Legislators as Linkage in European Democracies

Individual legislators and their preferences are the basic building blocks of legislative institutions. This workshop asks about the extent to which they matter as linkage mechanisms in European democracies, the conditions of individual and country level differences in this regard, and also their political consequences. Answers to these questions will help advance our knowledge about the process of political representation in European democracies, explore the quality of individual level linkage across European democracies, and also contribute to our understanding of the behavioral consequences of crucial democratic institutions such as electoral and party systems. Connecting citizens and the state is a crucial challenge in modern democracies. It is thus of utmost importance to explore the quality of available mechanisms in this regard. The linkage concept generally signifies the process in which preferences of citizens are connected with authoritative decision making (Dalton, Farrell and McAllister 2011; Lawson 1980; Römmele, Farrell and Ignazi 2005). This can refer to a number of distinct activities, particularly campaigning (campaign linkage), general efforts of politicians to connect to citizens and to provide opportunities to participate (participatory linkage), legislators’ efforts to take positions and to provide cues to voters (ideological linkage), and also legislative activities to influence public policies (policy linkage). Traditionally, this concept is closely tied to political parties as the main linkage mechanism in European democracies. We, however, consider it fruitful to expand it to individual legislators and to devote a workshop to these efforts. The reason we consider it fruitful to study individual legislators as linkage derives from four visible themes in the relevant literature. These all emphasize the significance of legislators as linkage but do so from different angles and with regard to different research questions. They provide the basic structure of the workshop. Our intention is to take stock of existing work on these themes, to critically explore them, to identify research gaps, and to facilitate syntheses. They can be sketched in the following ways. First, the role approach in the legislative studies literature emphasizes that legislators hold complex sets of role perceptions that involve highly individual motivations. These are considered to result in special efforts to provide individualized campaign, participatory, and also policy linkage (Longley and Hazan 2000; Müller et al. 2001; Müller and Saalfeld 1997; Norton and Wood 1993; Patzelt 1993; Searing 1985). In this vein, Thomassen and Andeweg (2004) argue that individual legislators matter since they are able to push for their beliefs in intra-party negotiations, enjoy some leeway in leading party policy as a result of the division of labor in parties, and also are able to pursue individual concerns, and cater to particular sub-constituencies, in “smaller” policy matters (see also Thomassen 1994). Advancing from this perspective, in this workshop, we wish to explore what individual legislators do to link to what kind of sub-constituencies, and why legislators might differ in this regard. We particularly aim to tap into and further stimulate most recent text-based research on legislators' efforts to signal to subsets of constituents in legislative context via parliamentary questions, private member bills, vote explanations, or floor statements (Bird 2005; Bowler 2010; Bräuninger, Brunner and Daeubler 2012; Kellermann 2016; Martin 2011a; Martin 2011b; Ono 2015; Saalfeld and Bischof 2013; Saalfeld 2011; Solvak 2013; Sozzi 2016; Wüst 2014; Sieberer 2015, Proksch and Slapin 2014; Bäck and Debus 2016). However, we also wish to relate to survey based research that focuses for example on legislators' extra-parliamentary activities to provide linkage such as campaigning or conducting case work (Deschouwer and Depauw 2014; Zittel 2015; Zittel and Gschwend 2008). The second theme elaborates on the types of sub-constituencies legislators might cater to and results from the descriptive and constructivist turns in representational theory. It stresses that legislators might function as critical actors that make representative claims on behalf of distinct social groups (Mansbridge 1999; Phillips 1995; Rehfeld 2006; Saward 2010). Advancing from this perspective, in the proposed workshop we wish to explore the universe of relevant social groups in this regard, the way legislators cater to these groups, their reasons for doing so, and particularly the relationship between claim-making, descriptive types of representation, and substantive representation. We particularly aim to relate to research that has examined when and to what extent female legislators are critical actors that represent specific interests of women in legislative contexts (Bratton and Ray 2002; Campbell, Childs and Lovenduski 2010; Celis and Childs 2012; Celis 2006; Eder, Fortin-Rittberger and Kroeber 2016; Lovenduski and Norris 1996; Lovenduski and Norris 2003; Mateo Diaz 2005; Piscopo 2011). We also aim to relate to recent additions to this literature such as research on minority representation in Europe (Wüst and Saalfeld 2010; Gilardi 2015; Martin 2016; Saalfeld and Bischof 2013), on new lifestyle groups such as the LGBT community (Reynolds 2013), and on working class constituents (Carnes 2012; Heath 2015). The third theme results from the electoral studies literature and focuses on why legislators might invest special efforts in providing linkage. It stresses legislators’ strategic interests as a result of institutional contexts and incentives. This literature particularly focuses on the role of candidate centered electoral systems that are said to facilitate personal vote seeking motivations and thus efforts to function as linkage (Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina 1984; Colomer 2011; Mayhew 1974). In this workshop, we wish to further explore this theme. We are particularly interested in recent research that has highlighted the nuanced behavioral effects of different electoral rules (Bawn and Thies 2003), the special significance of intra-party competition for personal vote seeking behavior resulting from preference voting systems in European democracies (André, Depauw and Martin 2015; Carey and Shugart 1995; Shugart 2005), the peculiar behavioral effects of mixed-systems (Bochsler and Bernauer 2014; Cox and Schoppa 2002; Shugart 2001), and also the independent role of candidate nomination processes (e.g. Hazan and Rahat 2010; Hazan and Voerman 2006). While these insights produce a wealth of studies on the electoral sources of individualized linkage politics, it also raises questions of the limits to electoral system explanations and suggests alternative perspectives that could help us understand the behaviors of legislators in their representative functions (Louwerse and Otjes 2016; Martin 2014). All these approaches are of relevance to the proposed workshop since it aims to explore the range of variables that might affect legislators’ proclivity to function as linkage mechanisms. A fourth theme relates to both the types and conditions of individualized linkage. The party and the electoral studies literatures stress strategic interests of political parties to engage in personalistic or valence types of politics as a result of efforts to adapt to changing electoral markets that result from partisan dealignment (Dalton, Farrell and McAllister 2011; Franklin, Mackie and Valen 1992; Mair, Müller and Plasser 2004). In this vein, parties are said to “utilize” individual legislators as cues in addition to partisan vote-earning strategies to react to increasingly volatile and segmented electoral markets. In the proposed workshop, we wish to explore this theme from several angles. First, it has implications for campaign linkage and how legislators interact in their role as candidates with the electorate and also with their parties. However, second, it also has implications for other types of linkage since the heightened “campaign value” of individual legislators might affect their intra-party bargaining power, and thus eventually policy linkage. To put it another way, personalized campaign politics might result in greater permissiveness of political parties towards individual legislators as a result of their increased electoral value. It is important to stress, that these four themes do not principally contradict the crucial role of political parties as linkage mechanisms in European democracies. As political scientists, our understanding of political representation in European democracies continues to be patterned by salient preferences of legislators for collective responsibility and thus by the model of collectivist representation; party loyalty has been understood to be the critical motivator (Esaiasson and Holmberg 1996; Powell 2004; Thomassen 1994; Uslaner and Zittel 2006). In this model, legislators join political parties that perform the function of linkages and perceive themselves as mouthpieces of collective agents. In this role legislators represent parties to citizens “from above” (Esaiasson and Holmberg 1996) as opposed to functioning as their own agent representing citizens to parties “from below”. However, the four themes outlined above stress the important role played by individual legislators as supplements to political parties in providing linkage, and also as factors that might affect the ways parties themselves function as linkage mechanisms. This ties in with the perspective of proponents of the linkage concept that never envisioned parties to be the only actors able to provide linkage and that suggested a focus on other actors and structures that might matter in this regard (Lawson 1980; Römmele, Farrell and Ignazi 2005).