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Party Strategies, Constituency Links, and Legislative Speech
Author(s) -
Alemán Eduardo,
Ramírez Margarita M.,
Slapin Jonathan B.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12174
Subject(s) - lawmaking , legislature , incentive , political science , dilemma , affect (linguistics) , position (finance) , test (biology) , public relations , public administration , law and economics , political economy , law , sociology , economics , communication , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology , finance , biology , microeconomics
This article examines how parties organize legislative speech. Electoral incentives and legislative institutions affect speech participation. When electoral systems create personal vote‐seeking incentives, parties are less concerned with screening speeches and more supportive of members seeking to garner name recognition. But in many countries, legislative rules and norms constrain opportunities for individual position taking during the lawmaking debates. We argue that parties resolve this dilemma by organizing speech participation into nonlegislative speeches and lawmaking debates. In each instance, different types of legislators are more likely to speak. We examine the case of Chile and test the implications of our theory with data on congressional speeches.