Corentin Poyet

Working at home: French MEPs’ day-to-day practice of political representation in their district

ABSTRACT In the early 2000s, Simon Hix and his colleagues declared the European Parliament (EP) constitutes a good laboratory to test theories and hypotheses about legislative or party behaviour. However, scholars mainly focused on roll-call votes analysis, allowing them to investigate voting behaviour, coalition formation as well as activities in committees. The author argues that work in parliament should not be investigated without considering constituency work. Surprisingly, despite the institutionalisation of district work, only a few studies have focused on micro-level linkages between members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and citizens. The results show that MEPs are in contact with citizens having matters to do with the European Union (EU) but not directly with their constituents. In the district, MEPs are more experts of the EU than members of the community. By investigating day-to-day contacts between citizens and their MEPs, this paper offers a new perspective on the debate about the democratic deficit of EP and EU institutions.

Substance or Behavior as Links? Explaining Representational Judgments

This chapter follows a subjective approach for evaluating representation and examines “citizens’ feeling of being represented” by the national parliament and their representatives. The authors examine this subject in two ways. The first explanatory approach emphasizes the relevance of substantive representation. In short, the more positively citizens perceive themselves to be represented concerning their values, issue preferences or their concerns as a member of a social group, the more positively they will evaluate the institutions and actors of the representational process. The second approach focuses on the behavior of representatives. It predicts representational judgments based on perceptions of MPs’ behavior. The results show that both explanatory approaches are relevant in explaining citizens’ representational judgments, but also suggest that perceptions of substantive representation are slightly more important than perceptions of MPs’ behavior.

Show or Substance? The Exchange Between District and Parliamentary Activities

District work influences how MPs fulfill their parliamentary functions in France and Germany. This is obvious for the communication function because of the direct interaction between representatives and citizens, social groups and local politicians in the district. But despite strong policy specialization in parliament, district activities are also relevant for their legislative and control functions. These provide input, sound “fire alarms” and give feedback, as the analysis of interview and observation data from the CITREP project shows. Much of this input is not channeled directly into plenary or committee work but rather is transmitted indirectly through the parliamentary parties’ policy experts (Germany) or the cabinet (France). Thus, the contribution of district work is often hard to see; yet for understanding parliamentary democracy, it should not be neglected.