Legislator activities in parliament and electoral ......the represented. The main principle of party representation is the representation of policy preferences: ‘party representation

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Legislator activities in parliament and electoral performance in a mixed-member

electoral system. The case of Hungary, 1998-2010

Zsófia Papp

Research Fellow

Centre for Social Sciences

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

[email protected]

First draft

Presented at the ECPR General Conference in Prague, 9 September 2016

Abstract

Students of legislative behaviour appear to agree with Mayhew’s starting point, and consider

MPs as ‘single minded seekers of re-election’. Consequently, most of the things MPs do in

the present are attributed to their individual desire to future re-election. However, within the

premises of legislative studies, little attention has been paid to whether MP behaviour in

parliament indeed affects electoral performance. The main question of the paper is whether

there is a connection between activities carried out by legislators and their performances at the

next elections. I wish to investigate this matter in a mixed-member electoral system

permitting multiple candidacy which produces at least two types of MPs with different sets of

incentives to act. To establish the effect of parliamentary activities on electoral outcome, I use

parliamentary activity panel data from three electoral terms. The results of the multilevel

models suggest that there is no connection between the intensity of work MPs carry out in

parliament and how they perform in single member district on the one hand, and where they

are placed on closed party lists on the other. The findings partially question the existence of

activity-based personal accountability in Hungary.

Keywords

Legislators; Parliament; Hungary; Accountability; Elections

mailto:[email protected]

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Introduction

Students of legislators’ behaviour might differ regarding the activities they study, the factors

with which they explain the variance in these activities and the methods they apply to uncover

causal relationships. However, the majority of authors seems to agree with Mayhew’s oft-

cited starting point, and consider Members of Parliament (MPs) as ‘single-minded seekers of

re-election’ (Mayhew, 1974). Consequently, most of the things representatives do in the

present are attributed to the MPs’ individual desire for future re-election. At the same time,

Hazan and Rahat point out that under centralised selection rules with a high number of safe

seats, the aim of re-selection is superior to the purpose of being re-elected (Atmor, Hazan, and

Rahat, 2011; Hazan and Rahat, 2010). In the former case, where re-election incentives

dominate, candidates who are able to attract extra votes will be selected, whereas in the latter,

where re-selection motivation prevail, candidate loyalty is considered as priority.

Nevertheless, even in safe districts, to maintain the electoral base, it might appears to be

reasonable to follow strategies that highlight the individual legislator without endangering

party unity (see also Russo, 2011).

Within the premises of legislative studies, less attention has been paid to whether MP

behaviour in parliament and in the constituency indeed affects electoral performance.

Extensive research has been done on the determinants of legislative behaviour, all based on

the presumption that the MPs’ perceptions on the utility of their work is more important than

the actual electoral benefit. Legislators work more and better because they think it will

increase their re-election chances regardless of whether this is indeed the case. While this

argument holds in several cases, it does not bring scholars closer to understanding the

implications of member behaviour and whether it is realistic to assume that such behaviour

yields extra votes or better positions on party lists.

Lessening the gap in the literature, my main question is if there is a connection between

activities carried out by legislators in parliament and their performances at the next elections

in the case of Hungary. I wish to investigate this matter in a mixed-member electoral system

permitting multiple candidacy for several reasons. Firstly, the case of mixed electoral system

is particularly interesting for students of the electoral formula, as it enables to test the effects

of two different set of rules within the same electoral and cultural context. Secondly, being a

candidate on multiple electoral tiers at the same time creates a larger pool of viable strategies

compared to system with one legislative tier on the one hand, and mixed-member system

without multiple candidacy on the other. Thirdly, besides being able to investigate the effects

of electoral activities on candidate votes share, by examining party list positions on closed

lists, we can test party priorities in candidate selection at the same time. The main hypothesis

of the paper is that both, selectors and voters evaluate the ‘goodness’ of the legislators

through their parliamentary activities. Voters seek to elect ‘good’ representatives who are

willing to do hard work in parliament, and they may use prior performance to evaluate future

potential. Additionally, it can be argued that parties will also consider this aspect when

organizing the party lists. Putting hardworking MPs on the top of the lists makes sure that

they have reliable legislators to do the leg-work in parliament.

The paper is structured as follows. First, I will briefly outline the theoretical framework of the

paper, which is followed by a short introduction of the Hungarian case. In the data and

methods section, the dependent and independent variables of the analysis are introduced. In

the analysis section I apply various types of multilevel regression to establish the effect of

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legislator activities on electoral performance. Finally, I will draw conclusions in the last

section.

Theoretical framework

The missing link in the literature bears theoretical relevance especially for research

establishing the connection between electoral rules and legislators’ personal vote-seeking.

Namely, the linkage between MP behaviour and voter decisions, which authors refer to as the

‘accountability linkage’, is used to describe the mechanism that creates the effect of the

electoral formula on MP activities in the first place.

Figure 1 clarifies this issue by displaying the relationship between the three factors: electoral

rules, MP’s activities and their electoral performance. As to the causal effects, (a) stands for

the effect of electoral formula on member behaviour, while (b) covers the relationship

between behaviour and electoral outcome. Establishing connection (a) in legislative studies

often implies that connection (b) is already manifested.

Figure 1. The relationship between electoral rules, member behaviour and electoral

performance

The underlying argument is that, since one constituency has one single representative in SMD

systems, voters will be able to determine who to reward or punish for the positive or negative

outcomes (Lancaster, 1986; Lancaster and Patterson, 1990; Norris, 2004), thus making direct

sanctioning possible (Mitchell, 2000). In Multi-Member Districts (MMDs) with a

geographical overlap among legislators (Heitshusen, Young, and Wood, 2005) the

accountability link becomes confused, and the incentive to free-ride increases. The reason for

this is that the voters have difficulties identifying the representative responsible for the

benefits, leaving little room for recognition and reward (Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina, 1987;

Lancaster, 1986; Scholl, 1986). In MMD-systems, members are more accountable to the party

leadership than to the electorate (Norris, 2004), which makes the contest for re-election a fight

for higher positions on the party list (Curtice and Shively, 2009). Single member district MPs

on the other hand are more dependent on local support, since their electoral fortunes depend

on the votes cast for them, and these votes cannot be enhanced or diminished by the electoral

performance of fellow party members (Curtice and Shively, 2009; Mitchell, 2000). One MP is

responsible for the whole constituency, and cannot delegate problem-solving to other

representatives (Gallagher and Holliday, 2003; Norris, 2004). As voters in SMDs can easily

identify who to approach with their problems (Scholl, 1986), and as members are usually

better known by the electorate (Cooper and Richardson, 2006), single member districts tend to

generate larger demand for constituency service, than MMDs (Scholl, 1986). And since SMD

MPs are more dependent on local support, they are more vulnerable to the pressure from the

electorate as well (Cooper and Richardson, 2006). In short, voters have expectations that are

called forth when casting the vote; and whether they can easily decide whether legislators had

met these expectations or not depends on electoral rules.

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The first models of representation described it as some kind of agreement between citizens

and the representatives. The main goal of elections was to choose the ‘best individuals to

defend the interests or values of the community or group’ (Colomer, 2011, p. 2). However,

the emergence of political parties shifted this relationship toward an interaction between

citizens and parties instead of citizens and the individual legislators representing their

districts. This was further enhanced by the extensive usage of multi-member Proportional

Representation (PR) electoral systems, where voters were offered to choose between parties

instead of individual candidates. This made party representation more stressful against

personal representation. The shift from single member majority systems toward PR also made

it difficult to apply theories of representation that were based on the logic of one member

representing one constituency, further diminishing the linkage between representatives and

the represented. The main principle of party representation is the representation of policy

preferences: ‘party representation is necessary in order to select the most relevant issues in the

public agenda and to design public policy’ (Colomer, 2011, p. 7). Personal representation on

the other hand aims to ensure the good quality of representation, by appointing individuals

who are reliable and responsive to the voters’ demands. In modern societies, the two aspects

of representation appear in a special mixture in which the composition is heavily influenced

by the given setup of the electoral system. This fits the conclusion of Eulau and Karps (Eulau

and Karps, 1977) as well as Mansbridge (Mansbridge, 2003, 2009) on the presence of the

different types of responsiveness and models within the same system. This indicates that even

in systems, where electoral rules or special circumstances support party representation, some

forms of personal representation should be detectable. This involves that voters will be

inclined to increase the quality of representation by electing representatives of the ‘good’

kind. Practicing accountability on the basis of former promises for a ‘good’ representative,

they might do this by judging incumbent MPs for their actions during the previous terms.

There are several ways in which Members of Parliament can mark out of the crowd of fellow

legislators to advertise their ‘goodness’. They engage in constituency service in the districts:

they hold office hours, carry out ombudsman-like activities and deal with problems arising in

the area as well as respond to individual petitions (Cain et al., 1987; Fenno, 1978; Norris,

1997; Norton and Wood, 1990). However, MPs do not necessarily need to be present in their

constituencies to gain visibility. As they spend most of their time in parliament, they must

find different ways to differentiate themselves from other members. On the one hand, the

contents of parliamentary activities reflect the focus of one’s legislative work. The local focus

of bill initiation (Crisp and Ingall, 2002; Marangoni and Tronconi, 2011), membership in

certain committees (Manow, 2013; Stratmann and Baur, 2002), speeches (Hill and Hurley,

2002), parliamentary questioning (Martin, 2011) and the willingness to desert the party line at

roll-call (Carey, 2007; Tavits, 2009) can reflect general concerns about issues that are

potentially important for citizens of a well-defined geographical location. On the other hand,

the intensity with which MPs engage in these activities is a simple proxy for their efforts to

establish the reputation of a hard-working representative. Voters and parties gain important

information on legislators simply by looking at their track records. Bill sponsorship, (Bowler,

2010; Bräuninger, Brunner, and Däubler, 2012), the frequency of floor speeches (Anderson,

Box-Steffensmeier, and Sinclair-Chapman, 2003) and tabling questions (Lazardeux, 2005;

Rasch, 2009) or simple attendance indicate that they work just as hard as other members

without having to assess the local nature of these activities.

On the basis of the above, the question of whether MP behaviour is relevant in explaining

electoral performance is important to make our assumptions stronger when tying MP

strategies to electoral systems. More importantly, answering this question supplies us with

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ideas on how well personal accountability works in a given country. A steady relationship

between member behaviour and electoral performance would suggest that a certain type of

legislative accountability mechanism is in place. If MPs are judged individually on the basis

of their performances as legislators, they are indeed encouraged to perform better to gain extra

votes at the next elections. Contrarily, no correlation between MP behaviour and their

electoral fate would indicate that Members of Parliament are not held personally accountable

for their actions while in office. Thus, the question regarding the link between behaviour and

performance might not only justify our basic assumptions in legislative studies, but contribute

to the discussion on the personal accountability of individual MPs and the broader topic of

representation.

The Hungarian case

During the period under investigation (1998-2010), Hungary has a three-tier electoral system,

which is commonly classified as mixed-member majoritarian with partial compensation

(Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001). A total of 386 legislators are elected from 176 single

member districts (SMD tier), 20 regions1 (regional tier) and the national level (national tier).

From the regional tier, a maximum of 152 representatives gain their mandates under the rules

of proportional representation2. A minimum of 58 seats and unallocated mandates from the

regional tier are distributed on the national tier3. Both list tiers apply closed party lists. Parties

may nominate candidates on multiple electoral tiers at the same time. This practice is quite

widespread in Hungary: between 1990 and 2010, almost 40 % of the candidates were

nominated on more than one tier. Furthermore, candidates may be nominated by more than

just one party. Joint candidacy is possible on all electoral tiers, but it is most common in the

case of SMD candidates and is usually restricted to a rather small amount of candidates. There

are some exceptions to this between 1990 and 2010, particularly on the right, namely the

electoral coalitions of Fidesz and MDF in 2002 and Fidesz-KDNP in 2010 which concerned

all candidates on all electoral tiers. Additionally, from 1994 on, legislators are allowed to hold

multiple elected offices such us various positions on the local level.

In the Hungarian parliament, House rules entitle individual legislators to sponsor bills and

submit questions. There are four types of questions in the Országgyűlés: interpellations,

written and oral questions as well as direct inquiries. These types differ in terms of the form

of the required response as well as sanctions in case the questioning MP does not accept the

response to the question. Interpellations, oral and direct questions must be answered at the

plenary session, while written questions require written response. With the exception of direct

questions, all questions have to be submitted in writing prior to the session. Interpellations are

said to be the most powerful among the question types, because if the questioning MP does

not accept the answer of the government, a plenary vote is called to decide on the response.

Hungarian legislators may also make brief speeches on the plenary during debates. However,

PPG leaders and their deputies enjoy a wider range of opportunities to take the floor in the

parliament than backbench MPs. Last but not least, representatives may sit in committees as

permanent members. However, as the partisan setup of each committee is fixed, committee

assignments are decided by the PPG leadership.

Data and variables

1 19 counties and Budapest.

2 Seats on the regional tier are distributed using the Hagenbach-Bischoff formula.

3 Seats on the national tier are distributed using the d’Hondt formula.

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The analysis builds upon a dataset that collects publicly available electoral4, socio-

demographic5 and parliamentary activity

6 data. Information on the parliamentary activities of

MPs is unavailable for the first two electoral terms (1990-1994, 1994-1998). The raw dataset

is available in wide form7, but for the sake of the analysis it is transformed into long form

8. As

we follow a relatively large number of individuals (large N) throughout a relatively short

period of time (small T), the data can be handled as panel. Since there are also MPs who did

not participate in every single election under investigation, the panel is fairly unbalanced.

Throughout this paper t will denote the year of the election under investigation. MPs are

elected at election t-1, serve between t-1 and t, and evaluated by the voters and parties at t.

Overall, the dataset in long form has 2032 observations. This figure consists of 1130

individual MPs serving between 1990 and 2010. For the above reasons, the analysis is

restricted to the period between 1998 and 2010, which leaves us with 1211 observations for

755 individuals9. 419 MPs only served once during the three electoral terms under

investigation, 216 served twice and 120 three times. Table 1 shows the distribution of

observations across the different values of t.

Table 1. The distribution of MPs across the different electoral terms t-1 t Elected

MPs (t-1)

Candidates

(t)

SMD

candidates

(t)

Regional list

candidates (t)

National list

candidates (t)

1998 2002 402 214 163 188 156

2002 2006 397 260 178 204 143

2006 2010 412 239 158 198 118

Number of

observations in

long form

1211 713 499 590 417

Dependent variables

The analysis section investigates the effect of legislator activities on three types of dependent

variables. First, candidate vote share in the SMDs at election t is explained. In this case, the

selectors have already decided that the given MP will be running as an SMD candidate at the

next election. Thus, the first dependent variable shows how voters react to the legislative

record of the different MPs. In this case MPs who were nominated in SMDs at election t are

taken into account. Nevertheless, legislative activities may not only influence voters in their

electoral decisions, but also parties and selectors at the candidate nomination stage. As being

an SMD MP in Hungary is considered to be a somewhat more prestigious position compared

to holding a list mandate10

, the second DV will differentiate between SMD and list

candidates. Nominating legislators in SMDs may be part of a reward mechanism for

hardworking representatives regardless of which type of mandate they hold between elections.

4 www.valasztas.hu

5 www.parlament.hu, and the dataset of the Centre for Elite Research at the Corvinus University of Budapest.

6 www.parlament.hu

7 Records in the datasets represent individual candidates and MPs. Each candidate appears in the dataset only

once (Weiss, 2006, p. 24). 8 Records in the datasets represent individual candidates and MPs at the given election. Every candidate and MP

has as many records as the number of elections he or she has participated in (Weiss, 2006, p. 24). All descriptive

statistics in this paper are calculated on the dataset in the long form. 9 Note, that MPs elected in 2010 are not part of the analysis, as the election of 2014 is not investigated due to the

changing electoral rules. 10

SMD MPs have more money at their disposal. Additionally, having to demonstrate that they also have a

considerable local support, these representatives often have more leverage within their parties.

http://www.parlament.hu/

http://www.parlament.hu/

7

Thirdly, it can be assumed that it is in the parties’ best interests to select MPs who work hard

in parliament, as long as they are loyal to the party. Also, if they want them to be elected,

parties should put these legislators into positions that results in election with a rather high

probability. In a mixed-member electoral system, especially with a large number of safe seats

and closed party lists, the electoral performance of the candidates heavily depends on which

district the MP was (re-)nominated in, and where she is placed on the party list. In this paper,

I will test the effect of legislator activities on the second set of variables, namely the MPs’

relative11

positions on the regional and national party lists at election t. Figure 2 visualizes the

distribution of the continuous dependent variables. With respect to candidacy in SMDs, 39.8

% of the MPs were nominated in the constituencies at the next election (t).

11

Relative list positions are obtained by dividing absolute list positions with the number of candidates on the list.

0

.00

5.0

1.0

15

.02

.02

5

Den

sity

0 20 40 60 80SMD vote share at t

8

Figure 2. The distribution of candidate vote share, relative list position on the regional and the

national lists

Legislator activities

I use several measures to measure legislator activities in parliament. MPs may engage in a

wide range of activities. They attend plenary sessions, take the floor, sponsor bills, submit and

table various types of questions or take part in the work of different committees. With the

exception of attendance, information on all these activities is available on the official website

of the Hungarian parliament. Table 2 lists variables that will be taken into account in the

analysis as main independent variables. Again, the main question of this paper is if

parliamentary activities affect the share of votes and candidacy in SMDs and list positions on

the regional and national tiers. The majority of the activity variables are heavily skewed to the

right. Therefore, with the exception of committee membership, the log transformed versions

will be used in the analysis (for the distribution of the main independent variables see

Appendix 1). To keep observations with no activity, I added a very small number to zero

(0.000001) before logaritmizing the variables. The bivariate relationships between legislator

activities and the dependent variables are shown in Appendix 2.a-d.

Table 2. The list of legislator activities in parliament Variables Description Transformation

Bills The number of bills sponsored by the MP per electoral terma Natural log

Questions The number of questions submitted by the MP per electoral termb Natural log

Speeches The number of speeches delivered by the MP per electoral term Natural log

Floor time Time spent delivering speeches by the MP per electoral term (in

minutes)

Natural log

Committees The number of committees in which the MP serves as a regular

member per electoral term

None

a Co-sponsored bills are included

b All question types are taken into account (interpellations, oral, written, direct).

01

23

45

Density

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1Relative position on the regional list at election t

01

23

45

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1Relative position on the national list at election t

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Results

To test the hypothesis of the paper, namely whether the intensity of parliamentary activities

influences re-selection and re-election chances, I follow a multivariate approach. In all cases,

I use multilevel regression to estimate the effect of the activity variables. However, as

different types of variables are to be explained, three different approaches are implemented.

First, in the case of candidates vote share, a simple multilevel linear model will be built.

Second, SMD candidacy being a binary variable, multilevel binary logit regression is the

proper choice. Third, as the distribution of relative list positions is skewed to the right both in

the cases of regional and national lists, I run gamma multilevel regressions. For this list of

control variable see Appendix 3. Table 3 presents the results of the models.

Table 3. Multilevel models explaining candidate vote share, SMD candidacy, and relative

positions on regional and national lists Variables Model 1

a

DV: Candidate

vote share at t

Model 2b

DV: SMD

candidacy at t

Model 3c

DV: Relative

regional list

position at t

Model 4c

DV: Relative

national list

position

Coefficients (s.e.) Odds ratios

(s.e.)

Coefficient (s.e.) Coefficient (s.e.)

Activity variables

Bills (logged) -.02 (.03) 1.02 (.02) .00 (.00) -.00 (.01)

Questions (logged) -.01 (.04) 1.03 (.02) .00 (.00) .01 (.00)

Speeches (logged) .32 (.09)*** 1.03 (.06) .02 (.02) -.06 (.02)**

Committee -.47 (.31) .98 (.14) .14 (.06)** .09 (.06)

Control variables

Time (t) -.15 (.12) .91 (.03)** .05 (.01)*** .03 (.02)

Party vote share in SMD (t) .88 (.03)***

SMD MP (t) .58 (1.05) 3.29 (1.15)*** -.03 (.14) .25 (.16)

Regional list MP (t) .38 (1.00) .89 (.31) -.05 (.16) .29 (.16)*

SMD candidate (t-1) 4.96 (1.70)***

Tenure (t) .24 (.33) .66 (.09)*** .03 (.06) -.13 (.08)*

Joint candidate (t) .71 (.88)

Dominant party (t) .03 (.85) 1.02 (.33) .00 (.14) .67 (.22)***

Government party (t) -1.31 (.64)** 1.06 (.28) -.26 (.10)** .22 (.16)

District competition (t) -1.09 (.36)***

Multiple candidacies (t) -5.22 (3.04)*

Mayor (t) 1.79 (.78)** 2.05 (.74)** -.25 (.13)* -.07 (.21)

Minister (t) -.82 (.82) 5.30 (3.21)** -.14 (.32) -.36 (.23)

Party leader (t) -.57 (.57) .93 (.23) -.38 (.11)*** -.59 (.15)***

Parliamentary position (t) .44 (.66) 1.49 (.63) -.11 (.24) -.01 (.30)

Committee chair (t) .12 (.45) 1.29 (.33) -.04 (.09) .18 (.13)

Constant 325.98 (243.65) 2.33e+83

1.85e+85***

-108.12 29.64*** -63.68 (44.94)

N 288 521 345 240

id sd(_cons) 2.40 (1.05) 0.00 (.40) .36 (.06) .59 (.17)

sd(Resid) 2.72 (.32)

Log(pseudolikelihood) -771. -271.85 233.76 104.29

Wald χ2 9932.90*** 107.45*** 46.27*** 66.54***

*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1

a: Multilevel linear model (xtmixed)

b: Multilevel binary logistic model (xtmelogit)

c: Multilevel generalized linear model (meglm, family(gamma))

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Starting with candidate vote share (Model 1), obviously, party vote share explains a huge

proportion of the variance. 1 %points increase in the party’s vote share in the SMD increases

the candidate’s vote share by 0.88 %points. A perfect correspondence between the candidate’s

and the party’ vote share would be indicated by a coefficient around 1. The fact that the

change in the party vote share does not induce the same size of a change in the candidate vote

share, leaves space for other variables to step in. Among the key independent variables only

the number of speeches appears to be significant. Its positive coefficient indicates that the

more frequently an MP has the floor in the parliament, the larger the share of votes she can

expect at the next elections. Besides the insignificant effects of the other activity variables,

they do not point to the expected direction: the number of bills, questions and committee

memberships effect vote share negatively. To disentangle the effect of questioning, I checked

if the frequency with which MPs use the different question types influences their vote share at

the next elections. The results are shown in Table 4. The coefficients of Model 5 suggest that

generally there are no statistically significant differences between the various types of

questions. However, we also find an exception: the number of direct questions slightly

increases vote share.

Table 4. The effect of the different question types on candidate vote share, SMD candidacy,

and relative positions on regional and national lists Variables Model 5

a

DV: Candidate

vote share at t

Model 6b

DV: SMD

candidacy at t

Model 7c

DV: Relative

regional list

position at t

Model 8c

DV: Relative

national list

position


(s.e.)


Parliamentary questions

Interpellations (logged) -.02 (.03) 1.03 (.02)* .00 (.01) .00 (.01)

Oral questions (logged) -.03 (.02) 1.02 (.017) .00 (.00) -.01 (.01)

Written questions (logged) .01 (.03) 1.00 (.02) .01 (.01) .01 (.01)

Direct questions (logged) .06 (.03)** 1.00 (.02) -.00 (.00) .00 (.01)

Control variables included

N 288 522 345 241

id sd(_cons) 2.46 (1.11) 0.00 (.40) .36 (.06) .64 (.17)

sd(Resid) 2.69 (.36)

Log(pseudolikelihood) -771.60 -270.30 234.34 105.68

Wald χ2 10802.81*** 110.34*** 49.21*** 59.02***

*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1




Apart from party vote share the government/opposition divide, district competition and

mayoral positions affect candidate vote share. As to the government/opposition divide, voters

appear to punish government MPs at the next elections. Karácsony (2006) has shown that

voters evaluate parties retrospectively on the basis of government performance. The reason

for the negative effects is that Hungarian voters have unrealistic expectations of the

governments’ ability to improve the economic environment12

. Therefore, voters may end up

punishing governments that execute successful economic policies. Furthermore, as voters

pursued trial-and-error tactics, a large share of votes was protest in nature, and at the same

time, a proclamation of trust toward the new government (Karácsony, 2006; Rose, 1992). The

12

Duch (2001) argues that in new democracies, voters cannot have established ideas on what to expect from

governments.

11

effect of district competition is straightforward: the larger the number of effective candidates

in the district, the smaller the share of votes a competing candidate may get. And finally,

being a mayor boosts vote share by 1.79 %points, which suggests that voters take local

attachments seriously when casting a personal vote.

Turning to the candidate selection strategies of the parties, the results of Model 2 (Table 3)

indicate that the observed parliamentary activity measures do not influence re-selection

chances on the SMD level. Obviously, selectors prioritize SMD MPs and list MPs with

previous SMD-level electoral experience. Knowing the results of Model 1, it is also not

unexpected that mayors are more likely to be nominated in SMDs than legislators with no

local leadership positions. Ministers are also more likely to be given a shot at the SMD

competition. Last but not least, somewhat surprisingly, tenure has a negative effect on re-

nomination chances. The more experienced the MP is, the lower the probability of being

selected in an SMD. This could indicate that parties constantly seek for amenable and

potentially more successful candidates who are able to increase the district vote share by

obtaining a larger amount of personal vote. These results indicate the parties take certain

activities or skills (or both) into account when selecting candidates. But these activities

(skills) are rather connected to other arenas of a legislator’s work than activities in parliament.

Although SMD candidacies may indicate who party leaders want to be re-elected, a better

measure for these kinds of preferences in a mixed-member system is party list position. Most

prominent partisans are very likely to be placed on the top of the lists either on the regional or

the national level. Models 3 and 4 on Table 3 display results related to relative list positions.

As the smaller the value of the dependent variable (i.e. the smaller the quotient of list position

and the length of the list) the higher the MP is on the list. Therefore, a negative coefficient

represents movement upward on the list. The results regarding parliamentary activities are

rather ambiguous. The number of speeches legislators delivered during the electoral term

seems to matter in the case of the national list composition. More speeches mean better

positions on the national list. With respect to the regional lists, interestingly, the number of

committee memberships has a negative effect on list placement. Paradoxically, the more an

MP works in the committees the more unfavourable her position on the list. Apart from the

activity-related measures, party affiliation and party leadership positions shape the ranking of

the candidates on the lists. First, MPs of the dominant parties (Fidesz and MSZP) are placed

lower on the list on average than the other parties’ candidates. The reason for this lies with the

setup of the parliament during the three electoral terms under investigation. Dominant parties

had substantially more MPs in parliament than any other parties. Therefore, while other

parties could place their legislators on the top of the party lists, Fidesz and MSZP had to place

at least a part of the re-nominated candidate pool down the lists. Thus, the average placement

takes a larger value in their case. Second, party leaders are placed significantly higher on both

the regional and national lists.

The above findings are based on the variables presented by Appendix 1. Here, all MPs were

taken into account, even if there is no registered activity. However, as zero cannot be

logaritmized, zeros were added a very small number (0.000001) to make logaritmization

possible. Due to this transformation, the distributions of these variables are not continuous:

they take a larger negative value in the case of inactive legislators, and are continuously

distributed in the case of others. Thus, one unit change in the independent variable cannot be

translated to every value of the variable. Therefore, to test the hypotheses (and confirm the

above findings), I re-ran the analysis using only data on active members. Results are

displayed in Table 5. The number of speeches is no longer significant (unlike in the cases of

12

Models 1 [candidate vote share] and 4 [relative national list position]), while bill-sponsorship

matters in terms of regional and national list positions. The more bills the MPs submit, the

more advantageous their positions on the lists.

Table 5. Multilevel models explaining candidate vote share, SMD candidacy, and relative

positions on regional and national lists (Active MPs only) Variables Model 9

a

DV: Candidate

vote share at t

Model 10b

DV: SMD

candidacy at t

Model 11c

DV: Relative

regional list

position at t

Model 12c

DV: Relative

national list

position


(s.e.)


Activity variables

Bills (logged) .088 (.342) 1.205 (.205) -.177 (.052)*** -.282 (.076)***

Questions (logged) -.205 (.245) .925 (.118) .024 (.039) .076 (.064)

Speeches (logged) .347 (.326) 1.224 (.199) .011 (.061) -.053 (.090)

Committee -.623 (.336)* 1.040 (.212) .147 (.070)** .077 (.079)


N 207 332 244 142

id sd(_cons) 3.01 (1.388) 0.00 (0.00) .335 (.066) 0.00 (0.00)

sd(Resid) 2.330 (.539)

Log(pseudolikelihood) -560.040 -153.749 163.390 69.126

Wald χ2 7418.13*** 72.03*** 43.30*** 98.70***

*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1




Last, but not least, floor time was excluded from the models because it’s high correlation with

the number of speeches. Table 5 shows the results of models that include floor time as an

independent variable. The number of minutes for an MP takes the floor is only relevant if

non-active MPs are taken into account. In this case, floor time influences candidate vote share

in the SMD and the relative position on the regional party list. In the former case, the total

length of the speeches affects constituency performance positively, while in the latter, MPs

spending more time with speaking on the floor, get higher on the party list than those with

less floor time.

13

Table 6. Multilevel models explaining candidate vote share, SMD candidacy, and relative positions on the regional and national party lists Variables Model 13

a

DV: Candidate

vote share at t

(all MPs)

Model 14a

DV: Candidate

vote share at t

(active MPs)

Model 15b

DV: SMD

candidacy at t

Model 16b

DV: SMD

candidacy at t

Model 17c

DV: Relative

regional list

position at t

Model 18c

DV: Relative

regional list

position at t

Model 19c

DV: Relative

national list

position

Model 20c

DV: Relative

national list

position

Coefficients

(s.e.)

Coefficients

(s.e.)

Odds ratios

(s.e.)

Odds ratios

(s.e.)

Coefficient

(s.e.)

Coefficient

(s.e.)

Coefficient

(s.e.)

Coefficient

(s.e.)

Activity variables

Bills (logged) -.01 (.03) .11 (.34) 1.02 (.02) 1.17 (.20) .00 (.00) -.16 (.05)*** -.00 (.01) -.27 (.08)***

Questions (logged) -.01 (.04) -.13 (.23) 1.03 (.02) .93 (.11) .00 (.01) .04 (.04) .01 (.01) .07 (.06)

Floor time (logged) .29 (.08)*** .16 (.31) 1.01 (.05) 1.27 (.19) .02 (.02) -.04 (.06) -.06 (.03)** -.06 (.08)

Committee -.47 (.30) -.62 (.34) .98 (.14) 1.03 (.21) .14 (.06) .15 (.07)** .07 (.06) .07 (.08)


N 288 207 522 332 345 244 241 142

id sd(_cons) 2.44 (1.05) 3.13 (1.36) 3.52e-11

(.41)

5.45e-07

(1.34)

.36 (.06) .34 (.06) .62 (.16) 3.16e-33

(9.85e-3)

sd(Resid) 2.71 (.32) 2.29 (.51)

Log(pseudolikelihood) -771.49 -560.42 -271.99 -153.27 233.98 163.60 107.02 69.24

Wald χ2 9878.45*** 7500.22*** 108.14*** 72.94*** 47.06*** 42.22*** 65.75*** 98.74***

*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1




14

Conclusions

In this paper I investigated the question if the intensity of legislator activities in parliament

affects electoral performance at the next election. Electoral performance was perceived in two

different ways. First, in the case of SMD candidates, SMD vote share was taken into account.

Second, as in mixed-member systems, there are multiple ways into the parliament, I tested the

effect of parliamentary activities on SMD nomination as well as regional and national list

positions. In the case of SMD candidacy it was assumed that it serves as a reward mechanism

to hard-working MPs. With regards to list positions, as party lists are closed, electoral

performance depends only on two things: (1) the number of seats a party wins with the list,

and (2) the rank of the candidate on that particular list. Thus, parties can decide who gets

elected just by ranking candidates.

The results are mixed at least. The number of speeches was found significant with regards to

candidate vote share and national list positions, and points toward the expected direction.

Furthermore, under certain circumstances, the number of bills also appears to have some

effect on how party leaders construct party lists. Nevertheless, none of these results are

consistent across different model specifications. Therefore, it cannot be confirmed that

legislative activities have a clear impact on the electoral fate of the legislators. This means

that MPs are not held accountable either by the voters or by their parties for how intensively

they work in parliament. With other words, the ‘goodness’ of the legislators are not assessed

based on what they do in parliament, if it is assessed at all. It is not the promise of re-election

that brings MPs to work hard, but something else. To identify these other motivations, more

research is needed, probably qualitative in nature.

Despite the insignificance of the main factors in this paper, certain findings of other nature

may add to our understanding of how voters chose between candidates and along what lines

parties construct party lists. We know now that voters value local attachment at the polling

box. Additionally, the results indicate that parties take certain activities or skills into account

when finalizing the order of candidates on the lists. However, these activities (or skills) are

rather connected to other arenas of a legislator’s work than parliamentary activities. Mayors

and ministers have better chances to being selected to SMD candidacy, while party leaders are

found at better positions on the party lists.

And finally, a few words about the causality in the presented models. Although, it was

assumed that there is a causal relationship between the independent and the dependent

variables, one has to be very careful in interpreting positive effects under such model

specifications. As a certain proportion of the MPs’ work in parliament is controlled

exclusively by the parties, both the number of bills for example and the list positions may be

influenced by a third factor, which makes parties selecting certain MPs to certain tasks. This

third factor is probably the MPs position within the party which cannot be captured either by

party leadership positions or any other political position that can objectively be measured.

Nevertheless, negative results still suggest that there is no connection between legislative

activities and electoral performance.

With regards to future research, to disentangle the case of individual accountability, whether it

exists and through what mechanism, one has to take other, non-parliamentary activities into

account as well. As to activities in parliament, one should look behind the intensity and look

at the content of those activities. Policy aspects as well as local orientation could be two

15

directions in which we could investigate further to see if voters and parties react to the context

behind sheer numbers.

16

Appendix

Appendix 1. The distributions of the main independent variables

Appendix 2.a. The bivariate relationships between candidate vote share at election t and the

main independent variables

0.1

.2.3

De

nsity

-15 -10 -5 0 5Number of sponsored bills (logged)

0

.05

.1.1

5.2

-15 -10 -5 0 5Number of questions (logged)

0.1

.2.3

.4

-15 -10 -5 0 5Number of speeches (logged)

0.1

.2.3

De

nsity

-15 -10 -5 0 5 10Floor time (logged)

0.5

11

.52

0 1 2 3 4 5Number of committees

020

40

60

80

0 1 2 3 4Number of sponsored bills (logged)

020

40

60

80

0 2 4 6 8Number of questions (logged)

020

40

60

80

0 2 4 6 8Number of speeches (logged)

020

40

60

80

0 2 4 6 8Floor time (logged)

020

40

60

80


Ca

nd

idate

vote

sha

re a

t ele

ctio

n t

17

Appendix 2.b. The bivariate relationships between SMD candidacy at election t and the main

independent variables

Appendix 2.c. The bivariate relationships between relative regional list positions at election t

and the main independent variables

01

23

4

Nu

mb

er

of

sp

on

sore

d b

ills (

log

ged

)

No Yes

02

46

8

Nu

mb

er

of

que

stion

s (

logg

ed

)

No Yes

02

46

8

Nu

mb

er

of

sp

ee

che

s (

logg

ed

)No Yes

02

46

8

Flo

or

tim

e (

log

ge

d)

No Yes

01

23

45

Nu

mb

er

of

co

mm

itte

es

No Yes

0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


Re

lative r

eg

iona

l lis

t positio

n a

t ele

ctio

n t

18

Appendix 2.d. The bivariate relationships between relative national list positions at election t

and the main independent variables

0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


0.2

.4.6

.81


Re

lative n

ation

al lis

t po

sitio

n a

t e

lection

t

19

Appendix 3. The list of control variables

Variable Description

Time (t) Election (2002, 2006, 2010)

Party vote share in

SMD (t)

The vote share of the MPs party in the respective SMD at election t.

SMD MP (t) The MP was holding an SMD mandate at the time of election t

Regional list MP (t) The MP was holding a regional list mandate at the time of election t

SMD candidates (t-

1)

The MP was an SMD candidate at the previous election (t-1)

Tenure (t) The number of terms served as an MP at the time of election t

Joint candidate (t) The MP was nominated by multiple parties jointly in the SMD at

election t

Dominant party (t) MP of Fidesz or MSZP

Government party

(t)

MP of a government party at the time of election t

District

competition (t)

The number of effective candidates in the SMD at election t;

2

1

ipN ,where pi is the vote share of each candidate competing in

the respective SMD

Multiple

candidacies (t)

The MP was nominated on multiple tiers of the electoral system at

election t

Mayor (t) The MP is a mayor at the time of election t

Minister (t) The MP is a minister at the time of election t

Party leader (t) The MP is a party leader at the time of election t

Parliamentary

positions (t)

The MP holds office in parliament as a PPG-leader, speaker, vice

president or clerk) at the time of election t

Committee chair (t) The MP serves as a committee chair at the time of election t

20

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Legislator activities in parliament and electoral ......the represented. The main principle of party representation is the representation of policy preferences: ‘party representation