From Constituencies to Parties: Economic Conflict and Political Responsiveness

From Constituencies to Parties: Economic Conflict and Political Responsiveness

How does democratization make political elites responsive to economic distress? This paper studies the Dutch transition from geographically defined electoral districts to proportional representation and universal male suffrage in 1918. It combines local labour conflicts with parliamentary proceedings to distinguish adaptation by incumbent politicians from representation mediated by parties and political replacement. The empirical design asks whether strikes increase labour-related attention among locally connected MPs. Before reform, locality is assigned by constituency; after reform, surviving MPs retain their former constituency as a predetermined geographic attachment. Comparing politicians within party and month isolates differential local responses to a common political event.