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ABSTRACT
In this paper I investigate how legislators behave in extremely pork-oriented, or pork-dominant, systems where virtually no party-line voting takes place and politicians strive to deliver individual/local benefits instead of national public policies. I argue that, in the pork-dominant context, most legislators vote with the president, who controls access to the pork pipeline, irrespective of their party affiliations. Thus, the president’s party legislators should have little incentive to vote against the president, regardless of voter demands for pork or policy; however, sometimes opposition-party legislators elected particularly from more-developed districts (where voters often desire policy over pork) should have strong incentives to vote against the president. These arguments are supported with quantitative studies of the post-authoritarian Philippine House of Representatives. It is found that, in the highly homogeneous legislature dominated by pork-seeking politicians, (1) most bills are passed with unanimous or near-unanimous consent, (2) governing-party legislators almost always vote with the majority of the members of the parliament, regardless of voters’ socio-economic conditions, and (3) opposition-party legislators, especially in more-developed areas, tend to vote against the parliamentary majority. These findings indicate that voters’ high socio-economic status promotes programmatic accountability, leading their representatives to undermine voting unity within the extremely cohesive pork-dominant legislature.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Jae Hyeok Shin is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Korea University. His research interests include electoral systems, parties, legislative politics, and political/economic development in new democracies, especially in East Asia. His works have appeared in journals including Party Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Government & Opposition, Democratization, and Journal of East Asian Studies.
Notes
1 In parliamentary systems, prime ministers control access to state resources. For the simplicity of the argument, this study considers the legislative voting only in presidentialism, and the applicability of the findings of the study to parliamentarism is discussed in the concluding section.
2 Few empirical studies have been conducted on the effects of voters’ socio-economic conditions on legislative voting, however. Desposato (Citation2006) shows that party switching is more frequent among legislators from less-developed districts, in which the majority of voters are poor and less educated, in order to deliver individual/local benefits.
3 The study disregards the Philippine Senate because its members are elected in the national constituency, and they thus do not engage in pork-barreling for their constituents.
4 Interview with Wilfrido V. Villacorta, member of Constitutional Commission of 1986 (selected from academic sector), Makati City, 25 May 2010.
5 See Shin (Citation2013, p. 104) for the details of the candidate-centeredness of the Philippine FPTP.
6 Interview with Lambert Ramirez, 20 May 2010; Interview with Joseph Emil Abaya, 24 September 2008.
7 In the Philippine Congress, bills on third (final) reading, overriding a presidential veto, and approval of a resolution affirming or overriding the articles of impeachment require roll-call voting (Paras & Santos, Citation1996, p. 38); other resolutions, motions, and committee reports, however, require roll-call voting only if it is requested by legislators.
8 In the Philippines, a census takes place every ten years. I use the 1990 census data for the 8th Congress (1987–1992) and the 9th Congress (1992–1995), and use the 2000 census data for the rest (1995–2007).
9 Even the Congressional Record lacks the information about legislators’ party affiliations. A political observer said that even party leaders could not provide a list of their party members because some members might have switched to another party while the leaders were making the list (Interview with Nancy T. Tuason, Supervising Legislative Staff Officer III of the Legislative Library, Quezon City, 24 September 2008).
10 About 20% of the members of the House of Representatives who are elected via party lists are prohibited from switching parties.
11 The term of office for the president is six years, while that for members of the House of Representatives is three years.
12 If we do, we are likely to commit a Type I error (false positive, treating opposition-party members who stay put for the greater part of the legislative session and switched to the president’s party just before the subsequent election as those who are with the governing party during the entire session) for midterm elections and to commit a Type II error (false negative, treating opposition politicians who switched to the president’s party earlier in the legislative session and switched again to another opposition party with a strong presidential candidate just before the subsequent election as those who did not join the president’s party at all) for concurrent elections.
13 I count those who use the same family name of legislatori in the same province as family members of legislatori.
14 Abstention is omitted because it does not count toward the total number of votes cast for bills in the Philippine Congress.
15 Interview with Lambert Ramirez, 20 May 2010.
16 (e1.61)0.5 = (5.00) 0.5 = 2.24.
17 This study does not employ the fixed-effects ordered logit model because using the fixed-effects models would eliminate the control variables for the legislative session fixed effects.