Title
Costly Signals: Voter Responses to Parliamentary Dissent in Austria, Britain, and Germany
Author
Nick Vivyan
School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University
Abstract
When Members of Parliament (MPs) disagree publicly with their party, this provides a signal to voters regarding both their political views and their character valence. We argue that the strength of this signal to voters depends on the personal career costs an MP incurs by dissenting. The greater the perceived costs of dissent to the MP, the more positively voters should react to dissent. In line with this theory, we use a series of conjoint analysis experiments in Britain, Germany, and Austria to show that: (1) dissent has a more positive effect on voter evaluations in systems where the costs of dissent are higher, and (2) more costly types of dissent have a greater impact on voter evaluations. These findings have important implications for understanding how voter evaluations of MPs depend on beliefs about parliamentary systems and how parliamentary institutions condition the link between voters and MPs.
Keywords
conjoint analysislegislative behaviorparliamentary dissentparliamentary rebellionsignallingvoter responses
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
Appeared in
Title
Legislative Studies Quarterly
Publication
Wiley
Version type
Date issued
2020
Access rights
Rights
Rights statement
© 2019 The Authors
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