A New Perspective on Constituency Representation: British Parliamentarians and the 'Management' of Crises

• Autores: Alastair Stark
• Localización: The Journal of legislative studies, ISSN 1357-2334, Vol. 16, Nº. 4, 2010, págs. 495-514
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article examines the constituency roles performed by members of the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly during four crises. While the constituency work of British parliamentarians has already attracted the attention of scholars, this article emerges from a belief that new findings about legislatures can be generated by examining familiar representative functions during the abnormal context of a crisis. In order to investigate this argument, the article sets out a series of theoretical proposals about the relevancy of constituency roles to state-led forms of 'crisis management'. These proposals are then applied to four crisis case studies and tested via interviews with parliamentarians and civil servants. Findings emerge which show that constituency roles can improve the implementation of crisis management decisions and generate support for political actors and systems during a crisis episode.