Disseminating legislative debates: How legislators communicate the parliamentary agenda

Area of Science:

• Political Science
• Legislative Studies
• Communication Studies

Background:

• Extensive research exists on legislative agenda-setting within parliaments.
• Limited understanding of how Members of Parliament (MPs) disseminate legislative agendas outside parliamentary debates.
• Focus on multiparty democracies and communication strategies beyond the floor.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how MPs disseminate legislative agendas through press releases.
• To test factors influencing MPs' communication of legislative issues: party agenda-setting, systemic salience, issue specialization, and intra-party delegation.
• To compare the communicated agenda with the actual parliamentary issue agenda.

Main Methods:

• Content analysis of 110 legislative debates.
• Content analysis of 5,847 press releases from Austrian MPs (2013-2017).
• Statistical testing of hypotheses related to agenda dissemination factors.

Main Results:

• MPs are more likely to issue press releases on issues salient to their party and the broader party system.
• Issue specialization and prior speech activity in debates positively influence press release communication.
• Communication of the legislative agenda is concentrated among issue specialists and plenary speakers within parties.

Conclusions:

• Legislative agenda communication by MPs is influenced by party salience, systemic factors, specialization, and intra-party dynamics.
• The study confirms that communication efforts are largely driven by party specialists and active debaters.
• The communicated legislative agenda by MPs aligns significantly with the actual parliamentary issue agenda.