Practice makes ‘perfect’? The effect of committee specialization on the complexity of parliamentary speeches
-
Petra Vodová [2] ; Petr Voda [1]
-
[1] Masaryk University
Masaryk University
Chequia
-
[2] University of Hradec Králové
-
- Localización: Parliamentary affairs: A journal of representative politics, ISSN 0031-2290, Vol. 78, Nº 2, 2025, págs. 354-378
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
-
Resumen
The complexity of parliamentary speeches is usually interpreted as an MP’s electoral strategy. We take the prism of parliamentary specialization and connect it to the use of issue-specifc jargon learned during parliamentary work. We expect that membership in a parliamentary committee and increased experience within it increases the complexity of an MP’s speech about committee-related issues, and that the effect of the work in the committee is stronger for MPs without a previous committee-related professional background. We test our expectations on almost 54,000 speeches in the Czech Chamber of Deputies (2006–2021), using the Flesch Reading Ease formula adapted for the Czech language. The novel dataset connects parliamentary speeches to personal information about the MPs and to responsible committees. The results show the expected effect of committee membership and committee experience, and the interaction effect of a professional background.
