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Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics
Does A District Mandate Matter For The Behavior Of Politicians? An Analysis Of Roll-Call Votes And Parliamentary Speeches, Andreas Born, Aljoscha Janssen
Does A District Mandate Matter For The Behavior Of Politicians? An Analysis Of Roll-Call Votes And Parliamentary Speeches, Andreas Born, Aljoscha Janssen
Research Collection School Of Economics
In most democracies, members of parliament (MPs) are elected either through a party list or by a district. We use a discontinuity in the German electoral system to investigate the causal effect of a district election on an MP’s conformity with the party line. A district election does not affect roll-call voting behavior causally, possibly due to overall high adherence to party-line voting. Analyzing the parliamentary speeches of each MP allows us to overcome the high party-line discipline with regard to parliamentary voting. Using textual analysis and machine learning techniques, we create two measures of closeness of an MP’s speeches …