IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cpp/issued/v25y1999i4p503-521.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Voting on Abortion in the House of Commons: A Test for Legislator Shirking

Author

Listed:
  • Neil Longley

Abstract

Using an agency theory approach, this paper examines the tightness of the links in the relationship between Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) and their respective constituents. The paper focuses on a 1988 parliamentary free vote on the abortion issue. It finds that MP voting on this issue did not appear to be influenced by the preferences of constituents, but was significantly influenced by the personal ideologies of the MPs themselves. Under an agency theory view, these results can be interpreted as evidence of "shirking" behaviour by legislators. Futhermore, to the extent that legislator shirking was found to exist, this shirking was more likely in constituencies where greater constituent-legislator slack was present. Greater constituent-legislator slack lowers the political cost to the legislator of engaging in shirking, since such shirking behaviour is less likely to be punished by constituents.

Suggested Citation

  • Neil Longley, 1999. "Voting on Abortion in the House of Commons: A Test for Legislator Shirking," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 25(4), pages 503-521, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:25:y:1999:i:4:p:503-521
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0317-0861%28199912%2925%3A4%3C503%3AVOAITH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0
    Download Restriction: only available to JSTOR subscribers
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zupan, Mark A, 1990. "The Last Period Problem in Politics: Do Congressional Representatives Not Subject to a Reelection Constraint Alter Their Voting Behavior?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 167-180, May.
    2. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    3. Longley, Neil, 1998. "Legislative Systems with Absolute Party Discipline: Implications for the Agency Theory Approach to the Constituent-Legislator Link," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 97(1-2), pages 121-140, October.
    4. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    5. Nelson, Douglas & Silberberg, Eugene, 1987. "Ideology and Legislator Shirking," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(1), pages 15-25, January.
    6. John Lott & W. Reed, 1989. "Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 75-96, April.
    7. Stephan F. Gohmann & Robert L. Ohsfeldt, 1990. "Predicting State Abortion Legislation From U.S. Senate Votes: The Effects Of Apparent Ideological Shirking," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 9(4), pages 749-762, June.
    8. Michael Davis & Philip Porter, 1989. "A test for pure or apparent ideology in congressional voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 101-111, February.
    9. Goff, Brian L & Grier, Kevin B, 1993. "On the (Mis)measurement of Legislator Ideology and Shirking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 76(1-2), pages 5-20, June.
    10. Kalt, Joseph P & Zupan, Mark A, 1984. "Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 279-300, June.
    11. Brady, David & Schwartz, Edward P, 1995. "Ideology and Interests in Congressional Voting: The Politics of Abortion in the U.S. Senate," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 84(1-2), pages 25-48, July.
    12. George Stigler, 1972. "Economic competition and political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 91-106, September.
    13. Medoff, Marshall H, 1988. "An Economic Analysis of the Demand for Abortions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(2), pages 353-359, April.
    14. Poole, Keith T & Romer, Thomas, 1993. "Ideology, "Shirking", and Representation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 77(1), pages 185-196, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saam, Nicole J., 2007. "Asymmetry in information versus asymmetry in power: Implicit assumptions of agency theory?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 825-840, December.
    2. Eric Crampton, 2002. "Distributive Politics in a Strong Party System: Evidence from Canadian Job Grant Programs," Microeconomics 0211001, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    2. Glenn Parker & Matthew Dabros, 2012. "Last-period problems in legislatures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 789-806, June.
    3. Glenn Parker, 2005. "Reputational capital, opportunism, and self-policing in legislatures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 333-354, March.
    4. Franklin G. Mixon & Rand W. Ressler & M. Troy Gibson, 2003. "Congressional Memberships as Political Advertising: Evidence from the U.S. Senate," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(2), pages 414-424, October.
    5. Peter A. Zaleski & Penny Maier Donati, 2000. "Tort Reform Voting in the U.S. Senate," Public Finance Review, , vol. 28(5), pages 415-427, September.
    6. Joseph Reid & Michael Kurth, 1988. "Public employees in political firms: Part A. The patronage era," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(3), pages 253-262, December.
    7. John Lott & W. Reed, 1989. "Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 75-96, April.
    8. Dennis, Christopher & Medoff, Marshall H. & Magnera, Michael, 2008. "Constituents' economic interests and senator support for spending limitations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2443-2453, December.
    9. Colburn, Christopher B. & Hudgins, Sylvia C., 1996. "The influence on Congress by the thrift industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 473-494, April.
    10. Soufiane Mezzourh & Walid A Nakara, 2009. "Governance and innovation : A Knowledge-based approach [La gouvernance de l'innovation : une approche par la connaissance]," Post-Print halshs-01955966, HAL.
    11. Peter-J. Jost, 2023. "Auditing versus monitoring and the role of commitment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 463-496, June.
    12. Michael Berlemann & Vera Jahn & Robert Lehmann, 2018. "Auswege aus dem Dilemma der empirischen Mittelstandsforschung," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 71(23), pages 22-28, December.
    13. Pascal Louvet & Ollivier Taramasco, 2004. "Gouvernement d’entreprise:un modèle de répartition de la valeur créée entre dirigeant et actionnaire," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 7(1), pages 81-116, March.
    14. Catherine Crapsky & Lionel Escaffre, 2009. "De la hiérarchisation des créances à la titrisation économique : les apports de la norme comptable à l'évolution du financement d'une opération de LBO," Post-Print hal-00769388, HAL.
    15. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "The Governance of the New Enterprise," CRSP working papers 487, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    16. Alley Ibrahim S. & Adebayo Abimbola L. & Oligbi Blessing O., 2016. "Corporate Governance and Financial Performance Nexus: Any Bidirectional Causality?," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 50(1), pages 82-99, June.
    17. Mawuena Akosua Kukah & Mohammed Amidu & Joshua Yindenaba Abor, 2016. "Corporate governance mechanisms and accounting information quality of listed firms in Ghana," African Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(1), pages 38-58.
    18. Heugens, P.P.M.A.R. & Kaptein, S.P. & van Oosterhout, J., 2007. "Contracts to Communities: A Processual Model of Organizational Virtue," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2007-023-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    19. González-Díaz, Manuel & Montoro-Sánchez, Ángeles, 2011. "Some lessons from incentive theory: Promoting quality in bus transport," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 299-306, March.
    20. Lehn, Kenneth, 2021. "Corporate governance and corporate agility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:25:y:1999:i:4:p:503-521. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Iver Chong The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Iver Chong to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.utpjournals.press/loi/cpp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.