Constituency Influence in Parliament

Soroka, Stuart; Penner, Erin M.; Blidook, Kelly

doi:10.1017/s0008423909990059

Cited by 85 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Soroka, Penner and Bidook, 2009;. By examining the effect of government and opposition questions as well as frontbench and backbench questions by the opposition on one another we offer a new account of the determinants of the parliamentary agenda that complements existing work.…”

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confidence: 98%

Policy Representation by Party Leaders and Followers: What Drives UK Prime Minister’s Questions?

Bevan¹,

John

2015

Gov. & oppos.

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This paper demonstrates how party leaders (frontbenchers) and backbenchers use their access to UK Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) to represent the policy agenda. Building on comparative research on parliamentary questions and agenda-setting as well as taking account of the particular context of PMQs, we argue that party leaders and followers draw attention to different kinds of policy topics with the express purpose of influencing the government. Based on a content analysis of over 9,000 questions between 1997 and 2008, our analysis demonstrates how the posing of questions affects subsequent agenda, varying according to whether questions come from the front or backbench, from government and opposition and from different parties. The findings demonstrate that PMQs helps both the opposition and backbenchers draw attention to issues that the government and opposition party leadership does not always wish to attend to. UK Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) is potentially one of the most important means for the opposition to challenge the government on the major issues of the day.During PMQs opposition Members of Parliament put questions to the prime minister in full view of the public and expect well-briefed answers in return. However, the value and the purpose of PMQs has increasingly been called into question by recent research (for a summary see Bates et al, 2012) and even internal government debates (see UK Parliament, 1996) contain comments about the shallowness and shortcomings of PMQs.As it currently stands PMQs is widely believed to show off the rhetorical skills of the leaders of the main political parties attracting the attention of the media rather than to hold the government of the day to account.Even though there is a theatrical aspect to PMQs, we argue that the practice can still ensure the government addresses concerns that it might not otherwise wish to talk about and therefore is an important venue for ensuring accountability and responsiveness.As a result of the topics stressed in PMQs, the government has to confront the difficult issues of the day, which can advantage the opposition by putting the government on the defensive regardless of the completeness of the government's answers. Due to these efforts, the party or parties in control of government respond to other parliamentarian and To advance this argument, the paper first briefly outlines the procedure of PMQs for the period of our analyses (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) followed by a review of the literature on agenda-setting through parliamentary questions. The paper then describes the data and methods used, before reporting the findings from graphical and statistical analyses. The conclusions draw out implications for the study of parliamentary representation. What are Prime Minister's Questions?Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) is a parliamentary convention whereby the prime minister answers questions in the House of Commons from Members of Parliament (including the leader(s) of the oppo...

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confidence: 98%

Policy Representation by Party Leaders and Followers: What Drives UK Prime Minister’s Questions?

Bevan¹,

John

2015

Gov. & oppos.

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“…Studies of the personal vote in the UK support the contention that servicing one's constituency is important to voters and contributes to a small but significant voting bonus for incumbents (Gaines 1998;Norton and Wood 1990;Wood and Norton 1992). The same trend emerges in studies of the US (Altman and Chasquetti 2005;Arnold 1990;Cain et al 1987;Erikson 1972;Jacobson 1996;Rocca and Gordon 2010) and Canada (Cunningham 1971;Krashinsky and Milne 1986;Soroka et al 2009). In the early 1990s, Arnold (1990: 44) introduced the notion of the 'traceability chain', noting that 'the incumbent performance rule provides citizens with an alternative approach for monitoring the performance of government and for rewarding or punishing those responsible for its performance'.…”

Section: Scholars Have Indicated That Legislators Have Three Mainmentioning

confidence: 83%

Re-election: Different Skills for Different Roles

Akirav¹

2013

Gov. & oppos.

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The current research examines the ability of legislators to be re-elected through fulfilling their three roles: legislation, oversight and representation. This study also re-examines Mayhew's claim (1974) that most legislators are motivated by a desire to be re-elected, and that this desire drives their legislative activity through its utility in advertising, credit claiming and position taking. We argue that the skills required for selection and re-election are different from those required for enacting legislation. Thus, we distinguish between two types of legislators – those who are electable and those who are successful in the legislature.

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“…2 Studies have documented evidence that such voter-member linkages are manifest with respect to MPs' nonpolicy, constituency service-type behaviors (Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina 1987;Norton and Wood 1993;Rush 2001;Searing 1994) and with respect to the policy issues that MPs choose to attend to (Blidook and Kerby 2011;Soroka, Penner, and Blidook, 2009). However, research on voter-member linkages with respect to policy positions has to date been impeded by a lack of the required empirical measures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dyadic Representation in a Westminster System

2012

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Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Dyadic Representation in a Westminster SystemIs policy representation in contemporary Westminster systems solely a function of programmatic national parties, or does the election of legislators via single-member districts result in MPs whose policy positions are individually responsive to public opinion in their constituencies? We generate new measures of constituency opinion in Britain and show that, in three different policy domains and controlling for MP party, the observed legislative behavior of MPs is indeed responsive to constituency opinion. The level of responsiveness is moderate, but our results do suggest a constituency-MP policy bond that operates in addition to the well-known bond between voters and parties.

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Constituency Influence in Parliament

Cited by 85 publications

References 72 publications

Policy Representation by Party Leaders and Followers: What Drives UK Prime Minister’s Questions?

Policy Representation by Party Leaders and Followers: What Drives UK Prime Minister’s Questions?

Re-election: Different Skills for Different Roles

Dyadic Representation in a Westminster System

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