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Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

Hanna Bäck

Professor

Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

Coordination of legislative speech in times of crisis : Youth unemployment and debates on redistributive policies in the Swedish Riksdag, 1994–2014

Author

  • Hanna Bäck
  • Markus Baumann
  • Marc Debus

Summary, in English

Parliamentary debates and the discussion on different law proposals are a key part of the process of policy making. We argue in this article that a high economic problem pressure in the region an MP represents will affect the MP’s legislative speechmaking. We also hypothesise that parties tend to coordinate their speakers in parliament to display a cohesive profile in the domain of labour, employment and immigration issues, i.e., in issue areas which reflect redistributive policies that are highly salient for almost all parties. We evaluate our expectations based on an analysis of Swedish parliamentary debates on labour, employment and immigration policy during the period between 1994 and 2014. The findings show that parliamentary parties coordinate speechmaking: Those MPs who represent economically troubled districts are less likely to appear in plenary debates, as well as MPs who deviate programmatically from the party line.

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2019-10

Language

English

Pages

404-417

Publication/Series

International Journal of Social Welfare

Volume

28

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

Keywords

  • (youth) unemployment
  • economic problem pressure
  • legislative coordination
  • parliamentary debates
  • Sweden

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1369-6866