Measuring MPs’ Responsiveness: How to Do it and Stay Out of Trouble
| Author | Diane Bolet,Rosie Campbell |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211038816 |
| Subject Matter | Experiments with Politicians: Ethics, Power, and the Boundaries of Political Science |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211038816
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(2) 175 –183
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299211038816
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Measuring MPs’
Responsiveness: How
to Do it and Stay Out
of Trouble
Rosie Campbell and Diane Bolet
Abstract
This article reviews the issues raised by the reaction to an audit experiment, studying the
responsiveness of British MPs to their constituents, in November and December 2020. The
experiment was part of a wider comparative project investigating the linkage between legislators
and their constituents. We sent two short emails to all MPs asking how they and their party were
going to respond to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were required by our
ethics committee to debrief the subjects, providing the opportunity to withdraw from the analysis.
The scale of the reaction to the debriefing email was neither desired nor anticipated (https://www.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56196967). We explain how we got ourselves into such difficulty, how
we might have stayed out of it and the wider implications of our experience for experimental
research on politicians. We reflect on the ethical issues raised by the reaction to our research,
alongside the role that communications with legislators, the wider parliamentary community and
the media should play in research design when conducting experiments with politicians as subjects.
Keywords
symposium, experiments with politicians, ethics, power, the boundaries of political science
Accepted: 23 July 2021
The subject of this article is the public reaction to the UK case study of ‘The Nature of
Political Representation in Times of Dealignment’ (NAPRE) project.1 The project aims to
understand better the nature of the relationship between legislators and their constituents,
a fundamental concern of representative democracy. The motivation for our international
collaboration is to examine the connection between citizens and their elected representa-
tives in the context of partisan dealignment (Dalton, 2016; Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000;
Mair, 2013), where the linkage role played by political parties is diminished. Our com-
parative research project involves audit experiments of the British, German and Dutch
Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, King’s College London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Rosie Campbell, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
Email: Rosie.campbell@kcl.ac.uk
1038816PSW0010.1177/14789299211038816Political Studies ReviewCampbell and Bolet
research-article2021
Symposia and New Ideas
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