Personal votes, electoral competitiveness of parties, and legislative representation in Taiwan under SNTV

Abstract

We advance the literature on electoral institutions and legislative representation by investigating legislators' position taking strategies in Taiwan under the single non-transferable voting period. Existing research largely assumes that representatives elected from the same electoral rule behave similarly. We challenge this conventional understanding by arguing that legislators in multi-member districts (MMDs) tend to move toward the extreme direction from the party line if they come from districts where their party is less competitive. This pattern of legislative representation allows them to appeal to partisan voters, as lowering one's partisan profile can be too costly in such districts. On the contrary, those who are elected from strong partisan districts are expected to deviate from the party toward the moderate direction. Given a solid partisan foundation in these districts, these legislators may target voters across party lines. Our analysis covering the entire period of MMD elections after Taiwan's democratization (1992-2008) provides robust empirical evidence to our theoretical claim. Our findings, therefore, shed lights for future studies on the intertwining nature between electoral systems, district level factors, and legislative representation.