

8

6

4

2

0

0 5 0

1

CommitteeStrength

Personal Vote

5

Note: Legislative particularism is not a significant feature of legislative life in countries in group zero(left side), whereas legislative particularism is a significant feature of legislative life in countries ingroup one (right side).

TABLE 1Descriptive Statistics

Variable Obs. Median Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Committee Strength 39 5 4.36 1.69 0 7Ballot Structure (Personal

Vote)39 2.28 2.64 1.62 0 5

MCPV (Fiscal Particularism) 39 0 0.15 0.37 0 1Cameral Structure 39 1 0.51 0.51 0 1Presidential 39 0 0.18 0.39 0 1Propensity for Legislative

Minority39 0.10 0.25 0.31 0 1



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equal to the product of Ballot Structure*MCPV. Given this, thecoefficient on Ballot Structure in Models 25 estimates the effectof ballot structure on committee strength for the unique case whenlegislators are unable to provide fiscal particularism (i.e., when MCPVequals zero). In all four models, the estimated coefficient on BallotStructureis negative and statistically significant. This is an interestingand important finding. It suggests that greater incentives to cultivatea personal vote reduce committee strength when providing fiscal

particularism is not possible. In other words, when legislators do nothave the ability to earmark, an increase in the incentives to cultivate a

personal vote reduces the strength of legislative committees. On average,a one-unit increase inBallot Structurecorresponds with a 0.4 unit reduc-tion in committee strength when legislators cannot provide particularism.

Using Monte Carlo simulations and holding all else constant, we esti-mate that increasingBallot Structurefrom three to four reduces commit-tee strength by 10% whenMCPVequals zero (i.e., fiscal particularism isabsent).9

TABLE 2Estimated Relationship between Personal Vote, Fiscal Particularism

and Committee Strength

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Ballot Structure (PersonalVote)

-0.308 -0.386* -0.383* -0.417** -0.378**(0.187) (0.195) (0.189) (0.179) (0.171)

MCPV (Fiscal Particularism) 1.797** -3.186*** -3.172*** -3.176** -2.779**(0.688) (0.803) (0.813) (1.250) (1.021)

Interaction (Ballot Structure xMCPV)

1.315*** 1.312*** 1.387*** 1.250***(0.265) (0.264) (0.369) (0.291)

Cameral Structure -

0.018 -

0.058 -

0.090(0.483) (0.497) (0.498)Presidential -0.582 -0.620

(0.615) (0.607)Propensity for Legislative

Minority0.901

(0.618)Constant 4.896*** 5.085*** 5.087*** 5.258*** 4.973***

(0.470) (0.501) (0.535) (0.509) (0.582)Observations 39 39 39 39 39R-squared 0.16 0.24 0.24 0.25 0.28

Note:Robust standard errors in parentheses.***p


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WhileBallot Structurereduces committee strength when the pro-vision of fiscal particularism is not possible, it has the opposite effect oncommittee strength in systems which permit fiscal particularism. Whenlegislators are able to provide pork, greater incentives to cultivate a

personal vote correspond with stronger legislative committees, all elseequal. Using the relevant elements of the variance-covariance matrixfrom Models 25 of Table 2,10 we calculate the coefficients and corre-sponding standard errors forBallot Structure when fiscal particularism isa MCPV (see Brambor, Clark, and Golder 2006 for details).These resultsare reported in Table 3 along with the estimated coefficients forBallotStructurewhenMCPVequals zero (taken from Table 2 for comparison

purposes). When fiscal particularism is possible,Ballot Structurehas apositive and statistically significant effect on committee strength. In otherwords, an increase in the personal vote incentive corresponds with stron-ger committees when legislators can earmark.This result holds across allfour model specifications. On average, a one unit increase in BallotStructurereduces committee strength by nearly one unit when fiscal

particularism is absent, all else equal.11 Using Monte Carlo simulations,we estimate that an increase in Ballot Structure from three to fourincreases committee strength by 20% whenMCPVequals one.12

In sum, the incentive to cultivate a personal vote matters greatly forthe strength of legislative committees. However, the effect of personalvote is conditional on legislators ability to provide fiscal particularism.In systems where legislators are able to provide legislative particularism,legislative committees are stronger when legislators have greater incen-tives to cultivate a personal vote. In contrast, committees are relativelyweaker when legislators have greater incentives to cultivate a personal

vote but are not permitted to provide fiscal particularism. In other words,the direction (and magnitude) of the effect of ballot structure on com-mittee strength depends critically on the mechanism by which personalvotes are cultivated.

TABLE 3Estimated Marginal Effects of Personal Vote on Committee Strength

Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

MCPV (FiscalParticularism)=0

Personal Vote -0.386** -0.383** -0.417** -0.378**(0.195) (0.189) (0.179) (0.171)

MCPV (FiscalParticularism)=1

Personal Vote 0.929** 0.929** 0.970** 0.873**(0.179) (0.182) (0.319) (0.237)

Note:Robust standard errors in parentheses.***p


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A brief note about the control variable is in order. None of thecontrol variables are statistically significant at conventional levels. Thesenonfindings will be of interest to scholars of legislative organization.

Neither presidentialism nor cameral structure is a robust predictor ofcommittee system strength. Likewise, a countrys propensity for execu-tives operating with a legislative minority does not have a statisticallysignificant impact on committee system strength. The implication is thatlegislators preferences, as determined by the interaction of ballot struc-ture and personal vote gathering strategies, matters more for the design ofinternal legislative institutions than bicameralism or the structure ofexecutive-legislative relations.13

Conclusion

Existing research, primarily on the U.S. Congress, points to acausal link between the degree to which the ballot structure createsincentives for personal vote gathering and how a legislature chooses toorganize itself. Yet, the relationship between electoral systems and com-mittee system does not always hold when political institutions in othercountries are explored. Indeed, legislatures with very weak committeesystems often exist alongside personal vote electoral systems.

This article has argued that existing research has systematicallyoverlooked the importance of how legislators cultivate personal votes.The distinction between fiscal legislative particularism and extra-legislative parochialism (constituency service) as two distinct MCPVs iswell observed. The innovation of this research is in suggesting the sys-tematic consequences of different MCPVs for how legislatures choose toorganize. We explained why committees will be stronger when legisla-tors cultivate personal votes by supplying fiscal particularism but weaker

when legislators cultivate personal votes by delivering nonfiscal, extra-legislative, constituency service. Creating strong committees is an idealway to assist incumbents in gaining reelection if fiscal particularism is anavailable MCPV; where it is not, incumbents will show little motivationto structure the legislature around committees. Where legislative work

provides little or no electoral benefit, members will prefer to allocatetheir time and resources to direct contact with constituents rather thandedicate interest and effort to committee assignments.

Quantifying the relationship between ballot structure, MCPV, and

committee structure provides evidence that the conventional view of adirect relationship between ballot structure and legislative structure ismisguided. The data validate the argument that MCPV is a critical inter-vening factor in determining the shape of internal legislative structures.

356 Shane Martin


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Committees tend to be stronger where the electoral system providesincentives for personal vote gathering, but only when fiscal particularismis the MCPV. Absent fiscal particularism, a negative relationship exists

between personal vote ballot structures and the strength of committeesystems.

Beyond identifying the circumstances under which strong commit-tee systems are likely to emerge in a range of different settings, thisresearch illustrates more generally how theories of Congress can beuseful in comparative legislative studies if other institutional or culturalfeatures of the political landscape are carefully incorporated or controlledfor. Linking electoral rules and legislative structures is unsuccessfulunless differences in personal vote gathering strategies from polity to

polity are taken into account. The argument made in this article impliesthat the MCPV must be considered as part of any attempt to use electoralsystems to explain political outcomes. Indeed, one of the key findings ofthis research is that the level of incentive to cultivate a personal vote hasdifferent consequences depending on the personal vote earning strategiesemployed by legislators. Existing research that seeks to link ballot struc-ture with policy outcomes effectively assume that the MCPV is alwayslegislative particularism. Such theories need to be refined to take accountof the different consequences of alternative personal vote gathering strat-egies. The evidence provided here of a conditional relationship between

ballot structure and legislative structures should motivate furtherresearch into how the ballot structure can have different effects, depend-ing on the absence or availability of fiscal particularism as a mechanismto cultivate personal votes.

Shane Martin is Lecturer in Government,Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland.

APPENDIXMeasuring Committee Strength

Using information collected on committee structures in 39 nationallegislatures, an index of committee strength is developed based on ananalysis of nine institutional features of committee systems which can beempirically observed and compared cross-nationally. The framework

builds on previous exercises to empirically compare and measure thesignificance of committees in different legislatures (Mattson and Strm1995; Strm 1990). The significance of each feature is described andhighlighted below:



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(a) Are committees jurisdictional to government departments?The more closely thecommittee system corresponds to ministerial portfolios the more likely they are to

hold property rights over a particular area of policy.(b) At what stage, if any, of the legislative process are bills considered by committees?The earlier a committee involves itself in the process of law making the moreinfluential it is likely to be. Empirically, if committee work is conducted prior to the

bill going to the floor or before full consideration on the floor, committees are codedas having a greater influence on the legislative process.

(c) Do committees have the right to initiate legislation?The ability to act independent ofthe executive or chamber by introducing legislative proposals signals a strongagenda-setting role for committee systems.

(d) Do committees have the right to amend proposed legislation and/or rewrite bills?Weak committees may have little scope to amend proposed legislation whereas

stronger committees are empowered to redraft or otherwise reshape bills.(e) Can committees compel ministerial attendance and evidence?Having the power to

compel individual cabinet ministers to attend a committee meeting and supply oraltestimony places committees in a strong position.

(f) Can committees compel civil servants to attend? Civil servants act as an importantsource of information for committees. Committee systems empowered to compel

public servants to attend and supply oral testimony are, all else equal, most influen-tial.

(g) Do subcommittees exist?Subcommittees provide a mechanism for committees tofurther specialize and delegate workload. The gains from division of labor broughtabout by delegation within committees strengthen the efficiency and overall effec-

tiveness of the committee system.

NOTES

1. Alternative explanations of strong committees in Congress have been pro-posed by Cox and McCubbins (1993, 2005), Diermeier and Myerson (1999), Krehbiel(1991), and Maltzman (1997).

2. In Ireland, between 1922 and 1997, 34% of defeated incumbents lost their seats

to a candidate from the same party. In the case of the largest party (Fianna Fil), 56% ofdefeated incumbents lost to a party colleague (Gallagher 2000, 97).3. That opportunities for particularism are not present in all personal vote elec-

toral environments could be cited as further evidence of the exogenous nature of mecha-nisms to cultivate personal votes. Assuming that legislators are goal oriented towardsreelection, and that the provision of legislative particularism can advantage an incumbentover a challenger, the legislature would be expected, were it permitted, to structure rulesto allow for the provision of legislative particularism (per the distributional theory). Thealternative casea personal vote electoral environment with no opportunities for legis-lative particularismsuggests perhaps a disequilibrium resulting from the inability of the

legislature itself to allow for the provision of legislative particularism.4. Bunreacht na hireannConstitution of Ireland. Available online at:www.taoiseach.gov.ie/.

5. Relating electoral systems to legislative organization in the Irish case, Martin(2010) observes that the single greatest barrier to an effective committee system is the

358 Shane Martin


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unwillingness of Irish parliamentarians to dedicate appropriate effort to parliamentarycommittees because of the competing need to focus on electorally necessary constituency

work.6. A fourth component of electoral system particularism is district magnitude.

According to Carey and Shugart (1995), the effect of district magnitude depends on thevalue of the other personal vote components. As the theory presented here focuses on aninteraction between electoral system and MCPV, we follow Seddon Wallack et al. (2003)in limiting electoral system particularism to ballot,pool, and vote. While it is theoretically

possible to provide for a three-term interaction (ballot+pool +vote * district magnitude* MCPV), this would be unwise given the relatively small number of cases and the needto include both lower-degree interaction and main effect terms in a full model.

7. It is not ideal to conflate divided government in presidential systems with

minority government in parliamentary systems as the nature and consequences of minor-ity legislative support varies between presidentialism and parliamentarism. In robustnesstests, our cases were divided to separately measure the impact on committees of the

propensity for divided government in presidential systems and the impact on committeesof the propensity for minority government in parliamentary systems. Our key resultsremain robust to this alternative model specification.

8. The dependent variable ranges from 0 to 7 with higher scores indicatingstronger legislative committees. By estimating a simple OLS model, the dependentvariable is effectively treated as a continuous variable. One might argue that the measureof committee strength more closely approximates an ordinal cardinal variable. However,

given our small sample size and the distribution of the dependent variable (with half ofthe values of the dependent variable containing two or fewer observations), the types ofmodels that can be estimated are limited.

9. This simulation was done using Clarify and estimated from Model 2 fromTable 2.

10. The coefficient onMCPV (Fiscal Particularism)is negative and significant inModels 25 in Table 2. In theory, the coefficients onMCPVin these models report theeffect of fiscal particularism on committee strength whenBallot Structure (PersonalVote)equals zero. However, there are no countries in our sample whereMCPVequals one when

Ballot Structureequals zero. Given this, the estimated coefficient onMCPVin Models

25 is substantively meaningless.11. This is the average effect across all four models reported in Table 3.12. This simulation was done using Clarify and estimated from Model 2 from

Table 2.13. In robustness tests,measuresof the size of the chamber and the log of the mean

district magnitude were included. Because chamber size and district magnitude arerelated (Taagepera 2007), each model was calculated separately. Neither the size of thechamber nor district magnitude proved statistically significant.

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