Unbreakable Legacies? Redistricting, Political Capital and the Personal Vote

• In Event: Preferences for Redistribution and Representation

Abstract

Political dynasties are a puzzling feature of democracies. The personal vote and political capital can explain why political dynasties endure. Yet does abolishing electoral districts remove these electoral advantages and break family legacies? We use this extreme, negative shock to an incumbent’s political capital in nineteenth century Britain to ask whether and to what extent the removal of these advantages contributed to the sharp decline in political dynasties observed after 1885. We exploit Britain’s Redistribution of Seats Act, mandating the abolition of constituencies below a population threshold. This feature allows us to distinguish the effect of the loss in personal vote on affected incumbents’ ability to build political dynasties from other contemporaneous economic and political reforms. We find that those whose seats were abolished were less likely to have elected relatives afterwards. The differences are not driven by fewer immediate successions in the next election, but by having fewer relatives elected over the short-run, i.e. up to 1918. Our paper highlights an understudied long-term consequence of redistricting: shifting the distribution of power across generations.

Authors

• Brenda Van Coppenolle, Leiden University

• Carlos Velasco Rivera, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse