Personalised Representation in a Weak and Party-Controlled Legislature: Policy Responsiveness in the French Parliament

Corentin Poyet

doi:10.1177/14789299211007987

Abstract

There is growing interest in personal representation and policy responsiveness in the European literature. The current scholarship mainly focuses on strong legislatures. This article aims to contribute to the discussion about policy responsiveness by investigating the least likely case, France. It asks whether French MPs engage in policy responsiveness, and if they do, how responsiveness interacts with party agenda and electoral vulnerability. Drawing on written parliamentary questions asked by French MPs from 1997 to 2007 ( N = 1172), the article shows that MPs’ behaviour is strongly affected by their district features. Moreover, the article shows that party agenda conditions the impact of district features. MPs are more likely to engage in policy responsiveness when the issue is also essential for the party. In other words, policy responsiveness is not independent of the party agenda. The article thus contributes to a better understanding of the personalisation of political representation and its relationship with political parties.

Highlights

In Europe, personal or dyadic linkages between MPs and constituents are traditionally considered a reaction to growing electoral volatility and the decreasing role of parties as primary agents of preference aggregation (Mair, 2013)
We focus on written parliamentary questions for two reasons: unlike other tools, their use is hassle-free, and MPs can submit as many questions as they want
Model 2 introduces the interaction of constituency pressures and electoral manifestos to explore the link between policy responsiveness and party representation

Summary

Introduction

In Europe, personal or dyadic linkages between MPs and constituents are traditionally considered a reaction to growing electoral volatility and the decreasing role of parties as primary agents of preference aggregation (Mair, 2013) These changes have received extensive attention, and the exploration of the behaviour of MPs has a rich literature. While most of the literature investigating policy responsiveness focuses on the references to local entities in MPs’ behaviour (Martin, 2011; Zittel et al, 2019), this article aims to measure the policy focus of MPs (Soroka et al, 2009) This approach has received significant interest in the literature (Baumann, 2016; Borghetto et al, 2020; Däubler, 2020; Papp, 2020), with authors highlighting the impact of local socio-economic contexts on the issues MPs raised in parliament

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