The MP's Complaints Service*

Rawlings, Richard

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2230.1990.tb01801.x

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Other studies examine whether and how constituencies influence politicians' actions at Parliament (Ågren et al, 2006;Blidook and Kerby, 2011;Miller and Stokes, 1963). A handful of studies examine the composition of casework (Le Lidec, 2009;MacLeod, 2006;Rawlings, 1990), but none examine what happens when an MP and a constituent sit down to talk during constituency surgeries. This is surprising, given that researchers and politicians alike are interested in engaging voters in politics (see i.e.…”

Section: The Constituency Officementioning

confidence: 99%

Offers of assistance in politician–constituent interaction

Hofstetter

Stokoe

2015

Discourse Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do politicians engage with and offer to assist their constituents; the people who vote them into power? We address the question by analyzing a corpus of 80 interactions recorded at the office of a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom, and comprising telephone calls between constituents and the MP's clerical 'caseworkers' as well as face to face encounters with MPs in their fortnightly 'surgeries'. The data were transcribed, then analysed using conversation analysis, focusing on the design and placement of offers of assistance. We identified three types of offers within a longer 'offering' sequence: 1) 'proposal offers', which typically appear first in any offering sequence, in which politicians and caseworkers make proposals to help their constituents using formats that request permission to do so, or check that the constituent does indeed want help (e.g., "do you want me to"; "we could…"); 2) 'announcement offers', which appear second, and indicate that something has been decided and confirm the intention to act (e.g., "I will do X"), and 3) 'request offers', which appear third, and take for form "let me do X". Request offers indicate that the offer is available but cannot be completed until the current conversation is closed; they also appear in environments in which the constituent reissues their problems and appears dissatisfied with the offers so far. The paper contributes to what we know about making offers in institutional settings, as well as shedding the first empirical light on the workings of the constituency office: the site of engagement between everyday members of the public and their elected representatives.

show abstract

Section: The Constituency Officementioning

confidence: 99%

Offers of assistance in politician–constituent interaction

Hofstetter

Stokoe

2015

Discourse Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If ministers seek to eliminate one of those rights, as they are doing by delegating cases to agencies, units and officials, they are diminishing the rights of our constituents and the rights of Parliament. (The Guardian, 1992) Kaufman is echoing the concerns expressed a year or two earlier in a study of the operation of the 'MP's complaints service' by an academic lawyer, which raised the spectre of a political form of redress becoming further bureaucratized and/or privatized (Rawlings, 1990). Rawlings himself doubted that MPs' casework would diminish because the increasing fragmentation of public services would stimulate recourse to MPs, particularly in respect of complaints about local services that might previously have been dealt with by elected councillors.…”

Section: Ministers Executive Agencies and Constituency Mpsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…10. This criticism was directed at the two 'lawyer ombudsmen', who were accused of divorcing the office from its parliamentary roots by bringing a restricted lawyer's frame of reference to the handling of complaints (in particular, by curtailing the use of the office to ventilate 'political' grievances linking maladministration with resource problems attributable to the government's policy of financial stringency) (R. Rawlings, 1990). For a more nuanced view, emphasizing the work of the Ombudsman in auditing and improving the quality of departmental administration, see Gregory and Pearson (1992).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managerialism, Administrative Justice and Public service Reform in Britain

Clark

1999

International Review of Administrative Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article has four objectives. The first is to survey a number of 'new public management' policy innovations introduced (or possibly pioneered) in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s which impinge directly on the relationship between the citizen and the state. The second is to develop an interpretation of these reforms as constituting, at least in part, a 'second wave' of administrative justice reforms based on techniques and principles opposed to traditional 'administrative law' concerns with court-like adjudication and legal remedies. The third objective is to undertake a preliminary evaluation of the success of these reforms in avoiding the administrative pathologies imputed by the authors of the reform programme to 'law-bound' approaches to administrative justice (Waldegrave, 1993). The final objective is to identify some remaining gaps in the British regime of administrative justice.The article is divided into three parts. The introductory part draws an analytical distinction between three 'ideal typical' models of administrative justice, understood as devices for resolving disputes between citizens and public bodies and for securing the redress of legitimate grievances. The second part traces the post-war evolution of the British 'regime' of administrative justice, charting developments concerning judicial review and tribunals, the ombudsman and the rise of internal complaints systems. The third part reviews the recent wave of managerially inspired reforms, including Next Steps agencies, the Citizen's Charter (1991) and the open government codes pertaining to central government (1994) and the National Health Service (1995), from the perspective of its impact on the balance of the contemporary administrative justice regime. It also examines the likely impact of legislative measures announced by the Blair government in the field of citizens' rights. Three models of administrative justiceThe discussion in this article rests on an analytical distinction between three models of administrative justice, understood as 'ideal type' mechanisms for resolving disputes between the citizen and the state. These are referred to as the

show abstract

“…However, the biggest bene®t to constituents was actually getting a response from ocialdom. 7 Rawlings judged that constituents obtained tangible bene®t by virtue of MPs' intervention in just over 20 per cent of cases, but in terms of reassurance that decisions were correct the success rate was over 50 per cent. Members therefore bene®t from ministerial letter writing; it clearly represents a cost eective use of their time, much more than tabling formal parliamentary questions.…”

Section: The Growth In Constituency Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

MPs Go Back to Their Constituencies

GAY

2005

Political Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The growth of the constituency role of MPs has been well documented since the 1960s, in particular the focus on casework. There are clear conventions that MPs should represent all their constituents and should not purport to represent other constituencies. Recent research indicates that these rules are under strain with the advent of devolution and the use of IT such as databases, emails and blogs. More generous allowances enable MPs to employ greater numbers of personal staff to process constituency casework. Parties favour this development, as simultaneously assisting with the permanent campaign and removing potential dissent from Parliament. The incumbency effect is now evident, as MPs believe that assiduous attention to constituents can save their seats. Parliaments are under pressure to improve the capacity of their members, but also to avoid inappropriate use of funds to influence the outcome of elections.

show abstract

The MP's Complaints Service*

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Offers of assistance in politician–constituent interaction

Offers of assistance in politician–constituent interaction

Managerialism, Administrative Justice and Public service Reform in Britain

MPs Go Back to Their Constituencies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About