Institutions and Legislative Speech: When Do MPs of Immigrant Origin Get To Speak on the Floor of the Chamber - and What Do They Get to Speak About?

This paper seeks to explain variations in the access Belgian, British, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish MPs enjoy to the floor of the chamber (a) in general, and (b) in policy areas directly linked to immigration and ethnic minorities. It starts with a general baseline model that does not take the ethnicity or other background features of MPs into account. We build on Proksch and Slapin’s (2014) delegation model of legislative speech, which demonstrates that (a) the incentives to cultivate a personal vote stemming from the electoral system, and (b) the control party leaders have over candidate nomination influence significantly the opportunities for backbenchers to speak on the floor of the parliamentary chamber. First, we replicate Proksch and Slapin’s model in general terms using the Pathways data on descriptive and substantive representation, i.e., personal background features and data on MPs’ speeches. In a second step, we will add information on the migratory background of speakers (and non-speakers) controlling for country-based heterogeneity, size and socio-demographic composition of the MP’s constituency and political party. For causal inference, we will compare a sample of all MPs of immigrant origin with a matching sample of MPs without immigrant background. The matching will be achieved through the use of a statistical technique based on propensity scores. Using this methodology, we will seek to uncover hitherto unknown differences in the patterns of delegation, rigorously re-testing qualitative evidence that some political parties discourage their members of immigrant origin from speaking on immigration and integration, whereas others do the opposite and seek to utilize the personal profiles of their MPs (including those of immigrant origin) credibly to signal policy commitments to the electorate.