Electoral Mandate and Party Cohesion: Does It Matter in Lithuania?

Abstract

Legislators elected on a party list vote (proportional representation system) are ostensibly more disciplined than those elected in single-seat district contests. However, previous efforts to test this hypothesis in cross-national studies have led to ambiguous results, as contextual factors were found to be at least as important as the type of mandate. In the case of Lithuania, which has adopted a mixed electoral system, the behaviour of elected deputies in 962 roll-call votes between 2003 and 2006 reveals that deputies from single-seat constituencies, rather than deputies on party lists, are more disciplined in the Lithuanian Seimas. This unexpected finding may be related to the peculiar dynamics of mixed electoral systems.