voting on abortion in the house of commons: a test for legislator shirking

Canadian Public Policy

Voting on Abortion in the House of Commons: A Test for Legislator ShirkingAuthor(s): Neil LongleySource: Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Dec., 1999), pp. 503-521Published by: University of Toronto Press on behalf of Canadian Public PolicyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3552425 .

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Voting on Abortion in the House of

Commons: A Test for Legislator

Shirking NEIL LONGLEY

Faculty of Administration University of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan

En se basant sur la theorie de l'agent, cet article examine les rapports entre les 6lecteurs et les membres du parlement canadien.

L'article se concentre sur le vote libre tenu en 1988 aux communes sur la question de l'avortement. Les

r6sultats indiquent que le vote des membres du parlement sur cette question n'a apparament pas 6t6 influence par les pref6rences des 6lecteurs. En revanche, ce vote a 6t6 influence de manibre significative par les id6ologies personnelles des membres du parlement. Selon la th6orie de l'agent, ces r6sultats t6moigne- raient a l'6vidence d'une certaine irresponsabilit6 de la part des 16gislateurs qui, en fuyant ainsi A leurs obligations envers leurs 61ecteurs, manqueraient h leur devoir.

Cet article d6montre que l'on retrouve cette attitude chez les d6put6s qui repr6sentent des circonscriptions l61ectorales oh les rapports entre le 16gislateur et les 61ecteurs sont les plus distants. Plus cet 6cart est grand, plus le cooit politique pour le 16gislateur est moindre, puisque les 61ecteurs de ces circonscriptions risquent moins de d6noncer une telle attitude de la part de leur d6put6.

Using an agency theory approach, this paper examines the tightness of the links in the relationship between Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) and their respective constituents.

The paper focuses on a 1988 parliamentary free vote on the abortion issue. It finds that MP voting on this issue did not appear to be influenced by the preferences of constituents, but was significantly influenced by the personal ideologies of the MPs themselves. Under an agency theory view, these results can be interpreted as evidence of "shirking" behaviour by legislators.

Furthermore, to the extent that legislator shirking was found to exist, this shirking was more likely in constituencies where greater constituent-legislator slack was present. Greater constituent-legislator slack lowers the political cost to the legislator of engaging in shirking, since such shirking behaviour is less likely to be punished by constituents.

INTRODUCTION

Agency theory has a long history in the study of

the behaviour and decision-making processes of the modern corporation.

As is well-known to economists, an agency rela-

tionship is said to exist when a "principal" contracts

- either explicitly or implicitly - an "agent" to act on behalf of the principal. An often-studied application of this concept is the relationship between a corporation's shareholders and its managers. A wealth of literature exists in this field. This line of

inquiry has its intellectual roots in the works of Berle and Means (1932) and Coase (1937), with other, more recent, influential contributions being made

CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY - ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES, VOL. XXV, NO. 4 1999



504 Neil Longley

by Williamson (1970); Alchian and Demsetz (1972); and Jensen and Meckling (1976).

Briefly, the basic premise of this research is that, in modern corporations, managers are hired to be

agents of the shareholders, and are expected to man-

age the corporation in the best interests of the shareholders. This delegation of authority by shareholders is intended to benefit shareholders through two mechanisms. It provides an efficient, orderly, means to streamline decision-making processes, and it enables the corporation to gain crucial managerial expertise through the hiring of knowledgeable specialists.

However, this delegation can at the same time be

problematic for shareholders. Problems arise because shareholders and managers may not have iden- tical interests. While shareholders seek to maximize their return from holding the stock, managers of the

corporation may have other objectives. Managers may attempt to "shirk" by engaging in behaviour that is at-odds with the maximization of shareholder wealth. Shirking behaviour could take many forms, but may include, for example, excessive spending on perks like foreign travel, office refurbishings, country club memberships, etc. In some cases, spending on these activities may not be cost- effective for the firm (i.e., the cost to the firm ex- ceeds any benefits these activities may generate for the firm). Managers may, however, still have an incentive to undertake such expenditures because they are able to directly capture the benefits of such

spending, but do not have to incur the costs of the

spending. The costs are borne by the firm's shareholders in the form of lower profits.

This incentive to shirk can be reduced by increased shareholder monitoring of managerial behaviour and performance, by the presence of rela-

tively efficient capital markets (where poorly man-

aged firms become takeover targets) and/or by de- signing incentive structures (such as stock options and profit-sharing plans) that encourage managers to act in ways that are compatible with shareholder

interests. However, only to the extent that these mechanisms perfectly monitor managerial behaviour and performance could it be expected that all mana-

gerial incentives to shirk would be eliminated.

More recently, some economists have begun to

apply agency theory concepts to areas outside the

study of the firm. One of these non-traditional ap- plications has been to use agency theory to analyze the workings of "political markets." The overwhelm- ing majority of this research has focused on

analyzing the US Congress. Under the agency theory approach to politics, the constituent-legislator rela-

tionship is modelled as a principal-agent problem. Legislators (the agents) are elected by constituents (the principals) to represent the interests of those constituents in the legislature. Where legislator behaviour is inconsistent with constituent preferences, legislators are seen to be engaging in "shirking." Normally "legislator behaviour" is deemed to be the

legislative voting behaviour of the legislator, since it is this type of behaviour which is most observ- able, and which is most objectively measured.

In this vein, the purpose of this paper is to test for the presence of shirking by Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) with respect to their voting behaviour in the House of Commons on the abortion issue. Unlike the US Congress, analyses of the

voting behaviour of Canadian MPs is rare, since Canadian MPs are generally completely bound by party discipline, and hence have no ability to independently determine their voting behaviour on any given policy issue.

The only opportunity to test the tightness of the link between constituents and their respective MPs is to analyze "free" votes in the House of Commons. Free votes are parliamentary votes where political parties do not enforce party discipline, thus allowing their individual MPs to vote as they see fit, without fear of punishment from the party. Normally, parties only allow free votes on issues of "conscience" - issues such as abortion or capital punishment.




Voting on Abortion in the House of Commons: A Test for Legislator Shirking 505

This paper uses a 1988 parliamentary free vote on abortion as the means to study the agency rela-

tionship between MPs and their constituents. The abortion issue has a long and contentious history in Canadian politics. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the degree to which legislators' votes on this crucial 1988 parliamentary vote reflected constituent preferences, versus the degree to which the votes reflected the personal ideological preferences of the legislators themselves. To the extent the latter has any significance in explaining legislator vot-

ing patterns, legislators can be viewed as shirking.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE AGENCY THEORY APPROACH TO ANALYZING POLITICAL MARKETS

In examining the alternate means by which legislators can (or should) represent their constituents,

political scientists often differentiate between legislators as "trustees," versus legislators as

"delegates."

Under the trustee view, constituents grant legislators relatively wide latitude to make decisions as

legislators see fit. This wide latitude can be poten- tially justified on a number of grounds: that legislators should be "leaders" and not "followers," and that legislators' roles are more complex and rich than to merely poll their constituents and then carry out the wishes of those constituents by rote; or that legislators have greater levels of expertise and knowl-

edge compared to their constituents, and thus legislators are in a better position to make informed decisions; or that legislators must also serve national interests, and not simply the interests of their own

constituency; or that no legislator should ever be forced to vote against his or her conscience on ethical and moral matters - that, for example, no legislator should ever be forced to vote in favour of

pro-choice policies if that legislator holds strong pro-life views and vice-versa.

Alternatively, the delegate view tends to see the

legislator's role as being more narrow and well defined. Under the delegate view, the legislator acts as merely the operational "voice" of his or her constituents. Legislators are not granted any special latitude in using their own discretion to make decisions, but are expected to represent constituent interests on all issues at all times. It is this view of the role of

legislators that underlies the agency theory approach to politics. The agency theory approach normatively assumes that legislators should act merely as agents (i.e., delegates) for the constituents they represent. If one applies this standard to legislative voting, for

example, legislators should cast their votes strictly in accordance with the preferences of their constituents. A failure to do so constitutes, in the vernacu- lar of the literature, "shirking" on the part of the

legislator.

The agency theory approach to analyzing the con-

stituent-legislator relationship has been well-devel-

oped for a US system. Kalt and Zupan (1984) were the first to model the constituent-legislator relation-

ship in a principal-agent framework. Kalt and Zupan develop a technique to proxy legislator ideology, and then find that this proxy variable is significant in

explaining legislator voting patterns. They interpret their empirical results as evidence of legislator shirk-

ing, and hence as evidence that "slack" exists in the

constituent-legislator relationship.

This slack exists presumably because constituents are unwilling and unable to monitor perfectly the behaviour of their legislative representatives. For individual constituents, monitoring has elements of a public good; thus, many choose to remain "ration-

ally ignorant" of the performance and policy positions of their representatives.

For legislators, the presence of this slack in their

relationship with their constituents is utility- enhancing. It allows legislators a greater opportunity to vote in accordance with their own ideological values. As Kalt and Zupan (1990) and Stigler (1972) note, ideological behaviour can be viewed




506 Neil Longley

as a consumption good in that it provides feelings of personal satisfaction and an enhanced self-image.

Since the publication of Kalt and Zupan's seminal article, a tremendous amount of research has been devoted to studying the application of agency theory to political institutions. A considerable amount of this research has attempted to extend Kalt and Zupan's original work. Many of the extensions have revolved around discovering whether the propensity of legislators to shirk varies with the opportunity cost of that shirking. The general premise of

many of these studies is that the cost of shirking to a legislator can be measured by the ability of that

legislator's constituents to punish the shirking. For

example, if constituents cannot, or do not, punish the legislator for shirking (either at the ballot box or through the withholding of financial contribu-

tions), then that shirking can be said to have a zero cost to the legislator.

In this context, some studies have focused on the so-called "last-period problem" - do legislators not

seeking re-election, and thus not subject to punishment by constituents, exhibit a greater propensity to shirk than do those legislators seeking re-election? Zupan (1990), for example, finds that senators do shirk more after their decision to retire. On a similar, but slightly different, vein, Davis and Por- ter (1989) find that shirking increases with a senator's age. McArthur and Marks (1988) incorporate last-period effects by analyzing a vote that occurred

during a "lame duck" session of Congress. They found that the representatives who had been re- elected to the next session of Congress were less

likely to shirk than those representatives who had not been re-elected (either because they were defeated or they did not seek re-election).

In a more comprehensive examination of the issue, Kalt and Zupan (1990) use cross-sectional data to show that senators' demand curves for shirking have a standard negative slope; as the cost of shirk-

ing to the senator decreases, the amount of shirking increases. They develop a model that shows shirk-

ing increases with such things as a senator's tenure, with the amount of time until the senator faces re- election, and with a senator's decision to retire.

Nelson and Silberberg (1987) also find shirking behaviour by senators to be consistent with demand

theory. They find that senators are more likely to shirk on defence expenditure bills which are generic in nature than on those which have a well-defined set of beneficiaries. They contend that legislators are more closely monitored by constituents on the latter, and thus face a higher cost of shirking on these bills. Therefore, shirking less on these specific- expenditure bills is consistent with the law of demand.

Some authors, however, have been sceptical of this supposed tight connection between a legislator's demand for shirking and the cost of that shirk-

ing. Lott (1987), for example, finds no evidence that

retiring legislators engage in greater amounts of

shirking than those not retiring, although he does find that retiring senators vote less in their last term. Lott and Reed (1989) examine whether the likelihood of shirking increases with a legislator's tenure. They argue that the answer to this question is uncertain, since it depends on the relative magni- tude of two competing forces. While legislators with more tenure do have greater accumulated political capital, and thus face a lower cost of shirking, Lott and Reed contend that this affect is at least partially offset by the operation of a sorting mechanism at work in political markets. They argue that if constituents sort candidates by their degree of shirking behaviour, those candidates who shirk the most can be expected to suffer electoral defeat, while those candidates who shirk the least will continue to be re-elected. This suggests that legislators with the

longest tenure may shirk the least, since such lon-

gevity can only be acquired by these legislators shirking less than their political competitors.

Although much of the US-based research on legislator shirking has focused on "economic" issues, there has been some empirical work on the specific





issue of abortion. A number of studies have examined Senate voting on the 1983 "Hatch-Eagleton" Amendment. This bill would have amended the Con- stitution to effectively overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade

Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion-on- demand in the United States. Medoff (1989), while not taking an agency theory approach, does use economic analysis to attempt to measure the demand for more liberal abortion laws. He finds that support for the Hatch-Eagleton Amendment in a state is positively correlated with the percentage of that state's population that belongs to a fundamentalist

religion, and is negatively correlated with such factors as the percentage of women in white collar oc-

cupations, the percentage of the population that is non-white, and the liberalness of the state's ideol-

ogy ("liberal" states are considered those that rati- fied the Equal Rights Amendment). A problem with Medoff's approach is that he only measures constituent ideology, and does not include in his model

any independent variables to measure legislator ideology. Therefore, his research is unable to offer

any insight into whether or not senators were shirking.

When Gohmann and Ohsfeldt (1990) correct for this problem they do, in fact, find that legislator ideology influenced Senate voting on the Hatch-

Eagleton Amendment - a result that supports the

shirking theory. Chressanthis, Gilbert and Grimes (1991) offer further support for the shirking hypothesis when they found that a senator's religious affiliation was a significant factor in explaining voting outcomes on the Hatch-Eagleton Amend- ment. Brady and Schwartz (1995), however, offer a

cautionary note by arguing that many studies on the issue are plagued by the fact that measures of constituent interests are crude, compared to measures of legislator ideology. These data limitations may skew the results to make shirking appear more

important than it actually is.

Further to the Brady and Schwartz caution, but on a more general level, methodological debates have become quite prominent in the shirking litera-

ture in recent years. Some authors contend that the

methods traditionally employed in the literature to measure both constituent interests and legislator ideology, methods that have directly evolved from Kalt and Zupan's seminal 1984 work, are lacking. The critics argue that these methodological problems introduce statistical biases into empirical work, and may lead one to inappropriately accept the hypothesis that legislators do engage in ideological shirking.

For example, the shirking literature has typically employed a median voter model when measuring constituent interests. Differences in constituent interests across constituencies have been proxied by differences in the demographic and economic characteristics of median voters in those constituencies. However, as numerous authors (see, e.g., Jackson and Kingdon 1992; and Poole and Romer 1993) ar-

gue, this approach may fail to capture the full rich- ness and complexity of a constituency. Further to this argument, a legislator's electoral constituency - that combination of voters that the legislator must

satisfy in order to win re-election - may not be

equivalent to his or her geographic constituency.1 While such criticisms are valid, they are difficult to overcome empirically and most studies continue to define constituent interests using the median voter

methodology.

However, perhaps the more serious concern raised by critics pertains to the manner in which legislator ideology has been traditionally proxied. The basic approach adopted in much of the literature, follow-

ing Kalt and Zupan, is to regress a legislator's past voting record (often measured by rating scores from interest groups - groups such as the Americans for Democratic Action) on a series of independent variables intended to measure constituent interests. The residuals from this regression, because they suppos- edly represent the portion of a legislator's past voting record that is unexplained by constituent interests, are then taken to proxy legislator ideology. This measure of legislator ideology has then been used as an explanatory variable in a second-step regression that focuses on a more specific piece of




508 Neil Longley

legislation. To the extent that this variable measur-

ing legislator ideology is significant in this second-

step regression, legislators have been deemed to be

engaging in ideological shirking.

Jackson and Kingdon (1992), among others, have

pointed out the statistical biases that may be introduced by using such methods to detect legislator shirking. Coates and Munger (1995), however, have

suggested an alternate methodology that may help to overcome this problem. They propose that legislator ideology can be proxied in a more direct manner, without the need to engage in the "residualizing" process that has become prominent in the literature. Coates and Munger suggest that legislator ideology can be best proxied by a series of variables repre- senting the legislator's personal characteristics; characteristics such as the legislator's age, race, etc. In effect, this allows legislator ideology to be measured in a similar manner to constituent interests.

Not only does the Coates and Munger suggestion address the statistical problems of the residualization method, it recognizes that not all

shirking is necessarily attributable to legislators voting their own ideological preferences. Under the residualization method, that portion of a legislator's past voting record that is not explained by constituent interests is deemed to represent the ideological beliefs of the legislator. However, this approach fails to recognize that there may be other factors which cause legislators to vote against the interests of their constituents. These factors, which could be viewed as non-ideological shirking, may include influences from the legislator's party, from non-constituent financial contributors, or influences from colleagues, etc.

THE CONSTITUENT-LEGISLATOR LINK IN

CANADA

Research on the constituent-legislator link in Canada has not tended to model the relationship as an agency theory problem. This is likely due to two reasons.

First, most of the researchers who have studied the issue have come from backgrounds (political science, administrative sciences, etc.) in which the "rational-actor" approach employed by economists is not frequently utilized.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the insti- tutional characteristics of the Canadian Parliament are fundamentally different from those of the US

Congress, thus making difficult the direct application of US models to a Canadian setting. For the

purposes of this paper, the most important differ- ence is that the Canadian House of Commons is characterized by rigid party discipline. Political

parties expect their MPs to vote as a bloc. A failure

by an MP to vote the party line can, at a minimum, lead to censure from the party, and can often lead to expulsion of that MP from caucus.

Not only is party discipline much stronger in the Canadian Parliament than it is in the US Congress, party discipline is much stronger in Canada than it is in many other parliamentary systems. For exam-

ple, during the Thatcher years in Britain, it was not unusual for "maverick" backbench MPs to vote

against the government. Franks (1987) hypothesizes that party discipline is stronger in Canada than in Britain because Canadian MPs are more dependent on their parties, for a variety of reasons, than are their British counterparts. For example, he argues the attainment of a Cabinet position, of which party loyalty is presumably a major prerequisite, is not as

important to British MPs as it may be to Canadian MPs. Because there is a higher proportion of "safe" seats in Britain, backbenchers from these constituencies may be able to enjoy lengthy political careers living the "quiet" life, and influencing policy through committee work (which is more influential in Britain than in Canada), rather than through a Cabinet position. Furthermore, British MPs, unlike their Canadian coun-

terparts, are not dependent on their party to be assured of re-nomination.

On a normative level, some have argued that such strong party discipline in Canada results in less than





effective representation for many constituents, since individual MPs are relatively powerless, at least with

respect to their legislative voting behaviour. Others have disputed this notion, and have argued that

strong party discipline is necessary for the effective

functioning of the parliamentary system, and those that are critical of party discipline are simply mis-

interpreting the role of MPs. Supporters of the status quo have also argued that strong party discipline insulates individual MPs from those promoting narrow interests, and allows the broader public interest to be better served.

From an analytical perspective, most researchers who have examined the constituent-legislator link in Canada have acknowledged the general ineffec- tiveness of backbenchers and opposition MPs in

influencing policy in any meaningful way, and have thus concentrated their research efforts on studying the other means through which these legislators can "represent" their constituents. Van Loon and

Whittington (1976), for example, observe that backbenchers and opposition MPs are restricted to non- policy roles such as redressing grievances of individual constituents (tracking down lost pension cheques, etc.). Other researchers have also found such "constituency service" functions to be important among MPs. A survey by Kornberg and Mishler (1976) found that Canadian MPs considered constituency service to be their most important role. Clarke and Price (1981) reported that the importance of constituency service was greater for less "ambi- tious" MPs (i.e., those less concerned with securing Cabinet positions). In a series of papers focusing on the British Parliament, Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina (1979, 1983, 1987) found that constituency service increases an MP's public recognition and electoral success.

Returning to the legislative voting role of MPs, the implication of this strong party discipline is that individual MPs do not have the ability to independently determine their policy position with respect to a particular issue. De facto political control in Canada rests with Cabinet, and providing the

government has a majority of seats, parliamentary votes become mere "rubber-stamping" of Cabinet- initiated policies. Thus, one could argue that, unlike the US Congress, the votes of individual Canadian MPs are relatively meaningless from an agency theory perspective, in that constituents recognize that party discipline pre-determines the legislative votes of their MP, and that it is the MP's party and not the individual MP that must be held account- able for the policy choices. It then becomes some- what meaningless to talk of MPs shirking, since MPs' voting decisions are completely controlled by the parties to which they belong.

Given this strong party discipline, a key question becomes whether agency theory can offer any insights into legislative voting in Canada. More specifically, are US-style agency theory models transferable to Canada? Longley (1998) argues that they are transferable, but with modification. He develops a model that attempts to test for the presence of

shirking within a system of strong party discipline. His model acknowledges that individual MPs have no control over their voting decision, and hence any tests for the presence of shirking must focus on political parties, and not individual MPs. His empirical work finds that political parties engaged in high levels of shirking on the House of Commons vote on the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement.

However, while it may be true in general that political parties, and not individual MPs, must be the unit of analysis if agency theory is to be applied to legislative voting in Canada, this requirement only holds if party discipline is imposed. There are rare occasions in Canada where party discipline is not enforced. These so-called "free" votes allow individual MPs to vote as they see fit, without control by the party. Generally, these votes only occur on issues of great moral dilemmas - issues such as abortion, capital punishment, and the right-to-die. It could be argued that for these "free" votes, individual MPs become comparable to US members of

Congress, in that each MP is allowed (and forced) to independently select his or her policy position.




510 Neil Longley

MPs can vote as they see fit, without fear of expulsion from caucus or censure by their party.

However, this freedom from party discipline may also create a dilemma for MPs. Since, by their very nature, free votes only occur on issues with strong ideological, moral, and/or ethical overtones, one would expect that MPs would have some natural desire to vote according to their own personal preferences. In fact, the justification typically offered for allowing free votes is to ensure that MPs are not forced to vote in a manner that is contrary to their

personal beliefs. Potential conflicts arise, though, in that constituents also have ideological preferences with respect to the issue. To the extent these preferences are different from the preferences of their MP, and to the extent that the MP votes according to his or her own preferences, the legislator runs the risk of alienating his or her electorate, particularly if the issue in question is high profile in nature.2 Agency theory would predict that, the more slack in the re-

lationship between constituents and the MP, the more likely an MP would vote in accordance with his or her own personal ideological views.

What this paper seeks to accomplish is to provide some insight into this potential dilemma faced

by MPs on free votes. The empirical section of the

paper develops a model that attempts to determine the degree to which constituent interests, versus the

degree to which legislator ideology, influenced vot-

ing on a key 1988 free vote on the abortion issue.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ABORTION POLITICS IN

CANADA

The abortion issue is examined in this study only as a means to provide insights into the agency rela-

tionship between constituents and their legislators, and is not, in itself, the focus of the paper. The political issues surrounding the abortion debate have been well documented and analyzed elsewhere (see, e.g., Brodie, Gavigan and Jensen 1992; and Pal

1991). However, to provide some context for the

discussion in this paper, a brief history of the politics of abortion in Canada is in order.

Until 1969, the 1892 consolidation of the Cana- dian Criminal Code governed abortion policy. These

provisions made it illegal both for a woman to self- induce an abortion and for any person to procure a woman's miscarriage. The only exception to the law was where doctors were acting to preserve the life of the woman.

Over time, particularly after the landmark 1939 Bourne case in the UK, abortions were considered

legal if the woman's life or health was threatened

by the pregnancy. The term "health" was not ad-

equately defined, but was taken to include both the

physical and mental health of the woman. Doctors were then faced with considerable ambiguity, and often sought second opinions from their colleagues in these cases. In some situations, hospitals estab- lished formal committees to hear cases (Jenson 1992). However, because of the ambiguities of the law, most doctors did not perform abortions.

In 1969, as part of the omnibus amendments to the Criminal Code, abortion law was relaxed some- what. The new law continued to prohibit abortions

generally, but did permit abortions in cases where the pregnancy posed a threat to the life or health of the pregnant woman. Abortions could only be performed in hospitals and only after the approval of the hospital's Therapeutic Abortion Committee. In effect, the 1969 amendments sanctioned and formal- ized some of the practices that had already occurred before1969.

In January 1988, the abortion issue took a new turn. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canada's existing abortion law, as given in the 1969 Criminal Code amendments, was unconstitutional. The basis of such a decision was that the existing law was a violation of a woman's right to "security of person" - a right guaran- teed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Brodie, Gavigan and Jenson 1992).





The 1988 Supreme Court decision suddenly threw the abortion issue back into the political arena. The

ruling effectively stated that abortion was a political matter and not a legal matter. The federal Lib- eral and Progressive Conservative (PC) parties, both while in government and in opposition, officially supported the 1969 legislation. The delegation of the abortion issue to the medical profession was

apparently seen as a politically safe stance. For both of these parties, abortion was a "no-win" issue that was not only volatile and emotionally-charged, but was also politically intractable because the two opposing sides had irreconcilable differences (Brodie 1992).

However, in striking down the 1969 law, rather than

simply amending the law, the Supreme Court forced

politicians to deal with the abortion issue. Both sides in the debate saw this vacuum as an opportunity to

shape any future policy, and both began to increase their lobbying efforts with government.

In July 1988 the PC government made an attempt to re-legislate on the abortion issue. It introduced a motion that made access to abortion relatively easy during the early stages of pregnancy, but significantly more difficult during the latter stages (Brodie 1992). The government stated that, by introducing the motion, it sought a "sense of the House" on the abortion issue so as to better guide any future policy making. As expected, neither the pro-choice nor the

pro-life movements were supportive of this compromise motion.

The House of Commons debated the abortion issue over a two-day period in July 1988. During these debates, individual MPs were allowed to introduce amendments to the government's motion. Ulti-

mately, five different amendments were put to a vote in the House. However, four of the five amendments were, in themselves, compromises. Only one amendment, the so-called "Mitges" amendment, named after its sponsor Gus Mitges of the PC Party, un-

equivocally separated the pro-life and pro-choice positions. The Mitges amendment, which would have prohibited abortions in all situations except

were the pregnant woman's life was endangered, was

unequivocally pro-life.3

The Mitges amendment is used as the basis of the empirical work of this study. Because the other four amendments could all be viewed as some form of compromise, it is not clear what a legislator's vote on these amendments actually means. For example, some pro-life legislators would vote against a com-

promise amendment because the amendment was not

sufficiently pro-life, while at the same time, some

pro-choice legislators would vote against the same amendment because the amendment was not suffi-

ciently pro-choice. Since the empirical work of this

study requires that MPs' positions on abortion be

clearly identifiable, only the Mitges amendment is useful for analytical purposes.

In this regard, the vote on the Mitges amendment was viewed by many MPs as the most important vote of the five votes, and the vote that would suppos- edly reflect the "sense of the House" (Brodie 1992).

Ultimately, all five amendments to the government's original motion were defeated. These debates and votes of July 1988 marked a temporary end to the issue, as shortly thereafter the Mulroney government dissolved Parliament and called an election for November 1988.4

THE EMPIRICAL MODEL

The empirical model examines House of Commons

voting on the above-discussed Mitges amendment. The model attempts to determine the degree to which MPs' votes on the amendment reflected constituent interests, versus the degree to which they reflected legislator ideology.

The general specification of the model is as follows:

MP's vote on

Mitges amendment = f (constituent interests, MP's personal ideology) (Equation 1)




512 Neil Longley

A logit technique is employed, where the dependent variable is set equal to one if the MP voted in favour of the amendment (i.e., a pro-life position), and is set equal to zero if the MP voted against the amendment (i.e., a pro-choice position). As Equa- tion 1 shows, the independent variables are divided into two categories. The first category attempts to

capture the preferences of the legislator's constituents with respect to abortion, while the second cat-

egory attempts to capture the legislator's own personal ideology with respect to the issue.

More specifically, the exact form of the model to be tested is:

Vote on

Mitges = Bo + B, (URB) + B2 (EDUC) +

B3 (AGE) + B4 (WHCOL) +

B5 (UNION) + B6 (RATE) +

B7 (CATH) + B8 (FUND) +

B9 (MPAGE) + Blo (MPOCC) +

Bl (MPED) + B12 (MPGEND) +

B13 (MPCATH) + B14 (MPFUND) (Equation 2)

where: URB = the percentage of the constituency's

population residing in urban areas

EDUC = the median years of education of the

constituency's population

AGE = the median voting age of the

constituency's population

WHCOL = the percentage of the constituency's workforce employed in white collar

occupations

UNION = the percentage of the constituency's workforce that belong to a labour union

RATE = the abortion rate per capita in the

constituency (provincial-level figure)

CATH = the percentage of the constituency that is Catholic (provincial-level figure)

FUND = the percentage of the constituency that belongs to a fundamentalist/conservative (defined as Baptist or Mormon) religion (provincial-level figure)

MPAGE = the age of the legislator

MPOCC = a dummy variable equalling one if the legislator had a career in a business

organization prior to his or her

parliamentary experience; zero otherwise

MPED = a dummy variable equalling one if the legislator holds an advanced (Master's, Law, Doctoral) degree; zero otherwise

MPGEND = a dummy variable equalling one if the

legislator is male; zero if female

MPCATH = a dummy variable equalling one if the

legislator is Catholic; zero otherwise

MPFUND = a dummy variable equalling one if the

legislator belongs to a fundamentalist/ conservative religion (Baptist or Mormon); zero otherwise.

The first eight independent variables of Equation 2 (URB through FUND) are intended to capture constituent interests with respect to the abortion issue. The last six independent variables (MPAGE through MPFUND) are intended to proxy legislator ideology. Data sources for all variables are provided in the Appendix.

In measuring constituent interests, a median voter model is employed where it is assumed that politicians increase their chances of re-election if they respond to the preferences of the median voter in their constituency. The median voter's preferences are then captured by the median values of a series of demographic variables designed to proxy constituent interests with respect to abortion.

With respect to these variables, economic analysis would predict the education (EDUC) and white





collar (WHCOL) variables to be negatively correlated with a pro-life stance, to the extent that the

opportunity cost of unwanted children is greater for those at the higher end of the income and social scale. Considerable empirical evidence exists to

support this hypothesis.5 The age variable (AGE) is

expected to have a positive sign, in that the acceptance of abortion appears to be lower for those in older age groups (Register and Stevans 1989; and

Legge 1983). The degree of urbanization (URB), and the degree of unionization (UNION) in a constitu-

ency should both be negatively related to a pro-life position. Urban residents could be expected to have a more liberal attitude toward abortion, while un- ions have generally been strong political supporters of a pro-choice position.

The variable RATE measures a constituency's current abortion rate. Its sign should be negative, in that a higher abortion rate indicates a higher current demand for abortion services, and hence a pre- sumed greater stake in ensuring a pro-choice policy. Two variables are included to capture the effects of

religious affiliation. CATH measures the percentage of constituents that are Catholic, while FUND measures the percentage of constituents that belong to a fundamentalist/conservative religion. Both the Catholic church, and numerous fundamentalist/ conservative religions have long taken active anti- abortion stances. Due to data limitations, the variables RATE, CATH, and FUND are constructed

using provincial-level data, rather than constituency- level data. Data limitations also prevented direct measurement of the number of constituents that be-

long to a fundamentalist/conservative religion. This

figure was thus proxied by the number of persons who belonged to either Baptist or Mormon religions, since the Mormon church and many Baptist sects have adopted socially conservative stances. How- ever, it is recognized that such a measure is imper- fect, since not all Baptist sects are conservative in nature, while at the same time, there are many conservative religions that are neither Baptist nor Mormon.

The second category of variables (MPAGE through MPFUND) attempt to proxy the ideological positions of MPs with respect to abortion. Using a legislator's personal characteristics as a proxy for his or her ideological position with respect to abortion, follows the suggestion of Coates and Munger.6 As discussed earlier, by proxying legislator ideology this way, as opposed to using the "residualization"

approach that became prominent in the early literature on shirking, many of the statistical problems that arose from the residualization approach are avoided.

Most of the legislator variables are included for the same reason that the corresponding variables for constituent interests are included. MPAGE

designates the age of the MP at the time of the vote. Its sign is expected to be positive, for the same reason the sign on AGE is expected to be positive. With respect to education, MPED is set equal to one if the MP has an advanced degree (Master's, Law, or Doctoral degrees) and zero otherwise. It is hy- pothesized that MPs with advanced degrees will have more liberal attitudes toward abortion, and hence the predicted sign on MPED is expected to be negative.

The influence of an MP's previous occupation is captured by the variable MPOCC. The variable is set equal to one if the MP's previous occupation was in the "business" area - either as corporate em- ployee, or as a self-employed person. The rationale here is that individuals with business backgrounds may be more conservative in nature, and thus more likely to be opposed to abortion. Thus, the sign on MPOCC is expected to be positive. MPGEND is set equal to one if the MP is a male. Its sign is expected to be positive in that females have a greater direct stake in securing pro-choice policies than do their male counterparts.

Finally, MPCATH is set equal to one if the MP lists the Catholic church as his or her religious affiliation, and MPFUND is set equal to one if the MP lists a fundamentalist/conservative church as his or her religious affiliation. Since these religions/




514 Neil Longley

churches have generally taken pro-life stances, both MPCATH and MPFUND should have positive signs.

The purpose, then, of the empirical analysis is to determine which, if any, of the legislator ideology variables are significant. To the extent that any are

significant, this may indicate the presence of some

ideological shirking by MPs.

Notice that the base model, as specified in Equa- tion 2, does not include the MP's party as an inde-

pendent variable. The legislator's party is excluded from the base model because, by definition of a free vote, parties are allowing their MPs to vote freely, without the constraints of party discipline. By excluding party as an independent variable, the base model implicitly assumes that the constituent- interest variables and the legislator ideology variables completely capture all factors that may influence a legislator's vote.

This assumption is not necessarily inconsistent with the empirical observation that MPs from the same party often vote similarly on free votes. In fact, one would expect some voting consistency across MPs from the same party. To the extent that MPs from the same party often represent constituencies with similar characteristics, and/or to the extent that MPs from the same party have similar ideological preferences, we would expect these similarities to be reflected in the outcomes of free votes.

However, it is still important to consider the possibility that the MP's party affiliation, as an inde-

pendent factor, does influence the voting of the MP on free votes. To this end, an additional two variables, labelled LIB and NDP, were added to the base model specification of Equation 2. LIB and NDP are dummy variables set equal to one if the MP be-

longed to the Liberal Party or NDP Party respec- tively. The base case is, of course, the MP being a member of the Progressive Conservative Party.

If, in fact, an MP's vote on a free vote is influenced by the MP's party affiliation, the roots of such

influence are not completely clear. To the extent that

political parties adopt ideologies that are different from each other, and to the extent that MPs have personal ideologies that are reasonably consistent with the parties in which they are members, the party affiliation variables may be indirectly capturing legislator ideology. In other words, the party affiliation variables

may capture differences in legislator ideology which are not already captured in the existing six variables

previously included to proxy legislator ideology.

However, a complication arises in that party affiliation may influence a legislator's vote for reasons that are not ideological in nature. For example, the legislator may be attempting to show loyalty to his or her party, and avoid being viewed as a rene-

gade. Or a legislator may feel peer/social pressure to vote a certain way, particularly if many of his or her colleagues in the party are voting that way. Even more importantly, it could conceivably be argued that constituent interests may actually be served when party affiliation influences the vote of the MP. A legislator who acts in a manner that is predict- able and consistent (of which voting similarly to one's fellow party members exemplifies), may provide constituents with a low-cost signal about that

legislator's likely behaviour in the future. For

rationally ignorant constituents, this consistency and

predictability may lower the expected costs of

gathering further information in the future (say, during an election campaign) about the legislator.

Because of the multiple factors that party affiliation may be capturing, the two party affiliation variables are not included as part of the legislator ide-

ology variables, but are considered a separate set of variables.

Logit analyses were then performed for both the base model, and the extended model (i.e., the model with LIB and NDP as explanatory variables). A total of 223 MPs voted on the Mitges amendment, with 105 voting in favour of the amendment, and 118 voting against the amendment. The results are re-

ported in Table 1.





TABLE 1 Logit Analysis of the Mitges Amendment

Base Model Extended Model

Independent Variable Structural Coefficient t-statistic Structural Coefficient t-statistic

CONSTANT -24.77 -.00025 -22.51 -.00024

Constituent Interest Variables URB -1.26 -1.65 -.80 -.96 EDUC -.37 - 1.01 -.48 -1.21 AGE .0062 .09 .0290 .31 WHCOL 1.86 .65 1.16 .39 UNION - 2.22 -.96 -1.06 -.44 RATE .19 .73 .07 .24 OATH - .61 - .55 -1.89 -1.49 FUND 13.36 1. 85 8.15 1.08

Legislator Ideology Variables MPAGE .03 1.33 .02 1.10 MPOCC .93 2.06* .56 1.18 MPED - 1.13 - 3.25* -1.27 -3.29* MPGEND 27.32 .0003 27.28 .0003 MPCATH .95 2.43* .89 2.09* MPFUND .50 .58 .33 .34

Party Affiliation Variables LIB -1.13 -1.86 NDP -27.52 -.0003

Cragg-Uhler R2 .40 .53 Percentage of Correct predictions 73 77 Likelihood Ratio Test 78.03 (14 df)* 110.15 (16 df)*

Notes: Dependent Variable: = 1 if legislator voted a pro-life position.

= 0 if legislator voted a pro-choice position. *Indicates significance at the 5 percent level.

The results reported in Table 1 are instructive in that none of the constituent-interest variables are significant, either in the base model or in the extended model. However, three out of six legislator ideology variables are significant in the base model, and two out of six are significant in the extended

model.7 All variables that are significant are of the correct sign. Results from the base model show that MPs who came from business occupations, and MPs who were Catholic, were more likely to vote a pro- life position, while MPs with an advanced degree were more likely to vote a pro-choice position. With




516 Neil Longley

respect to the extended model, neither of the two

party affiliation variables are significant.

ANALYZING THE SHIRKING BEHAVIOUR

The above results raise the possibility that the abortion vote was influenced by legislator shirking. This section attempts to further analyze the nature of this

possible shirking behaviour. It seeks to determine whether this decision to shirk or not varies in any systematic way across MPs. In particular, it seeks to address the question of whether greater constituent-

legislator slack in a constituency will increase the likelihood that the MP from that constituency will shirk.

To analyze the issue, each constituency was examined to determine whether the MP from that con-

stituency had the "opportunity" to engage in ideo-

logical shirking. An opportunity to ideologically shirk will exist if the MP's personal preferences with

respect to abortion are incompatible with the preferences of his/her constituents

In order to quantitatively measure the preferences of each side (i.e., constituents and the MP), the base model regression (from the above section) was

disaggregated into two separate regressions.8 The first regression regressed each MP's vote on the constituent-interest variables only (and not the legislator-specific variables). The predicted value of the

dependent variable is a probability (and hence must be between zero and one), and this value signifies constituent preferences with respect to abortion. For

example, constituencies that are more pro-life- oriented will have predicted values of the dependent variable closer to one. For constituencies that are more pro-choice-oriented, the predicted value of the dependent variables will be closer to zero. Because it is necessary to make a cut-off, constituencies where the predicted value of the dependent variable is greater than 0.50 are designated as "pro- life constituencies," while constituencies where the

predicted value of the dependent variable is less than 0.50 are designated as "pro-choice" constituencies.

The second regression conducts a similar analysis, only this time the independent variables include

only the legislator ideology variables, and not the constituent-interest variables. In this regression, the

predicted value of the dependent variable will proxy, for each legislator, that legislator's personal ideo-

logical position with respect to abortion. Legisla- tors that are more pro-life will have a predicted value of the dependent variable closer to one, while legislators that are more pro-choice will have a predicted value closer to zero. Again, as with the constituent- interest regression, it is assumed that legislators are

pro-life if they have a predicted value of the dependent variable greater than 0.50, and legislators are

pro-choice if they have a predicted value of the de-

pendent variable that is less than 0.50.

From these two regressions, it was then deter- mined that 97 MPs had the opportunity to shirk. Recall that an opportunity to shirk is defined to exist if the MP's personal preferences with respect to abortion are incompatible with the preferences of his or her constituents. Thus, the opportunity to shirk will exist if the predicted value of the dependent variable in the constituent equation is greater than 0.50, and the predicted value of the dependent variable in the legislator ideology equation is less than 0.50, or vice versa. To eliminate "borderline" cases, an opportunity to shirk was considered to have existed only if the predicted values of the dependent variables from the two regressions differed by more than 0.20 (i.e., the MP had a predicted value of the

dependent variable of at least 0.60 and the constitu-

ency had a predicted value no greater than 0.40, and vice versa).

Using this filter process, of the 223 MPs that voted on the Mitges amendment, only 47 had a "clear-cut" opportunity to shirk (i.e., where their

predicted value differed by at least 0.20 from the

predicted value of their constituents, as described above). A new model was then developed using only these 47 observations. A logit equation was constructed whereby the dependent variable was set equal to one if the MP did actually shirk (i.e., voted





in accordance with his/her own preferences rather than the preferences of his/her constituents), and was set equal to zero if the MP chose not to shirk (i.e., the MP voted in accordance with his/her constituent interests and contrary to their own personal in-

terests). Of the 47 observations, 25 had a value of one, while 22 had a value of zero.

What the model tries to determine is whether this decision to shirk or not varies in any systematic way across MPs. Thus, the independent variables attempt to capture factors that may influence an MP's choice of whether or not to shirk.

As discussed earlier in the paper, there is reason to believe that factors related to political competition and the operation of "political markets" may influence this decision. For those MPs where there is greater slack in their relationship with constituents, one would expect a greater likelihood that these MPs would shirk. Increased slack reduces the likelihood that constituents will punish the MP for any voting transgressions of the MP.

Thus, the general form of the model to be tested can be specified as follows:

Decision on whether or not to shirk = f (slack in the constituent-

legislator relationship)

Specifically, three independent variables are included in the model to measure this slack - the MP's parliamentary tenure (TENURE), the MP's

margin of victory in the previous federal election (MARGIN), and whether or not the MP was a candidate in the subsequent federal election (CANDI- DATE).

TENURE measures the number of years the MP had served in the House of Commons at the time of the vote. Its expected sign is uncertain because there are two opposing forces at work. The longer the MP has served, the greater the reputation capital that

person will have built with his or her constituents,

thus reducing the scrutiny the MP may face from constituents. This effect would lead one to believe that MPs with the longest tenure would have the

greatest opportunity to shirk. However, to the extent that a sorting mechanism exists in political markets, where those MPs who are attentive to constituent interests get repeatedly re-elected, and those who are not, meet electoral defeat, one would expect MPs with the longest tenure to exhibit relatively low

shirking behaviour. In other words, long-serving MPs attain that status not by chance, but because

they have been effective in meeting the needs of their constituents.

The sign on MARGIN is expected to be negative. The greater an MP's margin of victory (in votes) in the previous election, the "safer" that MP may feel about voting his/her own conscience, rather than

voting in accordance with constituent preferences. Where an MP's margin of victory in the previous election is low, indicating the existence of viable

competition for the seat, an MP may be more in- clined to be attentive to constituent interests, for fear of electoral defeat in the next election.

Finally, the dummy variable CANDIDATE is set

equal to one if the MP was a candidate in the subse-

quent federal election (i.e., the November 1988 election), and is set equal to zero if the MP was not a candidate.9 The expected sign on CANDIDATE is

negative in the sense that MPs that know they will not have to face the electorate in any future election are freer to vote in accordance with their own personal ideological preferences, knowing that they cannot be punished by their constituents.

To these three variables designed to capture elements of the political market, a fourth and final in-

dependent variable is added. This variable is sim-

ply a dummy variable (PROLIFE) that reflects the MP's personal ideological preferences with respect to abortion, as proxied in the preceding analysis. PROLIFE is set equal to one if the MP has pro-life preferences, and is set equal to zero if the MP has

pro-choice preferences. The intent of including this




518 Neil Longley

variable is to measure whether pro-life MPs are more or less likely to shirk than pro-choice MPs. There are no prior expectations placed on the sign of this variable.

The results of the logit regression are provided in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Logit Analysis of MP Shirking

Independent Structural t-statistic Variable Coefficient

CONSTANT 4.81 2.11

TENURE - 0.30 - 2.39* MARGIN .00012 2.01* CANDIDATE - 4.49 - 2.22* PROLIFE 0.89 1.17

Cragg-Uhler R2 = .40 Percentage of Correct Prediction = 79 Likelihood Ratio Test = 16.60 (4 df)*

Notes: Dependent Variable: = 1 if legislator shirked.

= 0 if legislator did not shirk. *Indicates Significance at the 5 percent level.

The sign on PROLIFE is positive, suggesting that

pro-life MPs may have had a greater tendency to shirk than did pro-choice MPs. However, because the coefficient is statistically insignificant, no de- finitive conclusions can be drawn here.

All of the other variables are statistically significant. The TENURE variable has a negative sign, indicating that MPs with a longer tenure are less

likely to shirk than those with a shorter tenure. This would seem to suggest that the political sorting mechanism that rewards MPs who are attentive to their constituent's interests more than offsets the tendency for long-serving MPs to feel that their accumulated political capital allows them to shirk their constituent's interests.

Both MARGIN and CANDIDATE possess the

expected sign. The MARGIN variable indicates that the greater the victory margin of the MP in the last election, the more likely that he or she would shirk. The CANDIDATE variable indicates that MPs who did not run for re-election in the November 1988 were more likely to shirk. These results would support the broader hypothesis that legislator shirking is more

likely to occur in situations where there is greater slack in the constituent-legislator relationship.

CONCLUSION

The evidence presented in this paper raises the possibility that legislator shirking is a factor in

explaining MP voting behaviour on free votes. The

empirical results show that, while no constituent- preference variables were found to be statistically significant, three out of six legislator ideology variables were statistically significant. Furthermore, to the extent that legislator shirking was found to exist, this shirking was more likely in constituencies where greater constituent-legislator slack was

present. Greater constituent-legislator slack lowers the political cost to the legislator of engaging in

shirking, since such shirking behaviour is less likely to be punished by constituents.

Of course, the application of agency theory to Canadian parliamentary systems is in its infancy, and much more study is needed before more defini- tive conclusions can be drawn. Further research on free votes is important for two reasons. First, free votes have traditionally been held on issues that have presented great moral dilemmas for our society -

abortion, capital punishment, the right-to-die, etc. It is important to understand how MPs view their role on these free votes. Where conflicts arise between their own ideological preferences and the ideological preferences of their constituents, how do MPs resolve such conflicts? This analytical un- derstanding of what actually occurs in free votes then leads directly into a normative debate about how MPs should resolve such conflicts.





A second reason why the further study of free votes is important is that it relates to the broader issue of parliamentary reform; an issue that has re- ceived considerable attention in the past decade. Numerous commentators have suggested that the defeat of a government-initiated bill in the House of Commons should not always be interpreted as a

signal of non-confidence in the government - an

interpretation that has traditionally existed in Canada. This relaxation in the interpretation of a defeat of a government bill would allow for more free votes, since the government's survival would not depend on the outcome of every legislative vote.

Proponents of such a view argue that more free votes would allow MPs to better convey and represent the interests of their constituents on specific issues.

NOTES

'Further, Goff and Grier (1993) have shown that, given a multi-dimensional policy space, a unique winning plat- form does not exist (except under highly restrictive, and

extremely rare, circumstances). It is their contention, therefore, that different legislators may choose to serve

quite different coalitions of constituents.

2While not taking an agency theory approach, Pattie, Fieldhouse and Johnston (1994) found that, on issues of considerable public interest, British MPs voting behaviour on free votes did impact the future electoral success for the MP.

3See Flanagan (1997) for a further discussion of the

significance and meaning of the five amendments.

40f course, this certainly did not mark the end of the abortion debate in Parliament. After the Mulroney government was re-elected in November 1988, it introduced in November 1989 a new abortion bill, Bill C-43. The bill was again viewed as a compromise, and ultimately met its demise when the Senate vote on the bill ended in a tie, which, under Senate rules, meant the bill was considered defeated.

5For example, Register and Stevans (1989); Finlay (1985); and Legge (1983) all find positive correlations between educational attainment and pro-choice views.

6One reason the abortion issue was selected for study in this paper, as opposed to other free vote issues like

capital punishment or the "right to die," is that evidence

suggests that the opposing ideological positions on the abortion issue can be better proxied by demographic variables (like age, gender, education, occupation, religion, etc.) than can the other issues.

7A test of the joint significance of the constituent- interest variables, as a group, and the legislator ideology variables, as a group, revealed that both sets of variables were significant at the usual levels of significance. The latter group of variables, however, were more significant in that they had a likelihood ratio test statistic of 57.53 (six degrees of freedom), versus a likelihood ratio test statistic of 25.20 (eight degrees of freedom) for the constituent-interest variables.

8Given that the variables LIB and NDP were not significant in the extended model, and given the previously discussed problems in interpreting the meaning of the

party affiliation variables, the base model (i.e., the model without the party affiliation variables) is used as the start-

ing point for the analysis in this section.

9Since the November 1988 federal election followed so closely after the July 1988 abortion vote, it is assumed that those MPs not seeking re-election already had made this decision when the abortion vote occurred.

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APPENDIX

DATA SOURCES

VOTE on Mitges:

House of Commons Journal, 28 July 1988.

EDUC, AGE, and WHCOL:

Statistics Canada, Federal Electoral Districts-Parts I and II (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1988).

URBAN, MARGIN:

Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Thirty-Third General Election, Report of the Chief Electoral Of- ficer, 1984.

UNION:

A constituency's total union membership is derived by multiplying the total employment in each industry in the constituency by that industry's union membership ratio. The latter is defined as the ratio of the industry's unionized employees to total employees. Union membership ratios are calculated on a provincial basis and are applied to all constituencies in that province.

MPAGE, MPOCC, MPGEND, MPED, MPCATH, MPFUND, and TENURE:

Canadian Parliamentary Guide, 1988.

CANDIDATE:

Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Thirty-Fourth General Election, Report of the Chief Electoral Of- ficer, 1988.




voting on abortion in the house of commons: a test for legislator shirking

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