Parlementaire en buiten-parlementaire activiteiten van Vlaamse volksvertegenwoordigers

Abstract

In this article, we integrated the data of four inquiries, concerning various activities and features (clientelist activities, cumulation of extraparliamentary offices, various activities in parliament, non-attendance at committee meetings and plenary sessions, extent of personal electoral campaign, amount of preference votes, parliamentary seniority, etc.), computing the relations between all these quantitative variables by partialcorrelation and multiple regression techniques.Remarkably, the most determing factor of the amount of preference votes of a candidate seems to be his various activities in parliament.His clientelist activities and his personal electoral campaign influence also, but in a lesser way, the cast of these votes. Parliamentary seniority correlates positively with the number of cumulated offices, which in turncorrelates with the extent of his electoral campaign. The attendance of a representative during the committee meetings and during the plenary voting sessions seems not at all to be (negatively) influenced by this cumulations of various offices, and only slightly by bis clientelist occupations. This general pattern of parliamentary behavior differs considerably between parties. Finally, the effect of each particular branch ofextraparliamentary offices on the other activities of each member was examined.