INDIVIDUAL REPRESENTATION AND LOCAL PARTY GOVERNMENT : representative behavior of croatian ... and slovenian municipal councilors

Marko Kukec studies the effect of intra-party coordination on individual behavior of local councilors, which is usually considered to be restrictive of individual behavior of representatives. Drawing on the potential of individual activities to serve as vote-seeking devices, this book offers a contrasting perspective implying that party leaders have good reasons to rather stimulate such activities. Based on surveys of Croatian and Slovenian local councilors it finds that the effect varies across different activities and institutional contexts. This study contributes to deeper understanding of the partisan aspect of local representative democracy. Acknowledgments 6 Table of contents 7 List of figures 11 List of tables 12 1. Introduction 13 1.1. Individual and collective political representation 13 1.2. Case selection 17 1.3. Empirical strategy 18 1.4. Outline of the book 20 2. Group leaders between individual and collective representation 23 2.1. The many advantages of local government 23 2.1.1. Local autonomy 23 2.1.2. Efficiency 25 2.1.3. Local democracy and participation 26 2.2. Party politicization of local government 27 2.2.1. Societal and state integration 27 2.2.2. Party competition 29 2.2.3. Incentives of local politicians 29 2.3. Responsible party government model and local government 30 2.3.1. The electoral arena 32 2.3.2. The legislative arena 34 2.4. Representational roles 37 2.4.1. Representational roles as ‘patterned game plans’ 37 2.4.2. Independent effect of representational roles? 39 2.5. The theoretical model 39 3. Conceptual tools 41 3.1. The concept of individual representation under party politicization 41 3.1.1. Contact 42 3.1.2. Policy 42 3.1.3. Control 43 3.2. Representative behavior 44 3.2.1. External activities 44 3.2.2. Internal activities 45 3.3. Instruments of leadership control 47 3.3.1. (Non)partisanship 48 3.3.2. Candidate selection process 49 3.3.3. Political ambition 50 4. Case selection 53 4.1. Shared history of local government during Yugoslavia 54 4.1.1. Yugoslav local government during the Second World War (1941 – 1945) 54 4.1.2. The period of state socialism (1945 – 1952) 54 4.1.3. The introduction of communes (1952 – 1963) 55 4.1.4. Further fiscal and administrative decentralization (1963 – 1974) 56 4.1.5. Participatory reform (1974 – 1991) 57 4.1.6. The legacy of Yugoslav local self-government system 58 4.2. Territorial structure and competences of local governments 61 4.2.1. Croatia 61 4.2.2. Slovenia 63 4.3. The internal structure of Croatian and Slovenian municipalities 65 4.3.1. Local political bodies 65 4.3.2. Local elections 66 4.3.3. Functioning of council 67 4.3.4. Relations between the local council and mayor 68 4.4. Party politicization of Croatian and Slovenian local government 69 5. Research design and operationalization 71 5.1. Semi-structured interviews 72 5.1.1. Topic guide 73 5.1.2. Sampling of respondents 74 5.1.3. Contacting and interviewing the respondents 75 5.1.4. Qualitative data usage 76 5.2. Operationalization of variables 76 5.2.1. Representative behavior 76 5.2.2. Local political group membership 78 5.2.3. Candidate selection process 80 5.2.4. Political ambition 80 5.2.5. Representational roles 81 5.3. Survey design 82 5.3.1. Sampling frame availability and survey mode 82 5.3.2. Sampling 83 5.3.3. Survey material 84 5.3.4. Survey administration and data processing 85 6. Contacts of Croatian and Slovenian local councilors with local actors 87 6.1. Introduction 87 6.2. Agency loss for the collective cause? 88 6.2.1. Means 90 6.2.2. Hidden information 90 6.2.3. Focus 91 6.3. Monitoring the contacts (the dependent variable) 92 6.3.1. Contacts 92 6.3.2. Electoral results 93 6.4. Strategy and control capacity of political group leaders 94 6.4.1. The strategy of local political group leaders 94 6.4.2. Control capacity of local political group leaders 95 6.5. Research design 97 6.5.1. Dependent variable: the scale of contact activity 97 6.5.2. Independent variables 101 6.5.3. Method of data analysis 102 6.6. Empirical analysis 102 6.6.1. Results 102 6.6.2. Discussion 109 6.7. Conclusion 111 7. Council activity of Croatian and Slovenian local councilors 114 7.1. Introduction 114 7.2. Council activities in the eyes of local political group leaders 116 7.3. Conceptualization of council activity 119 7.4. The three dimensions of leadership control capacity 121 7.4.1. Non-partisan local lists 121 7.4.2. Candidate selection process 122 7.4.3. Political ambition 122 7.4.4. Loyalty to a local political group 123 7.4.5. Control variables 123 7.5. Research design 124 7.6. Empirical analysis 127 7.6.1. Results 127 7.6.2. Discussion 134 7.7. Conclusion 137 8. Activity and re-selection of Croatian and Slovenian local councilors 139 8.1. Introduction 139 8.2. Why do incumbents get re-selected? 141 8.2.1. Outcomes of the candidate selection process 141 8.2.2. Candidate selection criteria 142 8.2.3. Which selection criteria do active councilors fulfill? 144 8.2.4. The moderating effect of party selectorate 145 8.2.5. Additional prerequisites for re-selection 147 8.3. Operationalization and method 149 8.4. Empirical results 151 8.4.1. Descriptive analyses 151 8.4.2. Multinomial logistic regression models 153 8.5. Conclusion 160 9. Conclusion 163 9.1. Key findings and their implications 164 9.1.1. Leadership control capacity 164 9.1.2. Comparative insights 170 9.1.3. Methods 172 9.2. Limitations 173 9.3. Further research 175 References 177 Appendix: Survey questionnaire 197 Front Matter ....Pages I-XIII Introduction (Marko Kukec)....Pages 1-10 Group leaders between individual and collective representation (Marko Kukec)....Pages 11-28 Conceptual tools (Marko Kukec)....Pages 29-40 Case selection (Marko Kukec)....Pages 41-58 Research design and operationalization (Marko Kukec)....Pages 59-74 Contacts of Croatian and Slovenian local councilors with local actors (Marko Kukec)....Pages 75-101 Council activity of Croatian and Slovenian local councilors (Marko Kukec)....Pages 103-127 Activity and re-selection of Croatian and Slovenian local councilors (Marko Kukec)....Pages 129-152 Conclusion (Marko Kukec)....Pages 153-166 Back Matter ....Pages 167-198