Making “politics” relevant

Abstract

This paper investigates an area of political discourse that has hitherto existed in an analytic “black box”: the constituency office. We focus on the interactions between ordinary British people as they engage directly in “political” discussions with their Member of Parliament. While the majority of surgery talk surrounds complaints about services, we focus on sequences of talk in which either citizens or the MP make “political” topics relevant. Eighty consultations were video-recorded, anonymised and transcribed, and the data analysed using conversation analysis. We found that MP-initiated political comments portray the government as aligned with constituents’ needs, whereas constituents use political comments largely to criticise the government. Constituents privilege the interactional contingencies over other issues. Overall, the paper contributes to our understanding of how constituents navigate interactional and political contingencies in interactions with their representative.

Representational Style Across National and Constituency Contexts: Members of Parliament in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom

“…Casework is an effective way for MPs to gain a reputation for service responsiveness (Parker 2021). In the UK, constituency service has long revolved around the constituency surgery-or advice surgery-in which MPs (and staff) meet with constituents to learn service needs (Hofstetter and Stokoe 2018).…”

A novice inquiry into unique adequacy

“…The everyday work of the constituency office is less to campaign for re-election, and more to mediate between constituents and bureaucratic agencies, especially with cases that do not fit into the typical processes, and signposting cases to other more specialized agencies (Alexander and Hofstetter, 2021). The offices deal with a huge variety of situations, from neighbour disputes to immigration, from problems with the local council to child custody and from parking to political complaints (Hofstetter and Stokoe, 2018). Unlike certain other service provision settings (e.g.…”