Economic Characteristics of Electoral Districts and Parliamentary Questions: Evidence from Portugal

What determines the topic selected by MPs for their parliamentary questions in a non-preferential electoral system? This paper aims to contribute to current studies on parliamentary questions and political representation by examining the impact of the economic situation of electoral districts on topic selection in Portugal. It tests whether MPs elected in districts undergoing economic hardship are more likely to represent their constituency’s interest in parliament by raising awareness on their problems through written questions. The expectation is that the effect of the problem pressure variable is stronger for MPs elected in small districts and for MPs belonging to opposition parties. The institutional characteristics of the Portuguese political system represent a suitable case study to evaluate the hypotheses. Portuguese MPs have a national mandate and their re-election chances hinge on being reselected by the party elites. This should make the odds of observing a direct link to their constituencies lower in comparison with preferential systems. The paper tackles this question by drawing on a dataset comprising the population of parliamentary questions (more than 10,000) tabled by Portuguese MPs in the period from 2009 until 2015.