Back from Holyrood: How mixed-member proportional representation and ballot structure shape the personal vote
| Author | David CW Parker,Caitlyn M Richter |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118762279 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118762279
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2018, Vol. 20(3) 674 –692
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148118762279
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Back from Holyrood:
How mixed-member
proportional representation
and ballot structure shape
the personal vote
David CW Parker and Caitlyn M Richter
Abstract
Research on mixed-member legislatures demonstrates that members face different incentive
structures when cultivating a personal vote. In this article, we examine how Scotland’s adoption of
a mixed-member proportional system (MMP) and a change in ballot structure affect the legislative
activities undertaken and emphasised by Members of Scottish Parliament (MSPs). Utilising a range
of measures of legislative behaviour, we find that MSPs representing constituencies spend less time
legislating and more time engaged in constituent service work. Regional members, conversely,
lodge more parliamentary motions when not listed on the ballot and sponsor more members’ bills
than constituency-based colleagues when on the ballot. We conclude that electoral structures
directly affect the representational styles MSPs adopt, while calling for conceptual reconsideration
of the personal vote.
Keywords
casework, home style, legislatures, mixed-member proportional, personal vote, policy expertise,
representational style, Scottish Parliament
That institutional structures shape legislative behaviour is uncontroversial.1 Campaign
regulations shape messages candidates employ on the hustings (Parker, 2008; La Raja
and Schaffner, 2015), selection procedures determine fidelity to the party on floor votes
(Depauw and Martin, 2008), committee autonomy relates to the intensity of executive
oversight (Fisher, 2015; House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform
Committee, 2013), and even the physical structures of and seating arrangements within
parliaments shape political culture (Crosby, 2016; Goodsell, 1988). Institutional proce-
dures establish the playing field upon which legislators compete for office and engage in
Department of Political Science, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA
Corresponding author:
David CW Parker, Department of Political Science, Montana State University, 2-139 Wilson Hall, P.O. Box
172240, Bozeman, MT 59717, USA.
Email: dparker@montana.edu
762279BPI0010.1177/1369148118762279The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsParker and Richter
research-article2018
Original Article
Parker and Richter 675
policymaking. Most directly, legislative and electioneering arrangements incentivise the
adoption of particular representational roles by parliamentarians.
Crucial to how legislators allocate scarce time, the representational roles they
adopt, and how they craft a personal vote are the balloting arrangements governing
selection of legislators. One popular method is mixed-member proportional (MMP).
As representatives in an MMP system are elected in two distinct ways, how they are
elected should affect the representational style they adopt. The Scottish Parliament,
which elects some members in First Past the Post (FPTP) elections to represent single-
member constituencies and others from closed party lists in multimember regions to
reflect the party vote proportionately, provides an opportunity to examine how the
incentive structures established by electoral systems affect the representational choices
legislators make.2
We make three contributions. First, we create measures of the policy-expertise and
constituency-service propensities of Members of Scottish Parliament (MSPs) instead of
relying on surveys of members. Specifically, we measure their willingness to revolt
against their party, sponsor members’ bills, lodge parliamentary motions, and spend rep-
resentational allowances on constituent surgery advertisements. Better measures of legis-
lator activity may help resolve the conflict between theoretical expectations and mixed
empirical findings in the literature on constituency service.
Second, we make the theoretical argument that a legislator’s efforts to develop a
personal vote goes beyond engaging in casework alone and may be intended for audi-
ences beyond constituents and general election voters. Although the literature on the
personal vote emphasises that legislators undertake casework to develop an electoral
advantage greater than the party’s expected support, legislators must also concern
themselves with other constituencies beyond general election voters. This list of others
includes party activists, members, and leaders making selection decisions and serving
as a legislator’s primary constituency (Fenno, 1978), which is often distinct from the
re-election constituency. The distinction between the two is perhaps most acute for
regional members who must protect their position on the party list and for whom case-
work is difficult to perform effectively over a larger geographic area as compared to
legislators representing smaller single-member constituencies. This contrast may
necessitate that regional legislators selected from closed party lists take on a distinc-
tively different, more policy-centric representational role compared to legislators
directly elected to serve constituencies. We find that members directly elected to sin-
gle-member constituencies are less likely to adopt a policy expert personal vote than
their regional colleagues selected from party lists and representing multimember dis-
tricts. Constituency-based members, alternatively, devote more resources crafting a
traditional personal vote based upon casework and surgeries.
Finally, we take advantage of a natural experiment rising from a change in ballot-
ing procedure concerning regional members. Names of regional candidates for the
Scottish Parliament appeared on the ballot before 2007 but not after. The removal of
regional candidate names may have changed the incentives for how regional mem-
bers cultivate a personal vote during their time in office. Collectively, we find support
for the notion that Scotland’s MMP system and the change in the ballot structure after
the 2003 elections affected how legislators allocate their time and the type of personal
vote adopted, with constituency members less active on legislative issues and regional
members more attentive to the constituency when their names appeared on the
ballot.3
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