Policy Preferences, Conflict, and Legislative Speech

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Across many democracies, the complex challenges posed by globalization, migration, and changes in trade dynamics have sparked new and diverse dimensions of policy conflict – sometimes between rival parties, but often even within parties and governing coalitions, in a trend that threatens to destabilize party organizations and systems. Importantly, these changes are reflected not only in electoral competition (e.g., the emergence of new populist challengers to established parties), but also in legislative debates over policy. Indeed, legislative discourse is a key area in which policy conflict between parties, and within parties and coalitions, is manifested and readily observable. In line with this year’s conference theme of “Promoting Pluralism,” this panel explores the multiple ways in which individual legislators and parties use legislative speeches to pursue their disparate policy goals vis-à-vis party leaders, coalition partners, and interest groups. The panelists draw on new sources of data from four legislatures on three separate continents, with each paper exploring a different use of speechmaking for expressing policy preferences and disagreement.
In the first paper, Pamela Ban, Ju Yeon Park, and Hye Young You draw on data from the US Congress to analyze the extent to which legislators’ speeches in congressional committees are similar to those of the witnesses representing organizations which fund members’ electoral campaigns, exploiting a 1995 reform which resulted in downsizing the research-oriented congressional staffs available to members of Congress. Next, Max Goplerud and Daniel M. Smith explore how the allocation of speaking time is used as a coalition-management tool in the Japanese Diet, arguing that electoral vulnerability and policy disagreement within the coalition influences who gets to speak in legislative debates. In the third paper, Verena Kunz uses data from the European Parliament to analyze how MEPs use interventions in debates to explore party dynamics, finding that such ‘blue-card’ interventions follow patterns of issue-specific government-opposition dynamics. Finally, David M. Willumsen and Patrik Öhberg explore the extent to which floor speeches in the Swedish Riksdag reflect legislators’ policy preferences, and whether floor voting corresponds to these expressed preferences. The paper also explores the effect of the introduction of incentives to cultivate a personal vote on these relationships. Catherine de Vries will chair the panel, and Hanna Bäck and Eduardo Alemán offer expert feedback and commentary as discussants for the panel.
Together, the papers in this panel paint a fresh comparative picture of how policy conflict works its way through the legislative process in contemporary democracies. Each paper advances our understanding of legislative speech as a deliberate political act, and pushes the literature beyond simple analyses of dimensionality and conflict to explore how speeches are used as strategic tools by legislators and parties in a variety of settings. Understanding this process is crucial for our broader understanding of how new dimensions of conflict, including the current rise of populist discourse around the world, may be either contained or accommodated within established legislative structures and behavior.

Sub Unit

• Division 22: Legislative Studies

Individual Presentations

• How Are Politicians Informed? Witness Testimony and Information Provision - Pamela Ban, University of California, San Diego; Ju Yeon Park, University of Essex; Hye Young You, New York University

• Coalitions and the Allocation of Speaking Time in Legislatures - Max Goplerud, University of Pittsburgh; Daniel M. Smith, Columbia University

• Interrogating the Opponent? The Use of Blue-Card Questions in the EP - Verena Kunz, University of Mannheim

• Thinking, Speaking, Doing? Preference, Speech and Floor Voting Congruence - David Munck Willumsen, University of Innsbruck; Patrik Ohberg, The Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg

Chair

• Catherine E. De Vries Bocconi University

Discussants

• Hanna Back Lund University

• Eduardo Aleman University of Houston