Social media platforms offer MPs the opportunity to directly signal attention to their local voters in the constituency. And while previous research has linked the strategic use of such local cues in social media posts to electoral motives, we know very little about their effectiveness. In this study, we trace the impact of local cues in social media posts in three steps. First, we revisit the claim that MPs are electorally motivated in their use of local cues by analysing 1,316,458 Tweets by Swiss and German national MPs (2009–2019). Second, we use survey experiment data (N = 16,597) to gauge whether voters reward local cues in social media posts with a higher likelihood of voting for a politician. Lastly, we investigate whether MPs' use of explicit local cues in Tweets leads them to obtain more preference votes in Swiss National Council elections (2011–2019). The overall image that emerges from these results is that while politicians use local cues particularly when campaigning, they are not directly electorally rewarded: both the results based on experimental and observational data do not provide evidence for the idea that adding local cues to social media posts comes with an electoral advantage.

Voters are frustrated by the influence of money in politics. They cannot be certain whether politicians follow the money or the will of the people. Disclosing side income may therefore serve as a means to increase trust in politicians. To investigate whether this mechanism works, we analyze data from a vignette survey experiment on parliamentarians’ side jobs with respondents from seven European countries (N $ \approx $ 14,100). Our results show that compared to parliamentarians who are unwilling to disclose their side income, transparent parliamentarians, even those with especially high extra-parliamentary earnings, are seen as more trustworthy and electable. We also find that voters rely on the combined information of the number and type of side jobs (companies versus public interest groups) when evaluating non-transparent parliamentarians. Furthermore, voters’ income, education level, and ideological leaning moderate their perceptions of (non-)transparent parliamentarians. Overall, our findings suggest that politicians’ disclosure of side income benefits representative democracy.

This article offers an innovative way of understanding gender balance in parliaments. Motivated by research documenting how newcomers are disadvantaged during their first term in office, while senior members enjoy certain privileges, we want to find out how common women are among senior members of parliaments. We launch an institutional approach comprising three seniority measures to study gender gaps in political endurance to find out whether, where, and when men are more likely than women to be parliamentary seniors. Our analysis using data from seven countries in Western Europe and two countries in North America (1965–2020) shows very high gender gaps across the three measures. Thus, despite an increased level of female representation, women still constitute a small part of the exclusive group of senior members of parliament. Our findings extend the research documenting that women and men largely have equally long parliamentary careers, emphasizing the need to understand gender balance in multidimensional terms.

This is the first academic paper to consider the role that parliamentarians play in access to justice. Under austerity, England and Wales has seen cuts to legal aid and local authority budgets that have impacted the ability of people to get help for legal problems in social welfare law from the advice sector. Members of the UK Parliament and Members of the Senedd Cymru are increasingly being called upon by their constituents to fill the resultant gap in advice. This paper draws on interviews with parliamentarians that draw out the nature of the role they are now playing in access to justice across three key areas of civil justice: welfare benefits; housing; and immigration. The growth of parliamentarians as figures in access to justice has thus far been largely neglected but is crucial to grasp, as the implications for the future of access to justice are massive. The paper calls for more research to better understand the phenomenon but urges caution that elected representatives should not be considered as an adequate substitute for a properly functioning, adequately funded advice sector.

Cet article aborde le phénomène des défections dans les partis politiques grâce à une étude du cas des députés québécois. Les entrevues avec les anciens parlementaires et une analyse des discours médiatiques à propos de leur départ documentent les motivations à quitter ou à rejoindre un autre parti. Cette recherche propose deux typologies novatrices : la première identifie les types de défections et la seconde explore les motivations à quitter. Les analyses montrent que les députés québécois partent surtout en raison de conflits liés aux valeurs et aux politiques, mais très peu pour le prestige. En ouvrant un dialogue avec les travaux d'Hirshman, l'article illustre aussi le rôle de la prise de parole et de l’écoute dans la décision pour un député de quitter un parti ou de rester dans celui-ci.