Loyal lists, distinctive districts: how dissent-shirking and leisure-shirking affect mixed-candidate selection

Abstract In parliamentary systems, party leaderships accomplish party unity by promising positive incentives to their members of parliament (MP) and threatening them with negative incentives. Regarding reselection, ‘loyal’ and active MPs should be rewarded with promising list positions, while rebellious and ‘slacking’ MPs should be punished with worse list positions or even denied renomination. Although this assumption is central to explaining party unity induced by party discipline, empirical evidence for this practice has been scarce. The study combines data on roll-call voting, parliamentary speeches and questions in the German Bundestag from 1990 to 2017 with novel data on renominations including renomination failures. Investigating list position changes and renomination failures in the German mixed-member system, the results indicate that selectorates of list candidates punished dissenting voting behaviour, while selectorates of district candidates considered the degree of parliamentary activity. The findings have broader implications for the representatives’ accountability in parliamentary systems.