[séminaire CREM] Conditional political legislation cycles

Abstract:
The Political Legislation Cycles theory predicts peaks of legislative production before elections, as incumbents adopt vote-maximizing strategies to secure their reelection. Like for the PBC, the presence of legislative cycles can be interpreted as quantitative evidence of a dynamic inefficiency in the agency relationship between voters and politicians. This paper presents the first test of the PLC theory in a panel framework, to identify the institutional features that most contribute to this inefficiency. The test exploits a brand-new dataset including the legislative activity of 19 countries mainly from 1975 to the 2010s. Estimates show that on average, the total number of laws decreases by 40% at the beginning of a new legislature and increases roughly by the same amount near its end, when elections are held at their expected time. The magnitude of this cycle increases by two times in proportional electoral systems compared to majoritarian ones, while no clear evidence emerges in the comparison between parliamentary and presidential systems.