How Do Strong Parties Shape MPs’ Incentives to Represent Local Interests?

• In Event: Unequal Representation and Its Consequences in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

How do strong parties affect the representation of local interests during times of distress? This paper uses parliamentary speech from Norway together with unique data on politicians’ travels and parliamentary attendance to study how economic hardship affects legislators’ representation of local interests in the national parliament. Contrary to what one would expect, I find that MPs deliver significantly fewer speeches and talk less about unemployment during local economic downturns. Using word embeddings together with recently developed methods to identify choices in high-dimensional data, I show that, conditional on speaking, MPs deviate more in floor speeches when their districts are experiencing economic downturns. These results demonstrate how it can be rational for party elites in well-functioning democracies to restrict MPs from representing their constituencies’ interests during times of distress because they want to prevent deviations from the party line from compromising the party brand.


Majority rule is at the core of democracy. However, unrestricted majority rule in democracies can suppress minority interests in the same way as autocratic regimes. A fundamental condition for a well-functioning democracy is hence that the interests of political minorities are represented in the public debate, and that their representatives are allowed the freedom to dissent and participate fully in democratic activities (Habermas, 1996).

In this paper, I contribute to our understanding of the trade-off between minority interest and majority rule by studying the conditions under which legislators are allowed to represent local concerns in parliament. On the one hand, representation of local interests can pay off in terms of local electoral gains. On the other hand, when there is incongruence between the preferences of voters in two districts, representation of one district’s interest at the expense of another can foster uncertainty regarding a party’s policy stands. Such uncertainty can reduce turnout by increasing the cost of voting, as ideology becomes a less efficient signal for parties’ political platforms (Downs, 1957). Parties hence face a trade-off between allowing their elected officials to represent local concerns and maintaining a coherent party brand.

I show that when parties have strong tools to discipline their elected officials, legislators may choose to abstain from representing their districts in parliament when the risk of compromising the party brand is high. Using local unemployment to create regional variations in the incentives to deviate from the party line in the highly party-centered environment of Norway, I find that MPs are less likely to speak in parliament when the districts they are representing are experiencing economic distress. A one percentage point increase in local unemployment relative to the preceding month is associated with a 10 percent reduction in the number of speeches given by an MP in the same month.

To disentangle the mechanisms behind my results, I look into MPs’ roll call vote attendance and a unique data set of legislators’ travel bills. I show that although local conditions have no effect on legislators’ roll call vote attendance, MPs are more likely to travel to their constituencies during times of distress, allowing them to cater to their localities without alienating voters in districts with different industry composition (whose policy solutions are different).

I also examine how the content and positioning of MPs’ speeches change in accordance with local conditions. For content, I show that local economic hardship is associated with a reduction in local representatives’ coverage of unemployment issues, while the coverage of other issues remains stable. To study positioning, I apply a three-stage natural language processing procedure, which allows me to scale MPs’ floor speeches in accordance with the preferences of the districts they are representing, I demonstrate that, conditional on speaking, MPs deviate more from the party line in floor speeches during times of distress. Taken together, my results suggest that national party elites use their control over parliamentary speeches to keep elevated incentives to deviate from the party line from compromising the party brand.

Author

• Oda Nedregård, Sciences Po