TY - JOUR

T1 - Geographic representation in party-dominated legislatures

T2 - A quantitative text analysis of parliamentary questions in the German Bundestag

AU - Zittel, Thomas

AU - Nyhuis, Dominic

AU - Baumann, Markus

N1 - The research for this article is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through ZI 608/7-1 and HE 5813/2-1. We thank Alejandro Ecker, Heike Klüver, Jochen Müller, Christian Stecker, Simone Wegmann, and the participants of the Workshop on “Individualized Representation” that took place between November 24 and 26, 2016 in Frankfurt for comments on previous versions of the article. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions. We are indebted to Juri Diels, Matthias Henneke, and Andreas Herzog for invaluable help in preparing the data for the article.

PY - 2019/11/6

Y1 - 2019/11/6

N2 - Political representation in European democracies is widely considered partisan and collectivist. This article, however, stresses that there is more to the representative process in European democracies than just its textbook version. It emphasizes the role of geographic representation as a complementary strategy in party-dominated legislatures that is characterized by two distinct features. First, legislators employ distinct opportunities to participate in legislative contexts to signal attention to geographic constituents without disrupting party unity. Second, these activities are motivated by individual- and district-level characteristics that supplement electoral-system-level sources of geographic representation. We empirically test and corroborate this argument for the German case on the basis of a content analysis of parliamentary questions in the 17th German Bundestag (2009–13). In this analysis, we show that higher levels of localness among legislators and higher levels of electoral volatility in districts result in increased geographic representation.

AB - Political representation in European democracies is widely considered partisan and collectivist. This article, however, stresses that there is more to the representative process in European democracies than just its textbook version. It emphasizes the role of geographic representation as a complementary strategy in party-dominated legislatures that is characterized by two distinct features. First, legislators employ distinct opportunities to participate in legislative contexts to signal attention to geographic constituents without disrupting party unity. Second, these activities are motivated by individual- and district-level characteristics that supplement electoral-system-level sources of geographic representation. We empirically test and corroborate this argument for the German case on the basis of a content analysis of parliamentary questions in the 17th German Bundestag (2009–13). In this analysis, we show that higher levels of localness among legislators and higher levels of electoral volatility in districts result in increased geographic representation.

KW - electoral systems

KW - geographic representation

KW - Germany

KW - legislative behavior

KW - parliamentary questions

KW - text analysis

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062956104&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/lsq.12238

DO - 10.1111/lsq.12238

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85062956104

VL - 44

SP - 681

EP - 711

JO - Legislative Studies Quarterly

JF - Legislative Studies Quarterly

SN - 0362-9805

IS - 4

ER -