Foxes and Hedgehogs in Legislatures: Why Do Some MPs Become Policy Specialists and Others Generalists?

Which legislators become specialized in particular policy areas (hedge-hogs), and which develop into policy generalists (foxes)? instead of focusing on the individual characteristics of MPs, we build on institutionalist literature and argue that an MP's specialization arises from an interaction...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Martínez‐Cantó, Javier, Breunig, Christian, Chaqués Bonafont, Laura
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/194246
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/194246
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Parlamentaris
Lideratge polític
Especialistes
Legislators
Political leadership
Specialists
Descripción
Sumario:Which legislators become specialized in particular policy areas (hedge-hogs), and which develop into policy generalists (foxes)? instead of focusing on the individual characteristics of MPs, we build on institutionalist literature and argue that an MP's specialization arises from an interaction between MP and par-liamentary leadership. these interactions generate demand for policy generalists depending on a leadership position, committee membership, government status, and parliamentary group size. Policy specialization is measured by how many different topics a legislator addresses in Parliament. using data from germany from 1998 to 2013, topic- coded parliamentary questions are combined with MPs' personal and partisan data. descriptively, foxes are common in germany and dominate in Parliament. the subsequent estimation indicates that policy special-ists are related to government status and parliamentary group size.