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Full Transparency of Politicians' Actions Does Not Increase the Quality of Political Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2014

David Stadelmann ,
Marco Portmann  and
Reiner Eichenberger
David Stadelmann
Affiliation:
University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstraße 30, Bayreuth, Germany; e-mail: david.stadelmann@uni-bayreuth.de CREMA—Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Südstrasse 11, CH-8008 Zürich, Switzerland
Marco Portmann
Affiliation:
University of Fribourg, Bd. de Pérolles 90, Fribourg, Switzerland; e-mail: marco.portmann@unifr.ch, reiner.eichenberger@unifr.ch
Reiner Eichenberger
Affiliation:
CREMA—Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Südstrasse 11, CH-8008 Zürich, Switzerland University of Fribourg, Bd. de Pérolles 90, Fribourg, Switzerland; e-mail: marco.portmann@unifr.ch, reiner.eichenberger@unifr.ch
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Abstract

We identify the impact of transparency in political decision-making on the quality of political representation with a difference-in-difference strategy. The quality of political representation is measured by the observed divergence of parliamentary decisions from revealed voter preferences on identical issues. We show that full transparency of votes of individual politicians does not decrease divergence from voter preferences.

Keywords

Transparencyquality of political decisionsrepresentationparliamentindividual votesreferenda
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Spring 2014 , pp. 16 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2014 

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