We analyze the effect of constituents’ preferences on legislators’ decisions within a quasi-experimental setting: In the Swiss referendum process, constituents and legislators vote on policy proposals and thus reveal their preferences. We match roll call votes of all legislators on 118...

type="main" xml:id="ecpo12039-abs-0001" <p>Does the gender of political representatives affect the extent to which they adhere to the voter majority's preferences? By matching individual male and female representatives' votes on legislative proposals with real referendum outcomes on the same...</p>

We match individual senators’ voting behavior on legislative proposals with 24 real referendum decisions on exactly the same issues with identical wording. This setting allows us to evaluate the median voter model’s quality with revealed constituents’ preferences. Results indicate a...

We reply to the comment of John Carey and Simon Hix on our original contribution entitled “District Magnitude and Representation of the Majority’s Preferences: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Popular and Parliamentary Votes” in Public Choice 151:585–610 (<CitationRef CitationID="CR3">2012</CitationRef>). District magnitude does...</citationref>

The separation of powers is endogenous to the politico-economic process, and thus to politicians’ self-interest. Only little is known about what really drives politicians’ behavior when shaping institutional rules with respect to the separation of powers. We econometrically compare votes of...

Representatives have more effective incentives to cater to the preferences of the majority of citizens when they are elected in districts with few rather than many seats. We investigate this hypothesis empirically by matching Swiss members of parliament’s voting behavior on legislative...

It is well established that individual parliamentary representatives are less likely to decide according to the preferences of their constituency when the number of representatives per district, i.e. district magnitude, increases. However, we propose that for majority decisions of district...