Not All Roads Lead to Rome: The Conditional Effect of Legislative Activity on Reselection Prospects in Italy

The literature shows that, on average, electorally vulnerable Members of Parliament (MPs) are more active than their colleagues. This article investigates whether parties have an incentive to reselect active MPs in a county with a closed-list electoral system. Being active is usually a way to increase one’s visibility among the constituency. We argue that parties have incentives to reselect active MPs only when they believe that voters pay attention to the qualities of individual candidates. The Italian case is a perfect case to test this argument because the attention paid by voters to individual candidates varies significantly between the northern and southern regions. Our empirical analysis reveals that being active leads to a higher probability to be re-selected only in regions where the style of representation is personalised.