en
Book chapter
English

The politics of legislative debate in Switzerland

Published inPolitics of legislative debate, Editors Bäck, Hanna & Debus, Marc & Fernandez, Jorge M., p. 734-757
PublisherOxford : Oxford University Press
Publication date2021
Abstract

What determines the speech-making behaviour of legislators in the lower house (Nationalrat) and the upper house (Ständerat) of the Swiss federal parliament? In this chapter, we employ newly collected data on debates covering the 46th - 50th legislative periods (1999-2019) to investigate the determinants of participation in debates, and the verbosity of members' speeches. The Swiss electoral system creates incentives for personal vote seeking in both chambers, but the institutional settings are markedly different in the lower and upper house. The smaller upper house has relatively free debates, while debates in the Nationalrat are tightly regulated. We find that faction leaders are more likely to participate in the lower house, while committee chair(wo)manship and seniority are the most important predictors of speech-making behaviour, increasing both the participation and verbosity of speeches. Gender, in turn, fails to play a role in speeches once we consider the effect of other covariates.

Keywords
  • Parlement
  • Débat
  • Partis politiques
  • Suisse
Funding
  • Swiss National Science Foundation - Parliamentary Careers in Comparison
Citation (ISO format)
FRECH, Elena Julia, GOET, Niels Dirk, HUG, Simon. The politics of legislative debate in Switzerland. In: Politics of legislative debate. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021. p. 734–757.
Main files (1)
Book chapter (Accepted version)
accessLevelRestricted
Identifiers
  • PID : unige:139723
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6downloads

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