Magnus Blomgren - Parliamentary Roles in Modern Legislatures

The idea that legislators have, and understand themselves to have, many roles was central to early behavioral studies of legislatures, but fell out of favor with recognition that the initial models were overly simplistic. With this volume, Rozenberg, Blomgren and their colleagues return a sophisticated understanding of legislative roles to center stage. The book not only demonstrates the power of the concept of legislative roles in understanding legislative behavior, but also sets an important agenda for the future research.

Richard Katz, Johns Hopkins University, USA

Historically, the study of legislative roles has been one of the most productive fields in empirical research on parliaments and legislatures. After great advances during the 1950s and 1960s, the new institutionalism in its sociological variety has contributed to a renewed interest in the role orientations of parliamentarians. Magnus Blomgren and Olivier Rozenberg have assembled a number of very distinguished scholars from Europe and the US to explore the potential of legislative role analysis half a century after its first great advances. The resulting volume is an outstanding and original contribution to the field of legislative studies. Based on very rich empirical material across a large number of countries and the European Parliament, the authors demonstrate that the study of legislative roles is highly relevant to a modern analysis of legislative behavior and offers profound theoretical insights into the motivations and strategies of Members of Parliament.

Thomas Saalfeld, University of Bamberg, Germany

Parliamentary Roles in Modern Legislatures

This book gathers the most influential authors on role research and legislative studies to examine the different roles that MPs are playing in modern-day legislatures. It provides a comprehensive and critical overview of current research on legislative roles, summarises previous research, presents a large variety of methodological approaches and also explores the latest developing approaches to role theory.

The concept of political roles has become increasingly relevant for understanding contemporary political systems. Parliamentary, legislative and representative roles are professional roles that provide a way of connecting the individual legislator to their institution that can also explain a legislators attitude and behaviour. Drawing upon case studies with as much as 40 years of data that include Germany, the Netherlands, UK, Austria, Hungary, Australia, New Zealand and the European Parliament, this book examines the link between representative roles, different institutional settings and parliamentary behaviour. It argues that the roles MPs play depends on whom they think they should represent: between their voters, their party, the people of their country and also themselves, conflicts of loyalty can occur. This book provides a framework to analyse MPs choices by searching both the reasons for their views about representation, and the consequences of those views in parliament.

Parliamentary Roles in Modern Legislatures will be of strong interest to students and scholars of government, legislative studies, political parties, comparative politics, political sociology and deliberative democracy.

Magnus Blomgren is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Ume University, Sweden.

Olivier Rozenberg is Associate Research Professor at Sciences Po (Paris) where he works in the Centre dtudes europennes.

Routledge/ECPR studies in European political science

Edited by Thomas Poguntke

Ruhr University Bochum, Germany on behalf of the European Consortium for Political Research

The Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research the leading organization concerned with the growth and development of political science in Europe. The series presents high-quality edited volumes on topics at the leading edge of current interest in political science and related fields, with contributions from European scholars and others who have presented work at ECPR workshops or research groups.

1 Regionalist Parties in Western Europe

Edited by Lieven de Winter and Huri Trsan

2 Comparing Party System Change

Edited by Jan-Erik Lane and Paul Pennings

3 Political Theory and European Union

Edited by Albert Weale and Michael Nentwich

4 Politics of Sexuality

Edited by Terrell Carver and Vronique Mottier

5 Autonomous Policy Making by International Organizations

Edited by Bob Reinalda and Bertjan Verbeek

6 Social Capital and European Democracy

Edited by Jan van Deth, Marco Maraffi, Ken Newton and Paul Whiteley

7 Party Elites in Divided Societies

Edited by Kurt Richard Luther and Kris Deschouwer

8 Citizenship and Welfare State Reform in Europe

Edited by Jet Bussemaker

9 Democratic Governance and New Technology

Technologically mediated innovations in political practice in Western Europe

Edited by Ivan Horrocks, Jens Hoff and Pieter Tops

10 Democracy without Borders

Transnationalisation and conditionality in new democracies

Edited by Jean Grugel

11 Cultural Theory as Political Science

Edited by Michael Thompson, Gunnar Grendstad and Per Selle

12 The Transformation of Governance in the European Union

Edited by Beate Kohler-Koch and Rainer Eising

13 Parliamentary Party Groups in European Democracies

Political parties behind closed doors

Edited by Knut Heidar and Ruud Koole

14 Survival of the European Welfare State

Edited by Stein Kuhnle

15 Private Organisations in Global Politics

Edited by Karsten Ronit and Volker Schneider

16 Federalism and Political Performance

Edited by Ute Wachendorfer-Schmidt

17 Democratic Innovation

Deliberation, representation and association

Edited by Michael Saward

18 Public Opinion and the International Use of Force

Edited by Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia

19 Religion and Mass Electoral Behaviour in Europe

Edited by David Broughton and Hans-Martien ten Napel

20 Estimating the Policy Position of Political Actors

Edited by Michael Laver

21 Democracy and Political Change in the Third World

Edited by Jeff Haynes

22 Politicians, Bureaucrats and Administrative Reform

Edited by B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre

23 Social Capital and Participation in Everyday Life

Edited by Paul Dekker and Eric M. Uslaner

24 Development and Democracy

What do we know and how?

Edited by Ole Elgstrm and Goran Hyden

25 Do Political Campaigns Matter?

Campaign effects in elections and referendums

Edited by David M. Farrell and Rdiger Schmitt-Beck

26 Political Journalism

New challenges, new practices

Edited by Raymond Kuhn and Erik Neveu

27 Economic Voting

Edited by Han Dorussen and Michaell Taylor

28 Organized Crime and the Challenge to Democracy

Edited by Felia Allum and Renate Siebert

29 Understanding the European Unions External Relations

Edited by Michle Knodt and Sebastiaan Princen

30 Social Democratic Party Policies in Contemporary Europe