As “currency of individual accountability” (Carey) recorded votes stand at the centre of the conflict between individual and collective representation. Recorded votes allow constituency voters and interest groups to control and potentially sanction individual MP’s voting behaviour. This study shows how parties use this “currency” strategically in the electoral competition. Following the logic of blaming and credit claiming-strategies parties request recorded votes to present their candidates as reliable servants of their constituencies and to expose competing candidates and their parties to the pressures of deviating constituency interests.
The empirical illustration of this argument is twofold: First an analysis covering 115 electoral terms of the German state parliaments shows that the electoral systems’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote are correlated with the frequency of roll call votes. Second a detailed analysis of the requester, content and result of some 2500 roll call votes further corroborates this argument. It is shown that recorded votes are predominantly requested by opposition parties. According to the logic of blaming opposition parties request recorded votes against government bills that induce concentrated costs for some constituencies. According to the logic of credit-claiming recorded votes are requested for own motions that (if adopted) would induce concentrated benefits for some constituencies.
