Why do Legislators criticize China? Making sense of International Legislative Networks

The rise of the People’s Republic of China as a dominant world power leads to political adaptations throughout the world. Whereas it is customary to argue that international politics is very much dominated by national executives, we can observe a movement towards the parliamentarization of international politics. Currently we witness a specifically strong trend of democratically elected legislators to focus on the role of China in world politics. My paper wants to shed light on the underlying incentives for members of national parliaments to engage critically in exchange with peer legislators about China related issues. For the empirical analysis, I use participation in the largest parliamentary network on China - the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China with over 220 MPs from 20 countries - as dependent variable. Using economic, geographic, and political variables on the individual legislator and country level, I predict which countries join the alliance and which constituency factors lead to an increased interest in China.