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The article investigates the extent of political favouritism in the central financing of local governments in Hungary between 2015 and 2018. An investigation of various transfers and the role of both mayor and member of parliament (MP) in the granting of funds enabled me to map how grant schemes relate to pork-barrelling. The rewarding of core supporters is observable with regard to discretionary intergovernmental transfers, while the political alignment affects the distribution of EU funds; thus, these constitute the primary mechanisms for acknowledging and sharing credit with local leaders. When a grant scheme requires municipalities to file an application for funding, local governments in opposition receive fewer grants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the political factors involved in the allocation of public investments into Turkish electoral districts. Using a unique data set covering detailed individual characteristics of approximately 2000 Turkish MPs over five legislative periods during 1987–2004, we show that the composition of several legislator characteristics in an electorate, such as the level of education, area of tertiary degree, and former profession, matters in the way pork barrel occurs across electorates. The findings also indicate a strong presence of partisan motivations and targeted support for opposition groups and ideological strongholds in public investment allocations. We also document evidence that a stronger right‐wing tendency in the cabinet, a single‐party government, fractionalized voter preferences, and higher voter turnout in the electorate are all associated with increased public investments into specific geographic constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In parliamentary systems, private members (i.e. backbenchers) with formal titles and roles can affect the institutional system in which politicians, civil servants and interest groups are embedded. Packing legislative institutions with backbenchers who act as agents of the government but who are not in Cabinet puts certain Members of Parliament in a privileged position with the core executive. We hypothesize that influential positions in Canada's House of Commons, notably a parliamentary secretary tasked with supporting a minister or a chair of a parliamentary committee, bring increased external pressure from interest group lobbyists. We test these assumptions with data on communications between MPs and interest group lobbyists gathered from the federal Registry of Lobbyists and open data lists found on the website of the Parliament of Canada. Our results show that a parliamentary secretary position or a seat on a standard committee exposes MPs to higher lobbying volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shakespeare's First Folio included publication of Coriolanus, a play that is said to be inflected by political events at the time of its writing and still so by its publication during a period the English parliament was in abeyance, having been dissolved the year before. In this paper, we take up Raffield and Watt's (2008) invitation to consider the relationship between Shakespeare's work and the nation-state, by considering the relationship between Coriolanus, and specifically the quasi-parliamentarian characters of the tribunes or representatives of the people, and contemporary Australian parliamentarians. We are particularly interested in how parliamentarians approach and grapple with their role as representatives of the people when undertaking human rights scrutiny of proposed laws, and explore this in relation to the tribunes' approach to their representative role when making political decisions. We follow Raffield and Watt's suggestion that, in early modern England, 'government was conducted and represented as theatre' (2008: 4) and argue that, in contemporary Australia, parliamentary work is still conducted and represented as theatre, and therefore it is necessary to adopt a theatre or performance lens when considering the ways in which parliamentarians perform their work as both representatives and legislators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers experimental tests of the "personal vote" in an era of heightened partisanship and polarization. Using three national surveys, we randomly present information about a hypothetical legislator's voting record, committee assignment, and district‐oriented work. After evaluating the legislator, respondents are presented with information about a challenger running on a nationalized message. Respondents, especially out‐partisans, report much greater satisfaction with the legislator when told about his district‐oriented activities, but increased willingness to vote for the legislator is more limited and mostly reserved for independents. In varying information about the legislator's voting record, we also find scant evidence that bipartisan legislators are better at securing a personal vote. In two experimental extensions, we show that our findings generalize to evaluations of real senators, and that nationalizing elections is one possible way that opponents can thwart incumbent efforts at winning the votes of independents and out‐partisans through traditional district‐oriented appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidents occupy a unique role as both the head of the executive branch and a de facto party leader. They nationalize politics and polarize lawmaking. Members of Congress know this, and they leverage the president's symbolic power to heighten political conflict. I argue that lawmakers, particularly those in the nonpresidential party, invoke the president to nationalize legislative debate and polarize constituent opinion. Using the text of House and Senate floor speeches between 1973 and 2016 and a within‐member panel design, I find that legislators reference the president more frequently in the out‐party and increasingly so as a district's media environment becomes more nationalized. Presidential references are also moderated by constituency partisanship. I support the behavioral implications with a vignette experiment: when a Republican Senator invokes President Biden in a policy speech, Republican respondents increase approval of that Senator and oppose political compromise. This research highlights the institutional consequences of nationalization and negative partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a distinctive approach to parliamentarism advanced by key figures from India's founding period in response to their anxieties about concerns about the masses' backwardness alongside a commitment to democratic self‐rule. Both orientations, one democratic and the other, suspicious of the peoples' political capacities, existed alongside each other in tension, generating a dilemma: how could the seemingly backward masses facilitate the overthrow of their backwardness in a democratic process? The thinkers studied in this article responded, I argue, with a pedagogical conception of parliamentarism, which viewed parliament and legislators as bearing the function of preparing the masses for democratic citizenship. Their approach represented a critical departure from the ideal of a deliberative legislative assembly at the apex of the lawmaking process, while avoiding strategies of exclusion historically associated with parliamentarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the implementation of voter identification (ID) laws intensify conflict between legislative parties? We examine the consequences of the American states' modern wave of voter ID requirements for polarization in their legislatures. We theorize that these laws alter legislative candidates' perceived uncertainty about their districts' median voters, which creates centrifugal forces on their ideological positions and ultimately magnifies partisan divisions. To test this theory, we leverage plausibly exogenous variation in voter ID law implementation induced by the timing of postenactment legal challenges. We find empirical support; a law going in force widens interparty ideological distance. This divergence may be stronger for Republican parties, does not appear in other contentious policies, and is not an artifact of the legislative agenda. Thus, a crucial legacy of these laws is the amplification of political conflict. By creating conditions that stifle compromise and bipartisanship, voter ID requirements indirectly threaten the quality of American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does Congress identify issues of sufficient concern to warrant consideration? Since the late nineteenth century, bill sponsorship by individual members has been the primary mechanism for winnowing the uncountable set of ideas for change to a finite agenda. Previous scholarship emphasizes electoral considerations and members' policy goals as motivating factors; however, the scant evidence for significant electoral returns to bill sponsorship raises questions about whether constituency concerns influence legislators' attention. We present a theory of bill sponsorship as constituency-minded policy-seeking activity and test its predictions using an original data set of bills introduced in the House of Representatives between 1881 and 1931. Using event count models and Monte Carlo simulations, we find that constituency concerns directly affect legislators' attention and indirectly influence bill sponsorship through committee assignments. These findings from a period when bill sponsorship was expansive and resource intensive illuminate how electoral factors and resource-based concerns shape legislative performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many jurisdictions have passed very broadly drafted laws to tackle academic integrity issues, criminalising the provision or advertising of contract cheating or essay mills, such as the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 in England and Wales. Recently, AI models such as chatGPT have amplified academic concerns. Here, we look at the intersection between these phenomena. We review academic cheating laws, showing that several may apply even to general-purpose AI services like chatGPT, without knowledge and intent. We identify a range of illegal adverts for AI-enhanced essay mills, and illustrate how difficult it is to draw the line between writing an essay and supporting it, such as by generating bone fide references. We also outline the consequences for intermediaries hosting these ads or providing these services, which may be significantly affected by these primarily symbolic laws. We conclude with a series of recommendations for policymakers, legislators, and education providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of DOMES: Digest of Middle East Studies is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This study aims to identify the political alignment and political activity of the 11 Presidents of Britain's most important scientific organisation, the Royal Society of London, in its early years 1662–1703, to determine whether or not the institution was politically aligned. Design/methodology/approach: There is almost no information addressing the political alignment of the Royal Society or its Presidents available in the institution's archives, or in the writings of historians specialising in its administration. Even reliable biographical sources, such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provide very limited information. However, as 10 Presidents were elected Member of Parliament (MP), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social and Local History provides a wealth of accurate, in-depth data, revealing the alignment of both. Findings: All Presidents held senior government offices, the first was a Royalist aristocrat; of the remaining 10, 8 were Royalist or Tory MPs, 2 of whom were falsely imprisoned by the House of Commons, 2 were Whig MPs, while 4 were elevated to the Lords. The institution was Royalist aligned 1662–1680, Tory aligned 1680–1695 and Whig aligned 1695–1703, which reflects changes in Parliament and State. Originality/value: This study establishes that the early Royal Society was not an apolitical institution and that the political alignment of Presidents and institution continued in later eras. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the election or appointment of an organisation's most senior officer can be used to signal its political alignment with government and other organisations to serve various ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal is the property of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal is the property of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Hadith paraphrased as 'every one of you is a leader' does not discriminate in gender in any way—both men and women are leaders. What does this mean in practice, and how are Muslim women perceived and received in line with this Hadith? Only in very recent years are Muslim women in Britain starting to occupy prominent positions: 13 Muslim women Members of British Parliament were elected in 2024; celebrities such as baker Nadia Hussain are regularly seen on British TV; and others such as Fatima Manji in the media. In this article, I explore how different 'contextual intersectionalities' influence and impact a Muslim woman and her leadership role. How does the intersectionality of her outward expression of faith identify her? How does a Muslim woman navigate a space where she is the leader and her skills are sought, yet her faith representation may instigate unconscious/conscious biases? Using an autoethnographic method, I investigate the impact of my identities as a Brown British Muslim woman in three distinct settings. First, in the professional and academic space of British Christian practical theology, where I was the first British Muslim to obtain a doctorate in the subject and was the first Muslim Trustee and Committee Member of the British and Irish Association for Practical Theology (BIAPT) between 2020 and 2024. Second, as a leadership advisor and executive coach to FTSE-listed companies, where I support C-suite leaders to generate sustained change in individuals, teams, and systems. And third, as a tutor and supervisor of proven business leaders to master the skills of coaching in their own right. I discuss how I am met in these spaces and the impact of that on my being. In conclusion, I call for increased understanding and awareness of the emotional tax paid by Muslim women who choose to take leadership roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, European Union (EU) agencies have proliferated to address a plethora of governance problems. When designing EU agencies, EU legislators confront a tension: Legislators want agencies to be competent problem‐solvers, but they also want to keep agencies under control. How do EU legislators balance these two imperatives? We argue that agencies' political principals do not necessarily have to trade competence for control, and vice versa, but can draw on different institutional strategies – manipulating agencies' decision‐making and decision‐maker independence – to mitigate the competence‐control dilemma. Drawing on an original dataset on EU agencies' formal independence, we demonstrate empirically that principals customize EU agencies' independence to match the respective competence and control demands that come with specific agency tasks: regulation, authorization, implementation and information. The paper makes an important contribution to the literature on the drivers of the EU's agencification and to debates on the institutional design of regulatory institutions in the EU and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When are executives in authoritarian regimes more likely to comply with formal legislative powers? Building from theories of authoritarian power‐sharing, we argue that executives will be more likely to respect legislative prerogatives when protests or elite organization increase the ability of legislators to undermine the executive's political position. We evaluate this argument by analyzing novel protest and legislative data in Jordan between 2010 and 2015. In line with our expectations, we find that parliamentary queries were more likely to receive the required response from the cabinet during months of higher protest activity and when they were submitted by MPs from Jordan's only well‐organized opposition bloc in the parliament. This study extends the burgeoning scholarship on authoritarian legislatures by contributing to understanding of executive‐legislative interactions under autocracy and providing new insights into the conditions under which these legislatures are more likely to influence decision‐making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During their term of office, members of parliament are responsible for passing laws, monitoring government activities, and approving the budget to ensure the legitimacy of parliament while representing the interests of citizens. However, in recent years, the ability of parliamentarians to effectively represent citizens has weakened, with growing concerns about their accountability and ethics. This highlights the need for a study on the negative impacts of these issues. The concept of the "optimal size of parliaments" explores the capacity of parliaments to fully perform their duties. The aim of this research is to determine the appropriate number of members for the Mongolian parliament, ensuring it remains at an optimal size. Specifically, the effectiveness of the parliament is linked to its size, as the ability to maintain ethical standards and properly implement laws that benefit society is connected to the number of representatives. The size of parliament affects its capacity to represent citizens, the workload it can manage, and its overall efficiency during the term of elected members. The research results suggest that the optimal number of members in the Mongolian parliament could range between 114, 151, and 155, considering factors such as traditions, geography, administrative divisions, and the electoral system. As a result of this study, the Constitution was amended in 2023 to increase the number of members to 126, which reflects the findings of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Medical News article discusses care denials under Medicare Advantage plans and efforts to streamline the prior authorization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ambivalent stance of Latin American governments towards Russia's actions in Ukraine. Using Proyecto Élites Parlamentarias de la Universidad de Salamanca (PELA‐USAL) data, it explores ideological self‐placement, Putin's approval and alliance preferences among Latin American Members of Parliament, highlighting the influence of anti‐imperialism and multilateralism on their international alignments and support for Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How should an excessively large parliament be effectively reduced in size without violating constitutional principles? This is a question that the German Bundestag has discussed since the introduction of the 2013 electoral reform measure. Facing a Bundestag consisting of 709 members and some public dissatisfaction, a reform measure to decrease the parliament's size was adopted in 2020. However, the 20 Bundestag, elected in September 2021, again increased in size to 735 members. The newly adopted electoral law still uses plurality voting to select the directly elected lawmakers. It is widely known that selection using the plurality rule is flawed because it violates the principle of majority decision. Aside from this aspect, this paper demonstrates that the plurality rule itself contributes to the excessive size of the parliament. By removing the flaws caused by the plurality rule and replacing this voting scheme with a Condorcet method (simple-majority rule), the targeted reduction of the size of the Bundestag can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Die Unternehmensbesteuerung (Ubg) is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines how parliamentary party groups decide who speaks for them on specific issues in parliament. We build on three strands of the literature: the work on the institutional foundations of parliamentary speech; the literature on committee assignments in parliamentary systems which points to different rationales behind parliamentary specialisation and the division of labour; and the literature on issue competition. First, we expect that the party leadership will assign more speaking time on issues that parties 'own' to Members of Parliament (MPs) they favour. Second, we expect an informational rationale regarding the allocation of speaking time by which MPs speak on issues for which they have pre-existing expertise. Third, we expect MPs to speak on issues if they have ties to relevant constituencies outside parliament. We analyse a new data set of all speeches in the Dutch lower house between 1998–2017. The analyses point to the importance of two rationales in the allocation of speaking time: high-status MPs (reflected by their list positions) speak on issues that parties prioritise, and MPs speak on issues on which they have specialised knowledge. Our analyses shed important light on how parliamentary party groups (PPGs) function, specifically how they divide labour within their ranks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from four general elections between 2010 and 2019 this note shows that British MPs are increasingly likely to represent constituencies in the region of their birth. By 2019, more than half of British MPs were born in the region in which their constituency sat. We find clear partisan differences, but no overall gender divide. There is also a clear centre-periphery divide. The less local nature of the current older cohort in the Commons – the most likely to retire in the next few years – means that these trends should continue in the same direction in coming elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentarians, as political personalities, are also media personalities insofar as political news is very present in the media. The objective of this article is to question the links between the political position, media presence and digital visibility of French deputies elected in 2017. Have the patterns of mediatisation changed with the digital age? What are the relations between the 'positions' occupied by political actors in the media as well as in the political and digital spaces in our hybrid media system? Inspired by a Bourdieusian framework, results are presented. They allow us to confirm some conclusions of the current literature and, more importantly, to rethink the process of mediatisation of members of parliament in our networked age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do members of regional parliaments engage in EU policymaking? This paper examines how and why members of the Walloon, Flemish and Brussels regional parliaments vary in their EU-contacting activities, by adapting a German survey. Belgium makes a relevant case, as the 'in foro interno, in foro externo' principle entitles regions to conduct foreign policy, including EU affairs in those areas they possess internal competency. Our data show that the level of EU-contacting activities of Belgian regional parliamentarians is overall low, mainly directed towards informational activities and taking place in the direct environment of the parliamentarians. The variation in EU-related activities is best explained by individual-level factors such as the perceived salience of Europe for their own careers, their perceived influence on EU policymaking and their position towards European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we ask how and why do Members of Parliament adopt different representational styles? Looking at MPs in four Westminster-style democracies, we identify differences between MPs and inductively explore influences on representational styles by first using participant observation to gain deep insights into the activities of a small sample of MPs and then by using semi-structured interviews from a larger sample to elucidate findings from the observations across states. Our primary focus is the method of connection between representative and citizen, as fostered by the representative while present in the constituency. Despite similar institutional and electoral contexts across countries, we find a significant variation that is influenced by both country-level and constituency-level factors. Findings suggest a continuum from highly service-oriented to highly symbolic-oriented styles, where MPs from the UK illustrate the former, and MPs from Canada illustrate the latter, though with further variation at the constituency level that is based, in part, upon both geography and demographics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pivotal legislators' positions are critical to legislative outcomes, but does this heightened importance in policymaking translate into heightened electoral accountability or voter knowledge? Arguments about clarity of responsibility suggest that pivotal legislators, who are decisive in determining legislative outcomes, may be held to higher standards, while perspectives rooted in electoral incentives for position taking suggest they may not. Two survey experiments show that voters do not respond more strongly to pivotal legislators' votes on policy. Moreover, observational data analysis rejects the expectation that constituents have more knowledge about the votes of pivotal moderate legislators compared to non-pivotal moderate legislators. These results suggest that pivotal legislators face similar, if not lower, accountability for their votes. Combined with the policy-concessions pivotal legislators can secure, these patterns point to the benefits that accrue to pivotal legislators from institutional rules that give them key veto power over policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the micro-level foundations of how policy responsiveness may come about. Our study builds on the assumption that elected officials' information source use shapes their policy actions. We analyze the variation in information sources elected officials rely on for agenda-setting and policy formulation, distinguishing between public opinion sources, advocacy sources, and expert sources. Additionally, we examine how elected officials' public opinion sources vary across individuals, parties, and political systems. Based on a 2015 survey with 345 Members of Parliament in Belgium and Canada, the results indicate that the actions of elected representatives are more affected by public opinion sources like citizens and the mass media when they initially prioritize issues for policy action, while interest groups are prominent in both stages, and parties and expert sources are more used in the policy formulation phase. Furthermore, politicians in majoritarian systems, those belonging to the opposition and members of populist parties, tend to rely more on public opinion sources than their peers in proportional systems, those in the majority and non-populist parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on lawmaking generally examines why lawmakers enact certain policy ideas. However, most ideas in the United States Congress never become law. Eventually, members stop introducing them altogether. This process, where policies are proposed, not acted on, and no longer advocated for is, by far, the most common legislative outcome. The literature pays it little attention. Yet, how ideas die is important in understanding why some measures stop being realistic alternatives, the importance of policy entrepreneurship, and how policy windows affect the supply of ideas. This paper analyzes why congressional ideas die. I argue and find that the proposals designed to be enacted, especially by legislators with more issue expertise and agenda-setting powers, are less likely to persist across terms. I also show that ideas disappear more often when their sponsors leave Congress, but do not find a similar pattern for when policy windows close and lawmaking conditions worsen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal is the property of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This note examines and tests the determinants of constituency service in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies. We argue that socio-demographic factors lead towards differences in the provision of constituency service. We use a new data set of meetings between legislators, constituents, and groups to provide evidence for two main hypotheses. First, Chilean deputies from more remote districts devote a higher proportion of their meetings to addressing local or personal issues from constituents (Centre-Periphery Hypothesis). Second, deputies from districts in worse socio-economic situations also provide relatively more constituency services of this type (Social Deprivation Hypothesis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Saeed University Journal of Humanities & Applied Sciences is the property of Al-Saeed Journal of Humanities & Applied Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research on the underrepresentation of youth in parliaments has rarely focused on political parties. This is surprising as parties are central in the selection of candidates and therefore should play an important role in determining the demographic composition of elected politicians. We created a data set of party parliamentary groups between 2017 and 2020 and conducted a linear regression as well as a fuzzy set QCA. Building upon previous literature, we expected the share of young Members of Parliament (MPs) to be higher under the following conditions: a low/high GDP per capita, a proportional representation electoral system, decentralized nomination processes, strong party youth organizations, an inclusive party ideology and young party structures. Our research support previous findings that electoral systems matter. Furthermore, our results indicate that whilst ideology might be a significant factor by itself, it becomes influential especially in combination with PR systems. The role of strong youth organizations, decentralized selectorates and party age seem to be highly context-dependent and more ambivalent. In summary, there is no singular condition under which we observe adequate youth representation, but rather different configurations of conditions. By applying the newest guidelines on good practices in QCA research, we present one of the first applications of these techniques in party and representation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2008, the European Union (EU) witnessed a growing tension between the social and economic dimensions of integration as a consequence of the 'polycrisis'. The increasing politicisation of EU issues in national political arenas that led to the rise of Eurosceptic parties mostly revolved around the issue of European solidarity. Against this background, this study investigates the congruence between voters and incumbent members of national parliaments on the highly contentious aspects of EU solidarity. First, the article maps the extent to which national political elites share similar views on EU solidarity with their voters. Secondly, we assess members of parliaments (MPs)-voters' congruence at the party level. Employing original data from an elite and a mass survey conducted in six EU countries between 2017 and 2018, we find that both voters and MPs expressed a high level of support for policies strengthening European solidarity in the Eurozone periphery. Instead, voters in Northern and Eastern EU member states shared more positive preferences than their national representatives. Furthermore, the party-voter distance was higher for radical-right Eurosceptic MPs, especially in Northern Europe, than for other parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do legislators decide with whom to collaborate? I argue that legislative collaborations are shaped by ethnicity and gender, with legislators from dominant ethnic groups and men legislators having more opportunities to collaborate than non-dominant legislators. These dynamics are likely present even when the nature of the collaboration is not particularly electorally salient. I test this hypothesis using newly collected data on question-asking from local legislators in Delhi. Dominant caste men legislators tend to dominate question-asking collaborations as expected, with men legislators consistently having more collaboration opportunities. The results suggest that legislative power dynamics are present even in lower-stakes interactions and may mean that simply encouraging additional legislator collaborations does not address underlying discriminatory patterns in how dominant legislators select their collaborators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine how the security of tenure (proxied by both inter- and intra-party electoral advantage) affects the engagement and political performance of members of parliament (MPs). Using data from the lower chamber of parliament in Poland for the period 2005–2019, we provide evidence that intra-party electoral advantage correlates with MPs' efforts and political performance. A more secured position of an MP vis-à-vis their co-partisans leads to a decrease in the number of parliamentary speeches, statements, interpellations, and lower voting turnout. Therefore, it appears that MPs whose political survival is less uncertain work less hard than MPs with a more precarious future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legislative bill is a critical factor in assessing whether a representative democracy is functioning well, and the politicians' ideologies have a significant impact on legislative activities. By investigating complete legislative bills in Korea's parliament from 2004 to 2016, classified using machine-learning techniques, and politicians' ideology, measured by the W-NOMINATE method, this study systematically examines the relationship between lawmakers' ideology and legislation. The results reveal that politicians with a strong conservative ideology propose more bills in general and a higher ratio of bills with an economic focus. The passing and processing rate of welfare-related bills sponsored by conservative lawmakers decrease, while the processing period lengthens. These results are aligned with common beliefs regarding the scope of the legislative agenda according to ideology. As ideological discrepancy increases between individuals and their party increases, the number of bill proposals decreases, and bills are less likely to be processed, reducing legislative productivity and efficiency. This study finds that lawmakers' ideology has a notable influence on legislative productivity and efficiency. It also suggests that these effects are closely related to both the absolute intensity of a lawmakers' political ideology and its relative position with respect to the affiliated party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A close connection between public opinion and policy is considered a vital element of democracy. However, legislators cannot be responsive to all voters at all times with regard to the policies the latter favour. We argue that legislators use their speaking time in parliament to offer compensatory speech to their constituents who might oppose how they voted on a policy, in order to re‐establish themselves as responsive to the public's wishes. Leveraging the case of Brexit, we show that legislators pay more attention to constituents who might be dissatisfied with how they voted. Furthermore, their use of rhetorical responsiveness is contingent on the magnitude of the representational deficit they face vis‐à‐vis their constituency. Our findings attest to the central role of parliamentary speech in maintaining responsiveness. They also demonstrate that communicative responsiveness can substitute for policy responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transgression credit is a form of deviance credit that occurs when people are more permissive towards transgressions by in-group leaders than by in-group nonleaders and out-group members and leaders. Despite rigorous experimental and simulation evidence for transgression credit, the ability to make such group processes research relevant to organizations and wider policy requires evidence with greater ecological validity. We examine transgression credit using spontaneously arising data from Twitter (now X) to test theoretically specified reactions to instances of transgressive leadership by the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Studies 1a and 1b compared Conservative and Labour Members of Parliament's (MPs') tweets in response to Boris Johnson's unlawful prorogation of Parliament (Study 1a) and his publication of an Internal Market Bill that would break international law (Study 1b) with tweets responding to a nonleader, Dominic Cummings, breaking coronavirus lockdown rules. Conservative, but not Labour, MPs were more permissive of Johnson's, but not Cummings', transgression. Study 2 examined the semantic themes occurring among supportive and unsupportive tweets posted by the UK general public in response to Boris Johnson's unlawful prorogation of Parliament. Across studies, the evidence is consistent with propositions from deviance credit and social identity theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before embarking on a discussion of the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), it is first necessary to define the subject matter regulated. Defining artificial intelligence is a difficult endeavour, and many definitions have been proposed over the years. Although more than 70 years have passed since it was adopted, the most convincing definition is still nonetheless that proposed by Turing; in any case, it is important to be mindful of the risk of anthropomorphising artificial intelligence, which may arise in particular from its very definition. Once we have established the subject matter regulated, we must ask ourselves whether lawmakers should pursue an approach that seeks to regulate artificial intelligence as a whole, or whether by contrast they should regulate applications of artificial intelligence in specific sectors or individual areas. The proposal for a regulation on artificial intelligence published on 21 April 2021 implements the former approach whilst also pursuing geopolitical goals. After providing an initial overview of the notion of artificial intelligence, this article investigates the geopolitical context to the proposal for a regulation, and then goes on to illustrate the regulatory model embraced by the proposal as well as related critical aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do electoral institutions matter for subnational legislators' career choices in a multi‐level polity? The paper considers this question by analyzing candidacies of sitting German State MPs for the Federal parliament ("level‐hopping attempts"), leveraging cross‐ and within‐legislature variation in electoral rules (due to the widespread adoption of mixed‐member systems in Germany's subnational parliaments). State MPs elected via list PR can be expected to be more likely to attempt level‐hopping than those elected in the single‐member districts (SMD) tier, as the former face lower re‐election rates and the latter are more directly accountable to their constituency's voters. Empirical evidence from a novel dataset of over 8000 State legislators spanning 10 Federal elections (1987–2021) confirms this hypothesis. It is also shown that the difference in behavior across tiers is more marked when State MPs run for insecure Federal candidacies than when they are offered secure candidacies. The findings suggest that subnational electoral institutions play a role in enabling or constraining legislators' progressive ambition. Moreover, they highlight a previously overlooked dimension of the "mandate divide" between MPs belonging to different electoral tiers of mixed‐member systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party discipline is an area that has received considerable attention in the party cohesion literature. While existing comparative research has predominantly focused on the institutional environment that impacts party discipline, we know less about its relationship with party-related variables. In this article, we explore the effect of party ideology on legislators' perceptions of party discipline in Latin America. The difficulties for parliamentary groups to act cohesively in Latin America make party discipline and its study a major task. We argue that party ideology shapes the perceptions of legislators vis-à-vis their relative autonomy and the resulting ability of the party to be cohesive. To perform the analysis, we have constructed a database containing the responses of 1272 parliamentarians from 71 political parties in 17 countries across the 2011–2022 legislatures. In addition to party-related variables, we have included individual- and system-level variables. The results suggest that Latin American parliamentarians belonging to left-wing parties tend to conform to party discipline more frequently than those of the right wing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]