In parliamentary systems, party leaderships accomplish party unity by promising
positive incentives to their members of parliament (MP) and threatening
them with negative incentives. Regarding reselection, ‘loyal’ and active MPs
should be rewarded with promising list positions, while rebellious and ‘slacking’
MPs should be punished with worse list positions or even denied renomination.
Although this assumption is central to explaining party unity induced by party
discipline, empirical evidence for this practice has been scarce. The study
combines data on roll-call voting, parliamentary speeches and questions in
the German Bundestag from 1990 to 2017 with novel data on renominations
including renomination failures. Investigating list position changes and renomination
failures in the German mixed-member system, the results indicate that
selectorates of list candidates punished dissenting voting behaviour, while
selectorates of district candidates considered the degree of parliamentary
activity. The findings have broader implications for the representatives’ accountability
in parliamentary systems.