Effect of Partisanship and Seniority on Fenno's Paradox: Evidence from Taiwan

• In Event: Legislative Behavior and Intraparty Dynamics in Taiwan

Abstract

Constituents prefer their legislators to the legislature as a whole, as observed by Fenno (1975). The main explanation for this “Fenno’s Paradox” is that legislators’ electoral efforts, such as providing constituency service and promoting district interests through legislation, do not necessarily translate into approval of the entire legislature. However, a growing number of empirical studies suggested that the intensification of partisanship and decline of incumbency advantage also affect how constituents evaluate individual legislators and the legislature in a polarized period. This paper argues that disparities in citizens’ evaluations of their particular representatives and the legislature are affected by their party identification. Furthermore, the effects of party identification are conditional on citizens’ other voting concerns and the seniority of incumbents. Using 2020 survey data from Taiwan, this study analyzes the differences in 1680 constituent’s evaluation scores for their district legislators and the Legislative Yuan. The findings demonstrate that the effect of party identification on constituents’ evaluation gap decreases if legislators build good reputation with constituency service, legislative behavior, and personal images. Furthermore, these concerns have heterogeneous influence on constituents’ evaluation gap for majority and minority partisans. However, it is surprising that incumbency has a marginally positive effect on evaluations of legislators, which decreases as legislators are reelected multiple times. To concluded, this study suggests that the loss of citizens’ approval for individual representatives may be compensated by some electoral and personal concerns in the polarization era, especially for members of minority parties.

Author

• YingTung Chen, National Cheng Kung University