Hudson, J;
Helboe Pedersen, H;
(2019)
Two Strategies for Building a Personal Vote: Personalized representation in the UK and Denmark.
Electoral Studies
, 59
pp. 17-26.
10.1016/j.electstud.2019.02.010.
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Abstract
Across parliamentary democracies, elected representatives constitute the link between citizens and government. MPs can connect with voters via the party label, or through personalized forms of representation, which is seen to be increasing in importance. However, scholars disagree on what explains variation in MPs' use of personalized representation strategies. In this article, we argue that politicians use different strategies to personalize the link between themselves and citizens: a constituency-oriented and a person-oriented strategy. To test our argument, we develop a new and novel dataset with behavioral measures of personalized representation. Using a content analyses of 698 British and Danish MPs’ personal websites, we demonstrate that the use of personalization strategies is conditional on the incentives MPs face in terms of electoral insecurity, candidate selection procedures, and the electoral context of the system. Our findings show that the level and type of personalized politics vary across political systems and may pose different types of challenges to party democracies.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Two Strategies for Building a Personal Vote: Personalized representation in the UK and Denmark |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.electstud.2019.02.010 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2019.02.010 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Personalized politics, Party democracy, Electoral incentives, Communication strategies, MP websites |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10069083 |
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