The effect of legislative misalignment on representation of constituency interests
with Vardges Levonyan
We study how the correction of imperfect information in the legislature affects the representation of constituency interests. While belief updating ideally is expected to result in re-optimization by market actors, the effect on elite behaviour is less clear. This is because MPs pay a reputation cost when altering their policy stands, which could result in them abstaining from re-aligning with their districts when they receive new information about their constituencies’ preferences. Using a difference-in-differences setup and the Brexit referendum as a natural experiment that educates MPs about their constituencies’ leaning, we find that MPs who unexpectedly learn that they are misaligned with their districts (receive a negative information shock) avoid issues on which they are misaligned, relative to aligned MPs. Instead, they use more populist rhetoric, and push party ideology to obtain re-alignment. Our results show how legislators use populism and polarization as tools to avoid drawing attention to issues where there is a mismatch between voters and the legislature.
The causal effect of trust in government on green policymaking
Fueling politics: Political ideology, election dynamics, and oil search licenses
Legislative party groups and party cohesion (book chapter)
with Martin Søyland
Norwegian Parliamentary Debates 1945–2021
with Jon Fiva an Henning Øien
COMING SOON: Data set with all Norwegian Parliamentary speeches in the period 1945 – 2021. We also include metadata on legislators’ committee membership, speaker status (minister, elected, deputy…), and descriptive characteristics.
Staying in Line or Straying for Votes: Party Discipline and Dyadic Representation (2024)
How does strong party discipline affect legislators’ responsiveness to local concerns? In list-based proportional representation systems, the election of candidates depends largely on their position on the ballot. This gives parties strong tools to discipline their elected officials, which can distort the link between the constituency and the representative. I test this hypothesis by studying speech allocation between legislators with heterogeneous incentives to deviate from the party line during local economic downturns in the party-centered environment of Norway. I find that only representatives with comparatively weak incentives to deviate from the party line are allowed to represent their districts during local economic downturns. Deviations are rewarded by local voters but penalized financially by the party, which reduces transfers to deviating MPs’ party organizations. This demonstrates how it can be rational for party elites to restrict MPs from representing subnational interests because they want to prevent deviations from the party line from compromising the party brand.
Group Identities and Parliamentary Debates (2023)
with Jon Fiva and Henning Øien, RR, Journal of Politics
How Does Party Discipline Affect Legislative Behavior? Evidence from Within-Term Variation in Lame-Duck Status with Jon Fiva, Quarterly Journal of Political Science (2024)
Nedregård, O., & Abrahamsen, B. (2018). Frafall fra profesjonsutdanningene ved OsloMet. ISO 690
“Snakker mer om næringer de eier aksjer i”, Dagens Næringsliv (2023)
“Hyttepåske for hvem?”, NRK (2021)
“Må det en krise til før politikerne våkner?”, Aftenposten (2020)
“Amerikanske tilstander”, Dagsavisen (2019)
“Faglig interesserte studenter fullfører oftere utdanningen”, forskning.no (2018)