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Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

Hanna Bäck

Professor

Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

The Unequal Distribution of Speaking Time in Parliamentary-Party Groups

Author

  • Hanna Bäck
  • Markus Baumann
  • Marc Debus
  • Jochen Müller

Summary, in English

Parliamentary debates provide an arena where Members of Parliament (MPs) present, challenge, or defend public policies. However, the “plenary bottleneck” allows the party leadership to decide who participates in a debate. We argue that in this decision the timing of a debate matters: in proximity of elections, the leadership should be concerned with maintaining its brand name and therefore restrict floor access, in particular if the debate is salient for the respective party. We evaluate our hypotheses in a cross-country study drawing on a novel data set covering all speeches given during one or two legislative terms in six European parliaments. We find that the electoral cycle matters for the distribution of speaking time: Party leaders do restrict parliamentary speechmaking to a smaller number of MPs at the end of the term. This has important implications for our understanding of parliaments as an electoral arena and for our understanding of intraparty politics.

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2019

Language

English

Pages

163-193

Publication/Series

Legislative Studies Quarterly

Volume

44

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

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

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0362-9805