A matter of trust? Delegation and Control in the relations between Parliamentarians and Personal Assistants: A comparative case study from Scottish and Finnish Parliamentary Offices

In the paper, we analyse how parliamentarians and their designated parliamentary assistants (PAs) talk about trust, delegation and control in relations between PAs and MPs. The role of PAs in parliamentary work is under-researched, although there is a rising research interest in parliamentary staff. Trust, delegation and control are central elements in parliamentary work. They are closely related to the institutional prestige, power relations and unwritten rules of parliaments, shaping the everyday work of the parliamentary staff. We aim to address this research gap in how parliaments work. The research field on parliamentary staff tends to be dominated by research on the US Congress and the European Parliament. Our study compares two lesser-known cases, the Scottish Parliament and Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta). The comparison is interesting because the two cases are very different: The Scottish Parliament is a sub-state parliament embedded in UK’s majoritarian Westminster system, and the Eduskunta is a national parliament in a consensus democracy. However, the Scottish Parliament was conceived to be different to Westminster (“new politics”), and recently there has even been an attempt to brand Scotland as a “Nordic country”. This study utilises qualitative content analysis of interview data collected from the 2010s until 2022.