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Do Electoral Rules Influence Small Do Electoral Rules Influence Small Parties’ Policy Strategies? Assessing Green Party Attention to Localized Issues Cory Belden This paper asks whether electoral rules influence aspects of policy. Previous literature has argued that electoral rules influence the extent in which legislators have incentives to appeal to localized constituents through constituency service or the delivery of pork, implying that legislators might also use their position in parliament to engage in policy work that addresses local policy problems. I deviate from the literature on localism, however, and argue that the incentives to make localized policy appeals and the location of these appeals are linked to where the legislator and party can collect meaningful votes, or votes that contribute to their individual and collective seat share. To test hypotheses, I leverage the list tier in mixed-member proportional systems (MMP), and compare a sample of parliamentary questions and motions of Green parties members of parliament (MPs) in the UK and Canada (both single-member district plurality systems) to those in New Zealand (MMP). Preliminary findings counter the expectations of previous literature, in that Green party MPs reference localized policy issues more often in New Zealand than in the UK. The second half of the paper argues that the mechanisms underlying the use of local appeals are distinct in each electoral system, which likely have implications for party growth and policy. [Please note that this version of the paper does not include analysis on Canada.] Prepared for delivery at the Annual Meeting of the Political Studies Association, Brighton, United Kingdom, March 22-23, 2016. (Early draft, please do not circulate.) Author information: Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science at the University of Cali- fornia, Davis ([email protected]) Introduction A question central to the study of comparative politics is whether electoral rules systematically a↵ect what happens within political systems. A large chunk of these questions have focused on whether and how electoral rules influence party dynamics in legislatures. We know, for example, that electoral rules have a profound and predictable impact on the number of political parties ob- taining seats within them (Amorim Neto and Cox 1997; Duverger 1951; Clark and Golder 2006; Taagepera 2007). An important area that the comparative political science and political institu- tional scholarship has not fully explored is the role of electoral rules in policy-making and policy itself. Limited exploration is well justified, as intermediate and interceding variables along the causal chain between electoral rules and policy abound. This paper is an expedition into the electoral rules and policy territory. It asks whether electoral rules shape an important characteristic of policy work: the extent that legislators address local policy problems. The literature argues that single-member districts tend to encourage legis- lators to cater to localized constituents because candidates are seated in the legislature only if they gather enough votes to become the plurality winner within a district boundary (Carey and Shugart 1995; Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1994). Yet the empirical evidence that tests this argument is mixed. One possible reason for mixed findings is that studies that compare legislative behavior in systems with single-member districts to behavior in multi-member districts (MMD) introduce substantial noise. Systems with multi-member districts vary on other electoral rules dimensions, such as district magnitude and list type. These rules also influence the extent in which parties and legislators have incentives to engage in entreprenerial or geographically-narrow activities. I propose that a principal mechanism that underlies patterns of localism—and patterns of localism in policy work—is permissiveness. Electoral systems in which any vote counts toward a party’s national seat share are permissive. Conversely, systems where votes are ‘wasted’, irrelevant to a party’s seat share when the candidate is not the plurality winner, are restrictive. The di↵erence between these two system types is where a party and their legislators can collect meaningful votes, or votes that contribute to their collective and individual seat share. I argue that by shifting the location of meaningful votes, electoral rules influence the degree in which parties and legislators value appealing to localized constituents. They also influence the incentives and constraints of these collective and individual actors to appeal to particular locations and not others. 1 To deal with the noise problem described in multi-member districts, I leverage the features or mixed-member proportional (MMP) systems. MMP systems are permissive because the system has a nationwide district list tier, allowing parties to collect meaningful votes from anywhere in the country. Yet the system also has a nominal tier, where candidates are elected via single-member district plurality rules. Comparing SMD plurality systems (restrictive) to MMP systems is thus equivalent to a quasi-experiment with permissiveness as the treatment. To strengthen the research design, I compare the policy work of seat-winning Green parties in Westminster-style parliamentary regimes, which are known for having high levels of party discipline and unity. Green parties not only have broad and nationally-oriented policy agendas that are similar across countries, but they are also small parties short on resources and seeking maximum return on votes. The salience of any electoral system e↵ect should be greatest on such parties. To test hypotheses on the extent that parties engage in local appeals and the location of these appeals, I analyze the written and oral parliamentary questions as well as motions from a period of two years preceding the most recent election in Canada (restrictive), the United Kingdom (restrictive), and New Zealand (permissive). I also use electoral data to test hypotheses on what motivates which locations are the recipients of policy attention, and whether the motivation is di↵erent across system types. Contrary to most literature on the electoral e↵ects on localism, preliminary findings show that not only do all parties mention geographically-specific locations in their policy appeals, but that Green Party MPs in the New Zealand parliament use local appeals more frequently than the Green Party MP in the UK. Preliminary findings also show that where legislators and parties collect meaningful votes is associated with the locations these actors address in their policy activities. This research makes several contributions. It contributes to the institutional literature by furthering our understanding of whether electoral rules influence the degree in which parties and their MPs pay attention to narrow, geographically-defined constituencies, and looks at a source of localism—policy work—that has not yet received much attention in comparative politics scholar- ship. Moreover, the paper advances conceptual clarity on the meaning of and reasons motivating “localism”, a nuanced term used throughout the comparative politics literature, by parsing out and testing the mechanism underlying the e↵ects of electoral rules on party and MP behavior. Finally, the paper analyzes the activities of small parties, a novel contribution as previous studies have 2 focused primarily on the extent of localism in the activities of bigger and mainstream parties. The paper is organized as follows. First, I present the previous literature on localism and electoral rules, and discuss expectations on the relationship between electoral rules and localism via the permissiveness concept. I then justify case selection, and test the first empirical question (whether small parties and their MPs tend to engage in higher frequency of localized policy work than those in permissive systems). After presenting preliminary results, I unpack the second em- pirical question (whether the motivation that shapes the geographic location of appeals are distinct in the two system types) and the methods for testing it. I conclude with the preliminary findings from the data that has been collected so far. Previous Literature on Localism and and the Permissiveness Concept The literature on whether electoral rules systematically influence the degree to which parties and legislators appeal to localized constituents is extensive. Scholars of comparative politics suggest that parties and MPs tend to cater to localized constituents in institutional conditions that heighten the presence of the ‘personal vote’, or votes that are cast based on the qualities or performance of a candidate rather than partisan affiliation (Shugart and Carey 1995; Carey 2007). Electoral rules such as single-member districts create incentives for candidates to highlight their personal qualities and engage in district-specific activities because voters cast votes for a person instead of or in addition to a party. These incentives are weaker if not entirely missing in systems that have high district magnitudes, which severs the relationship between a single legislator and his voters, and in systems where constituents vote for a party and have no control over candidate selection. Evidence on whether electoral rules influence the degree in which legislators engage in such locally-specific activities is mixed. Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita (2006) build a formal model of particularism, which predicts that single-member districts (among other elements) increase
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