When moving from a plurality rule to a proportional system, members of national parliament have more incentives to diverge from the median voter's preferences. We match voting behavior concerning legislative proposals of Swiss members of parliament with real referenda outcomes on the same issues...

Exploiting a natural voting experiment we identify female preferences for real policy issues in the electorate. We then analyze whether female or male politicians in parliament more closely correspond to female preferences. Holding constant revealed constituent preferences, there is generally no...

We analyze political representation of preferences of different income groups by matching referendum outcomes for low, middle, and high-income voters with individual legislators decisions on identical policy proposals. Results indicate that legislators more closely represent preferences of rich...

The role of electoral incentives vs. selection is ideally analyzed in a setting where the same legislators are selected to decide on policies under different electoral rules and where voter preferences on policies can be precisely measured. This is the first paper to look at such a situation....

We assess the effect of constituents' preferences on legislators' decisions within a quasiexperimental setting: In the Swiss referendum process, citizens and legislators reveal their preferences for legislative proposals. We match roll call votes of all Swiss legislators on 102 legislative...

In parliament, individual representatives vote with a certain probability according to their constituents' preferences. Thus, the mechanism of the Condorcet Jury Theorem can be fruitfully applied to parliamentary representation: The probability that a majority of representatives votes according...

We match individual senators' voting behavior on legislative proposals with 24 real referenda 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 limited...

We analyze whether female or male members of parliament adhere more closely to citizens' revealed preferences with quasi-experimental data. By matching individual representatives' voting behavior on legislative proposals with real referenda outcomes on the same issues, we identify the effect of...

Electoral systems determine the role party affiliations play in political representation. According to conventional expectations, politicians' party affiliations should influence political representation when they are elected by proportional representation. In contrast, majoritarian systems...

What determines political candidates' election prospects' We match roll call votes of candidates for the majority elected upper house of parliament who were previously in the lower house with revealed preferences of their constituency. Thereby, we obtain a direct measure of past congruence....