Lucia Motolinia, "Unity through Particularism: How Electoral Reforms Influence Parties and Legislative Behavior" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

About this episode

Dr. Lucia Motolinia discusses her book on how electoral reforms affect parties and legislative behavior in young democracies.

Why do supposedly accountability-enhancing electoral reforms often fail in young democracies? How can legislators serve their constituents when parties control the necessary resources? Unity through Particularism: How Electoral Reforms Influence Parties and Legislative Behavior (Cambridge University Press, 2026) by Dr. Lucia Motolinia sheds light on these questions and more by explaining how parties can use personal vote-seeking incentives in order to decrease intra-party dissent. Studying a unique electoral reform in Mexico, the book provides a detailed description of how institutional incentives can conflict. It draws on a variety of rich, original data sources on legislative behavior and organization in 20 Mexican states to develop a novel explanation of how electoral reforms can amplify competing institutional incentives. In settings where legislative rules and candidate selection procedures favor parties, legislators may lack the resources necessary to build voter support. If this is the case, party leaders can condition access to these resources on loyalty to the party's political agenda. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher

Guest: Dr. Lucia Motolinia

Topics covered

• electoral reforms
• legislative behavior
• political parties
• democracy
• Mexico
• intra-party dissent

Keywords

• electoral reforms
• legislative behavior
• political parties
• Mexico
• intra-party dissent
• democracy
• personal vote-seeking

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cambridge University Press

Places: Mexico, Angola, Mozambique

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