Entitlement and the electoral system

[andrewducker]

Very interesting graphs here showing that the safer an MPs seat was the more likely they were to be implicated in the current expenses scandal.



Where the "top 25%" are the people in the top quartile when we break them down by how large their majority is.

i.e. if you believe that you have a totally safe seat then you are more likely to take advantage of this.

cheers to miss_s_b for the link.

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Are the MPs with the safest seats also the ones who've been in the Commons the longest?

[andrewducker]

Yes, and indeed that was my thought - that the longer people have been in the commons the more likely they are to be corrupted by the environment.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Do we know whether length of service has a better or worse correlation with expense-fiddling than safeness of seat?

[andrewducker]

Well, _I_ don't.

Feel free to do your own stats - the figures should be online somewhere :->

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I imagine the old boys network has a lot to do with this. MP's who are well connected within their party are more likely to be given the safest seats and presumably more likely to take advantage the system when they get there.

[andrewducker]

Agreed. And this isn't something that will change with PR, so I'm loath to blame FPTP for it.

[markjthompson.livejournal.com]

Really? You don't think that under say STV where there are no safe seats and the fact that any MP could be removed by the electorate if they were up to things that that might help focus their minds more on not doing stuff like making huge expenses claims?

MPs are only human and we are seeing the evidence of that now. We need a system that makes it easier to get rid of the bad ones.

[andrewducker]

I know that STV _can_ get rid of safe seats, but a brief bit of searching found me this:
Proponents claim that there are no safe seats with STV, but with STV many politicians in Ireland hang on for more than 30 years. Their parties run only as many candidates in each area as they think they can elect, thereby creating safe seats and increasing the power of political parties who determine who they nominate to be members of parliament.

which would tend to indicate that we'd still be left with pretty safe seats for people the party prioritied.

I'm in favour of PR (and I live in Scotland, where we have it most of the time) - I'm just not convinced that the correlation here is showing causation.

I more strongly suspect that long-term politicians are more heavily affected by the culuture _and_ are more likely to be placed in safe seats.

[markjthompson.livejournal.com]

Maybe there are flaws with the Ireland system (I am not totally au fait with it to be honest) but I do know that in general it is much easier to get rid of bad apples with STV than with FPTP.

Your other points will doubtless have merit, but in and of themselves they are surely arguments against FPTP. Why should we have a system where senior politicians have the opportunity to put placemen into safe seats? It's anti-democratic and we end up with party apparatchicks and policy wonks parachuted into safe seats. STV would make that much harder.

[andrewducker]

Won't senior party members still be the people choosing who stands as members of the party in each area?

[markjthompson.livejournal.com]

Not usually. That should be the job of local parties. Even if there were some centrally placed place-men it would ultimately be the electorate in the constituency who decide if they get elected.

Over time, I suspect what would happen is that a few of these placemen would be rejected in favour of more local candidates, or ones who perhaps the electorate feel will better represent them and in the end the central parties will get the message. Putting the power in the hands of the voter like this would be a real game changer. That's one of the reasons why the main parties don't want it.

[andrewducker]

I'm intrigued as to why you think the power to choose the electoral representatives would be more in the hands of the local parties than it is now. What would cause the central party management to give them that power when they haven't already?

[markjthompson.livejournal.com]

Because of the reason I stated above, that the power to choose who they want to represent them from each party is now in the hands of the voters.

Imagine if South Shields were part of a larger STV constituency and Labour fielded David Miliband, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband, and James Purnell. Meanwhile the Lib Dems and Tories fielded some local candidates. In that situation, Labour may well find that some of their candidates don't get elected. After one or two iterations of this they would realise that imposing candidates centrally is not necessarily a good idea and if they want to maximise their seats, they have to be sure they have candidates that the public really wants.

At the moment a South Shields Labour voter has no choice but to vote for David Miliband.

Is this making sense?

I must say I am a bit intrigued about you too. You are a supporter of PR but you seem to be quite negative about what seems to me to be the best (or perhaps least worst) PR system. Obviously no system is perfect but for me STV is infinitely preferable to a list system where the central party really does have total control.

[andrewducker]

That does make sense. Of course, it mostly would work that way if they were fielding more people than they thought would win.

And also, it depends on local voters knowing more about their representatives. I have no idea who my local ones are, and last I checked about 4/5 of the people I knew were the same. They voted along strictly party lines.

That might change, of course, if they had the choice. I'm just not that convinced at the moment.

I've never been that fussed about which PR system was brought in. I'm mostly interested in getting power out of a simple majority rules system, and into one where it makes sense to vote for the Lib-Dems, rather than always voting tactically. Anything else is pure gravy as far as I'm concerned.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

On paper, in our FPTP system, the responsibility for selecting candidates lies entirely with the local party. For the main parties at least, the candidates are elected by constituency party members.

The problem is that when say the Tory leadership want to hand someone a safe seat, they essentially tell the local memebers to vote for that person and they all do so.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

The point is also made in comments that not all MPs have been investigated yet, and the current detailed implicating is being done by the press. Therefore more famous MPs are more likely to have been investigated, and these MPs are in turn more likely to be in safer seats.
Interesting correlation, but definitely a work-in-progress.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Does this surprise anyone?

If I feel well needed in my job and I've been doing it for a while, I'm more likely to take a long lunch, check internet excessively from work, (comment on LJ...)or perhaps claim slightly unwarranted expenses.

If I have a new job or my job is under threat, I'm more likely to work extra without overtime, not claim expenses I am reasonably due etc.

I'm not sure that I would read much more into it that human nature.

Lxxx

[andrewducker]

It's not a surprise. But lots of things that wouldn't surprise me turn out to be untrue, so it's nice that someone sat down and produced something to show it with nice graphs.

[misfratz.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm pretty sure there's contradictory evidence about that, in that some investigations show people are more likely to be conscientious when they feel appreciated (and in fact this fits with my own experience of myself and people I've worked with- when there is a good working environment, people genuinely want to contribute), and less when they feel stressed or vulnerable. Of course you can describe your own behaviour patterns, but calling it 'human nature' when you don't actually know that most people do the same is a bit rude and presumptuous tbh.

MPs expenses scandal correlation with safe seats

[markjthompson.livejournal.com]

Hello all.

I have read the comments on here with interest. It was me that collated the data for the graphs on my blog and it is from publicly available data.

I agree that there could be some distortion because of what the Telegraph has released but nevertheless the results still seem pretty stark and I think it is an indictment of our electoral system.

We always get the arguments from the status quo about how important all the arguments in favour of "First Part the Post" is. Well here is a very strong argument against it based on empirical evidence of MPs own making.

I think there needs to be a more detailed analysis once all the information is in the public domain but until then the interim results are food for thought in my view.

Mark Thompson (Mark Reckons Blog)

[matgb]

Mark, been meaning to email you, but parents visiting and am swamped. I've been working on a similar thing using similar datasets for ages, but on turnout compared to seat safety—clear correlation there as well, marginal seats have high turnout, etc.

Can you mail me your sheet so far and I'll send mine back when I'm online?

matbowles at gmail dot com

@Andrew: agree completely with what Mark's said above on STV—yes, parties can chose to limit their candidates to just what they're likely to win, in which case they can't expand their number of MPs, and can lose them, in addition, party splits and smaller parties are more likely in STV, but that doesn't happen in Ireland for historic reasons (although it did for awhile with the PDs, which wrapped themselves up recently).

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Mat didn't link to this. I did. Twice.

[andrewducker]

But you're pretty much the same person, and you're going to get married at some point, and he's the man, so surely he deserves the credit for your actions?

sorry - I'll go fix it now

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Thank you sweetie.