Legislators in the Crossfire: The Effect of Transparency on Parliamentary Voting

Legislators are agents who serve two different principals: their constituents and their Party. Legislators are caught in the crossfire if their Party leaders' position contradicts the electorate's interests. Legislators care about their reputation with both principals as they are career-motivated. Making their votes public increases the incentive to use voting for reputation-building, and therefore distortion in group decision-making. This paper first shows that reputational concerns drive the decision to participate in a vote. Second, the French transparency reform of 2014 provides a quasi-natural setting for a Difference-in-Differences analysis. Greater transparency has led to less participation and more alignment to the Party line. As such, knowing that their behavior is more easily observable, legislators prefer not to take sides, and additional information benefits Party leaders more than constituents in the short term. The effect size is sufficient to switch results in 12 percent of the vote outcomes.