Representation in Action

Representation and Partisanship: What Determines the Topics That Members of Parliament Prioritize in Communications with Their Constituents?

“…While prior research suggest that MPs are free to chart their own course in their constituencies based on their own characteristics, experiences, and the needs of their communities (for example, Koop et al, 2018), our results show that partisanship is by far the most important predictor of what MPs include in their communications to their entire constituencies. By contrast, the MP's own personal characteristics and the demographics of their constituencies are much less likely to predict what MPs focus on in their communications.…”

“…On the one hand, we know that Canadian politics is structured by very strong party discipline, elements of which MPs both lament and which can be beneficial to their political careers (Kam, 2009;Godbout, 2020;Marland, 2020). On the other hand, prior research has suggested that constituency work remains one of the last bastions of freedom that MPs have from the constraints of the central party (Koop et al, 2018) and that party election candidates have more freedom to defy party messaging than is commonly believed (Robbins-Kanter, 2022;Yates, 2022). If this were entirely true, we would expect to find other cleavages to be more important determinants of what MPs focus on in their constituent communications-for example, things specific to the electorate's own demographic characteristics, or the MP's own attributes.…”

“…Despite the scholarly attention received by party discipline within Canadian legislatures, researchers have paid comparatively little attention to the extent that party discipline extends to communications outside of the legislature, particularly MPs' interactions with constituents (Godbout, 2020;Malloy, 2023;Marland, 2020;Rayment and McCallion, 2023). Indeed, prior research has suggested that constituency operations are one of the last bastions of freedom that MPs have from the full grasp of party discipline in Canada (Koop et al, 2018). If this local freedom remains true, MPs' own backgrounds and the constituency context should be stronger predictors of how they communicate with their constituents than the MPs' political partisanship.…”

“…In setting out to conduct this study, we expected to find mixed evidence of party cohesion. In Britain, MPs' constituency newsletters are a respite from repeating a party's centralized messaging because party whips have limited influence over the content (Jackson, 2004), and in Canada there is evidence that MPs and party candidates exert more independence in their electoral districts over localized communications than controlling central actors intend (Koop et al, 2018;Robbins-Kanter, 2022;Yates, 2022). These newsletters are one of the only opportunities for MPs to emphasize their own representational style to their constituents (Koop and Marland, 2012), and research suggests there was a period of crosspartisan consensus in public opinion at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic when we conducted our fieldwork (Merkley et al, 2020).…”