Intra-party determinants of the allocation of legislative speeches

Abstract

ABSTRACT Parliamentary speech is an important and highly visible feature of legislatures in democracies. Time in parliament is scarce and the allocation of floor time is characterised by largely incompatible preferences between party leaders, aiming to preserve a unified party label, and individual members of parliament (MPs), facing incentives to differentiate themselves and take alternative stances to maximise their personal reelection prospects. This paper investigates the role of MP policy positions in the allocation of parliamentary speeches in different institutional settings. Measuring positions using a novel dataset containing tweets by MPs in three European countries, we find that MPs with positions diverging from the party line get allocated less time on the parliamentary floor when floor time is exclusively controlled by parties, but not when parliamentary rules allow individual access to the floor.