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Who is the ultimate boss of legislators: Voters, special interest groups or parties?

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  • Stadelmann, David
  • Torrens, Gustavo

Abstract

Politicians have multiple principals. We investigate the weights that politicians put on the revealed preferences of their constituents, special interest groups and party when deciding on legislative proposals. Preferences of constituents, special interest groups and parties are directly observed in our setting and they are positively correlated among each other. The empirical findings suggest that constituent preferences are assigned the lowest weight. Holding constant the preferences of other principals, constituent preferences are assigned a weight of only 10.0%. Party preferences are assigned the highest weight of all principals and special interest groups lie in between. A politician's personal ideology plays no substantial role in legislative decisions. We explore conflict among principals as well as heterogeneity among politicians. Our results cast doubt on the empirical relevance of the median voter model and suggest that more principals need to be considered to explain legislative decisions.

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  • Stadelmann, David & Torrens, Gustavo, 2020. "Who is the ultimate boss of legislators: Voters, special interest groups or parties?," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224562, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc20:224562
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Principal-agent; multiple principals; voting; political representation; behavior of politicians;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

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