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Private Members' Bills and the Personal Vote: Neither Selling nor Shaving

Private members' bills (PMBs) have mostly been studied from a government-opposition perspective as a tool in the hands of minor opposition parties. Using data on PMBs from two legislative periods of the Estonian parliament (1999–2007) and descriptive discriminant analysis (DDA), this article investigates if the personal vote notion explains why some members of parliament engage in sponsorship of PMBs more often than others in a fixed institutional setting with three different mandate types. In addition, the ‘pseudo-legislative’ nature of PMBs is studied by comparing the technical sophistication of the bills and legislative process in parliament between different mandate types. The results support the personal vote concept, but not the label of pseudo-legislation.