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- Title
Measuring Electoral Control.
- Authors
van der Kolk, Henk
- Abstract
If voters do not pay attention to what representatives do, representatives are not stimulated to be responsive. Therefore, electoral control, the extent to which voters base their vote on the behaviour of representatives is, at least potentially, an important variable in the explanation of the behaviour of representatives. Moreover, electoral control seems to be an important variable from a normative point of view. In this article four ways to measure the minimal level of local electoral control using the outcomes of local elections (electoral statistics) are presented. The general idea behind the measures is fairly simple. If local elections are completely determined by nonlocal factors, then the losses and gains of local divisions of national parties from one local election to another are 'identical' across municipalities. A deviation from this pattern can be interpreted as an indication of the minimal level of local electoral control in a specific municipality. The measures are externally validated using data from a survey among council members.
- Subjects
POLITICAL campaigns; COMMAND &; control systems; VOTING; REPRESENTATIVE government; BEHAVIOR; MUNICIPAL government
- Publication
Quality & Quantity, 2000, Vol 34, Issue 4, p367
- ISSN
0033-5177
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1023/A:1004888224540