Advisory ex ante referendums, such as the referendum on the UK membership in the European Union in 2016, provide MPs with a (more or less) clear mandate from their principal, but they are not legally binding. Implementation thus still requires a legislative act, usually by parliament. MPs therefore face the decision whether to follow the will of ‘the people’ or to decide according to their own judgement, and thus whether to act as delegates or trustees.
How do legislators deal with having preferences that go against those of the principals that they represent in parliament? This article analyses the debate in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum in the House of Commons to explore the relationship between divergent preferences and legislative speeches. It finds that legislators who defy the will of their country or constituency are rather communicative, and their speeches reveal higher levels of negativity. In contrast, those defying their party refrain from speaking in parliament, but if they speak, they use a significantly less negative language.
Everyone agrees that members of parliaments (MPs) should keep in touch with the people they represent. Yet some MPs invest more in communication with their constituency than others. We approach this problem with data from the parliamentary communication allowance in the United Kingdom, where all MPs had the same amount of budget to reach out proactively to their electors. We base our analysis on two fundamental assumptions: that re-election is the main goal of legislators and that communication to signal trustworthiness is one way of securing their re- election.
This article extends the empirical evidence for the use of e-newsletters in parliamentary communication in between elections. It assesses the effect of electoral incentives and parliamentary institutions on members (MPs1) from all four legislatures in the UK. I find that electoral incentives to cultivate a personal vote increase the e-newsletter usage by MPs. However, being an MP in subnational parliaments or smaller parties decreases it. These findings throw a fresh light on why only some parliamentarians are happy to adopt new and seemingly resource-efficient ways to reach out to voters.
An influential literature underlines how much parliamentary communication of European Union (EU) affairs could offer to democracy in the EU. Yet members of parliaments (MPs) seem unmoved by their potential. MPs are strategic about their communication, and this study questions the suitability of EU affairs to their re-election strategies. Analysing the messages posted on Twitter by regional and national MPs from Ireland and the United Kingdom over a four-month period, this article shows that clear electoral safety and strong political responsibility increase the communication of EU affairs.
Many studies have examined the determinants of ministerial selection. However, the effect of electoral incentives on government post allocation has so far not been studied in the literature. Drawing on data from the United Kingdom over the period 1992–2015, this article investigates the relationship between the selection of ministers and the electoral interests of the actors in this selection process–party leaders and members of parliament (MPs). The findings demonstrate that the greater the electoral safety of constituencies, the more likely are MPs to have a higher office.