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Abstract
This article analyses the attitudes of members of parliament towards representation. Based on the PARENEL project dataset, it takes an individual-level approach to examine the focus and style of representation of Belgian, French and Portuguese representatives. It shows that, given the complexity of the process of representation, MPs have various principals and develop multiple foci of representation. It also demonstrates the impact of electoral rules, career patterns and MPs' goals on their focus of representation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge Viviane Le Hay, Philipp Hornung and Corentin Poyet for research and data management assistance.
Notes
As noted by De Winter (Citation1997: 128), few empirical studies on role attitudes of Belgian MPs have been carried out, due to the predominance of the legalistic and historical approaches of the legislature. Although there is a new interest for political representation (see for instance the PARTIREP project: www.partirep.eu), there is still much more that we should know about individual Belgian MPs and their visions of representation. Similarly, in France, MPs were long neglected by researchers. The study of French parliamentarians and their attitudes towards representation is quite recent and needs to be further developed (see the Legipar research project, www.legipar.sciencespobordeaux.fr/, Costa and Kerrouche 2007). Recent studies on Portuguese MPs mostly focus on the representativeness of the legislature, i.e., its social composition and not so much on the substantive aspect of representation (see for instance Freire Citation2001; Texeira 2009).
Only valid answers were taken into consideration (MPs who did not answer or who answered ‘no opinion’ were left aside).
These percentages are the additions of the rates on answers 4 and 5 on the scales.
Given the space constraint, the table is not inserted in the article but is available upon request to the authors.
Given the space constraint, the table is not inserted in the article but is available upon request to the authors.
It is mainly due to low effective, especially in the French case and to many missing data, especially in the Portuguese case.