TY - JOUR

T1 - The legislative effects of campaign personalization

T2 - An analysis on the legislative behavior of successful German constituency candidates

AU - Zittel, Thomas

AU - Nyhuis, Dominic

N1 - Funding Information: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research for this paper is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through ZI 608/7-1 and HE 5813/2-1. We are indebted to Janina Barth, Lena Ehret, Matthias Henneke, Andreas Herzog, Fabienne Rauschenplatt, Lennart Schürmann, and Marie Wittenius for invaluable help in preparing the data for the project.

PY - 2021/2

Y1 - 2021/2

N2 - Personalized campaign styles are of increasing importance in contemporary election campaigns at all levels of politics. Surprisingly, we know little about their implications for the behavior of successful candidates once they take public office. This paper aims to fill this gap in empirical and theoretical ways. It shows that campaign personalization results in legislative personalization. Legislators that ran personalized campaigns are found to be more likely to deviate in roll call votes and to take independent positions on the floor. These findings result from a novel dataset that matches survey evidence on candidates’ campaign styles in the 2009 German Federal Elections with the legislative behavior of successful candidates in the 17th German Bundestag (2009–2013). Combining data from the campaign and legislative arenas allows us to explore the wider consequences of campaign personalization.

AB - Personalized campaign styles are of increasing importance in contemporary election campaigns at all levels of politics. Surprisingly, we know little about their implications for the behavior of successful candidates once they take public office. This paper aims to fill this gap in empirical and theoretical ways. It shows that campaign personalization results in legislative personalization. Legislators that ran personalized campaigns are found to be more likely to deviate in roll call votes and to take independent positions on the floor. These findings result from a novel dataset that matches survey evidence on candidates’ campaign styles in the 2009 German Federal Elections with the legislative behavior of successful candidates in the 17th German Bundestag (2009–2013). Combining data from the campaign and legislative arenas allows us to explore the wider consequences of campaign personalization.

KW - candidates

KW - constituency campaigns

KW - electoral systems

KW - legislative behavior

KW - personalization

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087390546&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0010414020938103

DO - 10.1177/0010414020938103

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85087390546

VL - 54

SP - 312

EP - 338

JO - Comparative Political Studies

JF - Comparative Political Studies

SN - 0010-4140

IS - 2

ER -