The use of parliamentary tools by local councillors

In recent years, political scientists have gained greater understanding of how national parliamentary parties use their parliamentary tools: that is under what conditions they submit parliamentary questions, amendments to legislation, private member’s bills or parliamentary motions. We know surprisingly little about how local politicians, such as members of municipal councils, use their parliamentary tools: under what conditions do these local councillors submit questions to the local executive? When do they submit amendments to local ordinances? Or under what conditions do they submit motions to propose policy changes? We build further on the model developed by Louwerse & Otjes (2019; Otjes & Louwerse 2021) which proposes three factors that structure the parliamentary behaviour of party groups: 1) Populist parties are more likely to be ‘responsive’ parties, using parliament as a bully pulpit to amplify citizens’ objections to policy, for instance by asking questions. These parties are less likely to be ‘responsible’ parties that use the legislature as a place to find support for policy alternatives, for instance by submitting amendments. 2) There is a marked difference in the legislative behaviour of coalition and opposition parties. Opposition parties are more likely to use any kind of parliamentary tools as they cannot use informal channels influence the policy that the local executive pursues. 3) Ideology is also likely to play a role in legislative behaviour: the greater the left-right distance between the executive coalition and a party’s policy position, the more likely that they use any kind of parliamentary tools. The reason for this is that they disagree more strongly with the policies that the government pursues. We test these expectations using data on parliamentary behaviour and party manifestos in dozens of Dutch municipalities in the last decade.