Party Personnel Strategies
Electoral Systems and Parliamentary Committee Assignments
Matthew S Shugart author Robert J Pekkanen author Ellis S Krauss author Matthew E Bergman author Cory L Struthers author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:27th May '21
Should be back in stock very soon
Key party goals serve to advance a policy brand and maximize seats in the legislature. This book offers a theory of how political parties assign their elected members -- their "personnel" -- to specialized legislative committees to serve collective organizational goals, here known as "party personnel strategies". Individual party members vary in their personal attributes, such as prior occupation, gender, and local experience. Parties seek to harness the attributes of their members by assigning them to committees where their expertise is relevant, and where they may enhance the party's policy brand. However, under some electoral systems, parties may need to trade-off the harnessing of expertise against the pursuit of seats, instead matching legislators according to electoral situation (e.g. marginality of seat) or characteristics of their constituency (e.g. population density). This book offers an analysis of the extent to which parties trade these goals by matching the attributes of their personnel and their electoral needs to the functions of the available committee seats. The analysis is based on a dataset of around six thousand legislators across thirty-eight elections in six established parliamentary democracies with diverse electoral systems.
Large parliamentary parties use committee assignments strategically to enhance their distinctive brands, signalling commitment and expertise by matching legislator attributes to committee type. Electoral systems leverage votes, forcing committee trade-offs. Party Personnel Strategies develops, explores, and tests these theories in a major contribution to our comparative understanding of parliamentary linkages. * G. Bingham Powell, Jr, Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester *
Party Personnel Strategies provides an important new framework for understanding a key element of the internal organization of parliaments. By recognizing the poor fit of US Congress based models to fused powers systems the authors are able to present a new model of committee assignment. * Amie Kreppel, Jean Monnet Chair and Founding Director of the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence, University of Florida *
We know electoral systems help determine party systems but here we learn how they help determine the industrial organization of parliaments. A highly original and persuasive account: a must-own book for scholars of parliamentary politics. * Keith Dowding, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Political Philosophy, Australian National University *
ISBN: 9780192897053
Dimensions: 242mm x 163mm x 24mm
Weight: 658g
336 pages