1. Introduction -- 2. Theoretical expectations about speechmaking -- 3. How to analyse speeches and legislative debates -- 4. Who speaks in European parliaments? -- 5. Who speaks against the party? -- 6. Conclusions about legislative speechmaking.
Summary:
"Why do some Members of Parliament (MPs) take the parliamentary floor and speak more than others? Why do some MPs deviate more than others from the ideological position of their party? This book develops hypotheses on legislative speechmaking and evaluates them by analysing parliamentary debates in seven European democracies: Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Assuming that MPs are concerned with policy-making, career advancement, and re-election, the authors discuss various incentives to taking the floor, and elaborate on the role of gender and psychological incentives in speechmaking. They test their expectations on a novel dataset that covers information on the number of speeches held by MPs and on the ideological positions MPs adopted when delivering a speech."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.