Dynamic Political Rhetoric: Electoral, Economic and Partisan Determinants of Speech Making in the UK Parliament

Existing research has argued that candidate-centered electoral systems motivate members of parliament (MP) to adapt their legislative behavior to cultivate personal votes. Yet, these institutional incentives do not affect all MPs equally, and studies show that there is substantial variation regarding the responsiveness of MPs to constituency concerns. In particular, we know little about the dynamics of MPs’ responsiveness and the extent to which MPs change their expressed balance of constituency-focused and party-oriented activities during the legislative term. Parliamentary debates offer MPs an arena for responding quickly to constituents’ concerns or for highlighting party policy. In this paper, we examine how British MPs change the frequency and content of their parliamentary speeches depending on electoral, economic, and partisan factors. Seat vulnerability has been shown to affect parliamentary behavior more generally in plurality electoral systems. We assess its effect in the context of changing partisan popularity and fluctuations in unemployment rates at constituency level on MPs’ parliamentary speeches. Our analysis covers three decades of parliamentary debates and allows us to investigate the dynamics of parliamentary political rhetoric in more detail than has previously been accomplished.