Citizens' Perspectives of Legislator Dissent: Experimental Evidence

• In Event: Legislative Behavior and Intraparty Dynamics in Taiwan

Abstract

People have different views about what elected representatives should do in a democracy. Some people think legislators should follow their conscience (policy concern), others believe they should respond to citizens’ demand (public opinion or constituency), and yet others think they should follow their party platform. However, which of these considerations are voters care about the most when there is a conflict? In this article, we presented respondents with the vignette of a fictional legislator who ran for a seat in the Taiwan Legislative Yuan of Representatives. These vignettes experimentally manipulated whether the representative had changed positions on a policy. Our experiments were conducted in October 2022. The 1500 respondents were separated into two groups, Change of Position and Maintain of Position, and six sub-groups. The vignette randomly manipulated fictional legislator faced three kinds of different pressure: (1) Public Opinion, (2) Constituency, (3) Party. We make a significant theoretical contribution to the literature on representation by comparing how much citizens value legislator maintaining or changing his position when he faces a conflict between personal views and the majority of citizens' wants. To be more specific, we think there would be some differences in Public Opinion and Constituency, and finally, party pressure. Also, we want to understand these legislators' behaviors and how to influence the citizens' voting behavior.

Authors

• Shiow-duan Hawang, Soochow University

• You Chen Chen, University of Houston