Talking Conflict Inside and Outside Parliament: Target-Specific Communication in Legislative Speech and Press Releases

Parliamentary groups comprise MPs with diverse preferences. However, opportunities for MPs to express their individual preferences publicly are scarce; in particular as deviating from the party line in parliamentary voting can be used to a limited extent, only. This leads to the question how individual MPs present their preferences to the public. Drawing on Fenno’s concept of home style, we assess this question by measuring the issue attention that MPs devote to issues in parliament and compare these saliencies to those that we find in their press releases. We expect differences between home style and away style to vary systematically with the incentives MPs face. More specifically, MPs that have to cater to their electoral district constituency to ensure reelection should have stronger incentives to deviate in their home styles, while MPs on save seats should be free from these incentives. To measure home and away styles we draw on an extensive collection of speeches and press releases that covers the activities of all MPs of the 16th German Bundestag.