Divining Parliamentary Roles: Latent Class and Transition Analyses of Intracameral Backbench Activity in the UK House of Commons, 1979-2019

Work on parliamentary roles, especially in the UK case, has tended to start by interviewing MPs. We take here a different approach by using a ‘sharp focus’ to analyse intracameral activity – speeches, voting, committee activity, written questions, and early day motions – of all backbench MPs (n=2,133) in the UK House of Commons between 1979 and 2019. Drawing on a historical institutionalism undergirded by critical realism and using both latent class and latent transition analysis, we seek: (i) to divine the backbench parliamentary roles present within the chamber; (ii) to identify changing patterns in the balance between these parliamentary roles over time; (iii) to explain MPs’ incumbencies within particular roles, and how and why MPs move between roles, through recourse to a series of variables concerning MPs’ backgrounds and experience, constituency information, and broader political contextual data. In this way, we wish to shed light on how and why Westminster’s World has changed and, perhaps, whether it was ever thus.