Going Local: Parliamentary Questions as a Means of Territorial Representation in the Italian Parliament
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920986798 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Author | Federico Russo |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: The Electoral Connection Revisited: Personal Vote-Seeking Efforts in the Era of Political Personalization |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920986798
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(3) 410 –427
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920986798
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Going Local: Parliamentary
Questions as a Means of
Territorial Representation
in the Italian Parliament
Federico Russo
Abstract
Parliamentary questions are often employed by Members of Parliament to demonstrate
their responsiveness to the needs of the constituency. This article takes advantage from this
opportunity to study the determinants shaping the constituency focus of Italian deputies. Previous
research has shown that the degree to which Members of Parliament devote attention to their
geographical district depends on several factors related to electoral incentives, demands coming
from citizens and taste-based preferences. By studying the behaviour of Italian deputies elected in
three legislative terms with a system giving few incentives to perform constituency service, this
article offers new evidence that non-electoral reasons are important to shape the role played by
Members of Parliament.
Keywords
parliament, representation, constituency service, Italy, parliamentary questions
Accepted: 18 December 2020
The purpose of this article is to examine territorial representation in the Italian Parliament.
This is done by looking at the activities undertaken by elected representatives on behalf
of their constituencies. In parliamentary systems of government that are typical in Europe,
the relationship between parliamentarians and their voters in the district is considered of
secondary importance; representation is primarily shaped by the interactions between
voters and parties. The indisputable prominence of collective representation, however,
should not obscure the fact that representation also has an important dyadic component.
When looking at the attitudes and behaviour of parliamentarians, empirical scholars note
that some Members of Parliament (MPs) define their role as constituency members
(Brouard et al., 2013; Searing, 1994) and devote some of their activity both within parlia-
ment (Borghetto et al., 2020; Däubler, 2020; Fernandes et al., 2020; Marangoni and
Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
Corresponding author:
Federico Russo, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy.
Email: federico.russo@unisalento.it
986798PSW0010.1177/1478929920986798Political Studies ReviewRusso
research-article2021
Special Issue Article
Russo 411
Tronconi, 2011; Martin, 2011; Russo, 2011; Zittel et al., 2019) and outside (Brouard
et al., 2013) to speak on behalf of their districts. This apparent paradox – the idea that in
European countries, dyadic representation is not theoretically important and the empirical
finding that a substantial proportion of MPs devote some time and effort to represent their
districts – can be resolved by remembering the lesson learnt from Eulau and Karps (1977):
representation has to do with being responsive to both policy and non-policy matters.
Territorial representation often takes the form of service or allocation responsiveness
(Eulau and Karps, 1977). When parliamentarians speak publicly to advocate for public
funding for their constituencies, when they denounce the wrongdoing of a local adminis-
tration or when they try to solve specific problems for a constituent, they are performing
the function of linkage between their geographical constituencies and the government.
The goal of this article is to contribute to the field of study that aims to understand why
parliamentarians choose to devote time and effort to representing their particular territo-
rial constituency. There are basically two complementary approaches to analyse this
behaviour. The rational-institutional approach, which stresses the importance of self-
interest and institutions, looks at the incentives to cultivate a personal vote given by dif-
ferent electoral rules and candidate selection systems (Carey and Shugart, 1995). In
contrast, scholars adopting a sociological approach employ concepts such as appropriate
behaviour, socialisation (Rush and Giddings, 2011), inner motivations (Searing, 1994)
and personal experiences (Burden, 2007) to account for this parliamentarian practice.
Both theoretical frameworks, however, share the importance of parliamentarians’ self-
perceptions and personal characteristics. This approach can convincingly explain why
parliamentarians may considerably differ in their role orientation and behaviour, even
when elected in similar contexts. While institutions constrain the range of available strat-
egies, which tends to funnel the range of options towards uniformity of behaviour, per-
sonal characteristics represent a source of variability. A comprehensive framework should
combine system- and individual-level variables, structure and actors. There are, however,
only a few studies that have attempted to disentangle the role of incentives and personal
characteristics in shaping territorial representation. Furthermore, this type of study is dif-
ficult to conduct in a single country (Louwerse and Otjes, 2016).
The Italian political system offers a great opportunity for studying how incentives and
personal characteristics contribute to territorial representation. The electoral system
adopted in 2005 provides virtually no incentive to cultivate a personal vote, and yet there
is considerable variation in the degree of decentralisation of the candidate selection sys-
tems adopted by various parties, a feature that is commonly believed to influence the
necessity to build a personal reputation (but see Shomer, 2009). Moreover, political rep-
resentation is remarkably more personalised in Southern than in Northern Italy, another
factor creating different incentives for parliamentarians. Finally, in the Italian Chamber of
Deputies, parliamentarians coexist with different profiles in terms of personal and politi-
cal experiences, which may result in different attitudes towards the territorial constitu-
ency. This suggests that MPs’ personal characteristics have a major role in shaping the
attention dedicated to the regions in which they are elected. There is some evidence,
however, that being elected in regions where political representation is personalised can
also have a positive effect on territorial representation.
This article contributes to the literature on the determinants of territorial representation
by analysing the content of the Parliamentary Questions (PQs) for Written Answer asked
by Italian deputies during three legislative terms, from 2006 to 2018. The analysis of the
content of parliamentary questions, a tool which is not subject to strict party discipline,
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