Who Represents the Constituency? Online Political Communication by Members of Parliament in the German Mixed-Member Electoral System

IF 1.4 3区社会学 Q2 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Legislative Studies Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-03-09 DOI:10.1111/lsq.12379

Lennart Schürmann, Sebastian Stier

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引用次数: 5

Abstract

Members of parliament (MPs) are elected via two different tiers in mixed-member electoral systems—as winners of a seat in a constituency or as party candidates under proportional rules. While previous research has identified important consequences of this “mandate divide” in parliaments, questions remain how this institutional setup affects MPs' political behavior in other arenas. Analyzing more than one million social media posts, this article investigates regional representation in the online communication of German MPs. The results show that MPs elected under a direct mandate refer approximately twice as often to their constituencies by using regionalized wording and geographic references than MPs elected under the proportional tier. The substantive findings provide new evidence for the benefits of mixed-member electoral systems for political representation while the methodological approach demonstrates the added value of social media data for analyzing the political behavior of elites.

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谁代表选区？德国混合议员选举制度下议员的在线政治交流

在混合成员选举制度下，国会议员通过两个不同的层级选举产生——作为选区席位的获胜者，或者作为按比例规则选出的政党候选人。虽然先前的研究已经确定了议会中这种“授权鸿沟”的重要后果，但这种制度设置如何影响议员在其他领域的政治行为仍然存在问题。本文分析了100多万条社交媒体帖子，调查了德国国会议员在线交流中的地区代表性。结果表明，在直接选举中当选的议员使用区域化措辞和地理参考的频率大约是在比例选举中当选的议员的两倍。实质性研究结果为混合成员选举制度对政治代表制的好处提供了新的证据，而方法论方法则证明了社交媒体数据对分析精英政治行为的附加价值。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Legislative Studies Quarterly POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

2.60

自引率

13.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Legislative Studies Quarterly is an international journal devoted to the publication of research on representative assemblies. Its purpose is to disseminate scholarly work on parliaments and legislatures, their relations to other political institutions, their functions in the political system, and the activities of their members both within the institution and outside. Contributions are invited from scholars in all countries. The pages of the Quarterly are open to all research approaches consistent with the normal canons of scholarship, and to work on representative assemblies in all settings and all time periods. The aim of the journal is to contribute to the formulation and verification of general theories about legislative systems, processes, and behavior.