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Electoral Context and MP Constituency Focus in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
Author(s) -
Heitshusen Valerie,
Young Garry,
Wood David M.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/j.0092-5853.2005.00108.x
Subject(s) - house of commons , irish , context (archaeology) , incentive , political science , variety (cybernetics) , public administration , focus (optics) , geography , politics , economics , law , linguistics , philosophy , physics , archaeology , optics , parliament , artificial intelligence , computer science , microeconomics
The job description for legislators in western democracies includes constituency‐focused activities such as casework and district visits. Unfortunately we have a limited theoretical and empirical understanding of the factors affecting legislators' constituency‐oriented activities, in large part because most studies focus on single nations; even studies that are comparative do not span a variety of electoral systems. In this article we examine the constituency focus of MPs in six chambers that do provide such variance: the Australian House and Senate, Canadian House, Irish Dáil, New Zealand House, and the British House of Commons. We find that electoral considerations and incentives provided by different electoral systems, as well as other factors, affect the priority that MPs place on constituency service .