Does representatives' legislative activity have any effect on their electoral performance? A broad theoretical literature suggests so, but real-world evidence is scarce as empirically, personal and party votes are hard to separate. In this article, we examine whether bill initiation actually helps MPs to attract preference votes under flexible list electoral systems. In these systems, voters can accept the party-provided rank order or vote for specific candidates, which allows a clear distinction between personal and party votes. The empirical analysis uses data on bill initiation by Belgian MPs in the period 2003–2007 to explain their personal vote in the 2007 elections. We find that particularly single-authored proposals initiated shortly before the upcoming elections are associated with a larger personal vote.

Es gibt eine Vielzahl von Studien zu den Themen „Parteienwettbewerb“ und „strategisches Wählen“. Eine Verknüpfung der beiden Themenfelder findet jedoch kaum statt. Während Untersuchungen zum Parteienwettbewerb meist von „ehrlichen“ Wählern ausgehen und sich auf die Positionierung von Parteien konzentrieren, legen Studien zu strategischem Wählen meist komplexes Wählerverhalten zugrunde bei gleichzeitig statischen Parteipositionen. Der vorliegende Beitrag will diese Forschungslücke schließen und die Frage beantworten, inwiefern strategisches Wahlverhalten die Positionierung von Parteien beeinflusst. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf der Modellierung des Mehrparteienwettbewerbs in parlamentarischen Demokratien mit Verhältniswahlrecht und Koalitionsregierungen. Koalitionsregierungen aus mindestens zwei Parteien, die über eine parlamentarische Mehrheit verfügen, sind die typische Regierungsform in europäischen Demokratien.1 Die weite Verbreitung dieser institutionellen Gegebenheiten steht in direktem Gegensatz zur geringen Aufmerksamkeit, die diese Demokratieform in räumlichen Politikmodellen erhält.

It is well known that different types of electoral systems create different incentives to cultivate a personal vote and that there may be variation in intra-party competition within an electoral system. This article demonstrates that flexible list systems where voters can choose to cast a vote for the list as ordered by the party or express preference votes for candidates create another type of variation in personal vote-seeking incentives within the system. This variation arises because the flexibility of party-in-a-district lists results from voters' actual inclination to use preference votes and the formal weight of preference votes in changing the original list order. Hypotheses are tested which are linked to this logic for the case of Belgium, where party-in-a-district constituencies vary in their use of preference votes and the electoral reform of 2001 adds interesting institutional variation in the formal impact of preference votes on intra-party seat allocation. Since formal rules grant Belgian MPs considerable leeway in terms of bill initiation, personal vote-seeking strategies are inferred by examining the use of legislative activity as signalling tool in the period between 1999 and 2007. The results establish that personal vote-seeking incentives vary with the extent to which voters use preference votes and that this variable interacts with the weight of preference votes as defined by institutional rules. In addition, the article confirms the effect of intra-party competition on personal vote-seeking incentives and illustrates that such incentives can underlie the initiation of private members bills in a European parliamentary system.

In stable democratic countries the redistribution of power is institutionalized. Yet, there are periods of increased political uncertainty: During electoral campaigns there is uncertainty about who will win the election. And in multiparty parliamentary systems the uncertainty over who will actually govern usually continues throughout the coalition formation process. This article tries to contribute to answering the question whether and how financial markets react to such political uncertainty. Using a standard econometric tool, a GARCH (1,1) model, I find evidence for reactions of the AEX (Amsterdam Exchange Index) on periods of political uncertainty in the Netherlands. There is strong evidence that the political uncertainty during electoral campaigns is reflected in increased volatility of the AEX. The reactions during the coalition formation period seem to depend on the degree of uncertainty about the expected government coalition. The evidence for reactions on the ideological positions of government is mixed: Participation of left parties in governments seems to increase volatility, but the mean returns are not negatively affected in recent elections.

Legislation in Germany is dominated by three central actors: government, Bundestag (first chamber), and Bundesrat (second chamber). While the role of the Bundesrat as initiator of laws is disregarded in most research on legislation in Germany, it will be at the centre of this article, which analyses the factors determining the success of Bundesrat bills. We focus on the question whether the actors' policy positions or party strategic considerations are decisive for, first, the success of a bill inside the Bundesrat and, second, in the whole legislative process. Policy positions of the parties at the federal and the state level are extracted from party manifestos using the wordscores method. Our results show that programmatic positions are relevant to win a majority in the Bundesrat. However, the overall success depends more on whether the initiator belongs to the government or opposition camp at the federal level.