Serving MPs or surveying the country? A comparative analysis of parliamentary staff.

Surprisingly little is known about the staff that supports MPs in their work. The only case where these staffs have been surveyed in depth is the US. Yet, this is an exceptional case with very large congressional staffs. This paper presents a comparative analysis of parliamentary staffs. The American literature, as well as the existing but limited European literature suggests that these staffs serve a key role in democratic systems as they provide MPs with the information to do their legislative, representative and oversight work. Using data from the IPU we compare the size of parliamentary staffs in 48 Western countries and 66 houses of parliaments over an eight-year period. We compare two explanations for the number of employees: firstly, that these staffs serve MPs and that therefore their number is strongly tied to the number of MPs. Secondly, that the size of these staffs reflects the size of the country, because they serve as intermediaries between the population and the MPs. We find that population size is a dominant driver of the size of parliamentary staffs.