Dual candidacy as a source of legislator behaviour. The re-election and the mandate incentive under mixed-member electoral rules

• Published in: Acta politica Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 26 - 48
• Main Author: Papp, Zsófia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Palgrave Macmillan UK 2021; Palgrave Macmillan
• Subjects: Alternative approaches; Attitudes; Behavior; Candidates; Comparative Politics; Constituents; Dissent; Elections; Electoral systems; European Politics; Incentives; Legislators; Original Article; Political Science; Political Science and International Relations; Political Science and International Studies; Legislators; Electoral rules; Hungary; Voting dissent; Parliament; Constituency orientation
• ISSN: 0001-6810; 1741-1416
• DOI: 10.1057/s41269-019-00143-6

Legislators are often viewed as ‘single-minded seekers of re-election’, and hence their actions are attributed to their ultimate goal of staying in office. However, an alternative approach ‘liberates’ legislators from the ever continuing struggle for re-election and argues that MPs carry out certain tasks simply because it is part of their jobs. This study is an attempt to empirically separate re-election and mandate incentives in the MPs’ behaviour. Hungary’s mixed-member electoral system with dual candidacy creates a situation in which the two types of incentives can be separately observed. If mandate incentives prevail there should be a difference between SMD and list MPs, while re-election motivations offer the dominant explanation to MP behaviour if the difference is between MPs nominated in SMDs and those who are not. Analysing legislators’ attitudes and behaviour between 2010 and 2014 it is found that although re-election incentives indeed prevail in the MPs’ behaviour, the effect of the mandate strongly characterizes attitudes creating a tension between what MPs do and what they think they should be doing.