Legislative Organization and Legislative Incumbency

The assumption that legislators are motivated in their work by the goal of re-election has inspired a great deal of research on the behaviour of legislators. If this assumption that the electoral connection drives legislator behaviour is realistic, legislative incumbency rates (the frequency with which incumbent legislators win re-election) should tend to be high. We seek to explain differences in incumbency rates between different political systems. We suggest that how a legislature is organized impacts members’ capacity to gain re-election. Some legislatures may be organized in such a way as to allow members use their perquisites of office to maximise electoral success. As others have noted, the organization of the American Congress, with its traditionally strong committee system and consequential ability to allow members to engage in particularistic resource allocation and reputation building with constituents, meets remarkably well the electoral needs of its members. We present more specific hypotheses concerning the effects on incumbency rates of a wide range of legislative institutions such as committee systems, opportunities for legislative initiatives and questions, mechanism of executive oversight, access to discretionary “pork-barrel” grants, leadership functions, and remuneration schemes. To test our argument, we collect and analyse new data on legislative organization and re-election rates in 68 democracies. We find strong evidence that legislative organization and in particular the ability to cultivate a personal reputation (with constituents or party leaders), associates with higher levels of incumbency. By affecting incumbency rates, legislative institutions may have direct and significant effects on the quality of democracy. After all, who sits in parliament, how securely, and for how long, are issues of profound normative, theoretical and real-world significance.