Does a District-Vote Matter for the Behavior of Politicians? A Textual Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches

44 Pages Posted: 3 Aug 2020

See all articles by Andreas Born

Andreas Born

Stockholm School of Economics - Department of Economics

Aljoscha Janssen

Singapore Management University

Date Written: June 4, 2020

Abstract

In most democracies members of parliament are either elected over a party list or by a district. We use a discontinuity in the German parliamentary system to investigate the causal effect of a district-election on an MP's conformity with her party-line. A district-election does not affect roll call voting behavior causally, possibly due to overall high adherence to party voting. Analyzing the parliamentary speeches of each MP allows us to overcome the high party discipline with regard to parliamentary voting. Using textual analysis and machine learning techniques, we create two measures of closeness of an MP's speeches to her party. We find that district-elected members of parliament do not differ, in terms of speeches, from those of their party-peers who have been elected through closed party lists. However, both speeches and voting correlate with district characteristics suggesting that district-elections allow districts to select more similar politicians.

Keywords: Party-line; Textual Analysis; Regression Discontinuity; Parliamentary Speeches; Voting

JEL Classification: D72

Suggested Citation

Born, Andreas and Janssen, Aljoscha, Does a District-Vote Matter for the Behavior of Politicians? A Textual Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches (June 4, 2020). IFN Working Paper No. 1320 (2020), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3644358 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3644358

Andreas Born

Stockholm School of Economics - Department of Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 6501
Sveavagen 65
S-113 83 Stockholm
Sweden

Aljoscha Janssen (Contact Author)

Singapore Management University ( email )

Li Ka Shing Library
70 Stamford Road
Singapore 178901, 178899
Singapore

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