Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/214486 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
CREMA Working Paper No. 2011-02
Publisher: 
Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA), Basel
Abstract: 
We assess the effect of constituents' preferences on legislators' decisions within a quasiexperimental setting: In the Swiss referendum process, citizens and legislators reveal their preferences for legislative proposals. We match roll call votes of all Swiss legislators on 102 legislative proposals with revealed constituents' preferences on exactly the same issues from 1996 to 2008. The setting allows us to quantify the quality of parliamentary representation and we identify conditions which affect convergence between constituents' preferences and legislators' decisions. Results show that a legislator's probability to accept a law proposal increases by 16.8 percentage points when district voters accept the proposal.
Subjects: 
Political Representation
Constituents' Preferences
Spatial Voting Models
Referenda
JEL: 
D7
H7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
181.73 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.