earticle

영어

The aim of this study is to provide broader understanding of patterns of parliamentarian behaviors. Active role of parliamentarians by introducing bills, questioning to ministers, and attending interpellation in an orderly way seems to be a crucial element in producing high political effectiveness. However, our knolwdge of salience of parliamentarian behavior is confined for the lack of empirical evidences.
This study is to reduce this gap. This study delves into behavioral patterns of the Swedish parliamentary members representing 7 political parties – four ruling coalition parties and three opposition partieis – as a case study based on two different sources, i.e. the Swedish Riksdag and DN databases. This study tests three hypotheses: 1) Opposition party members seem likely to introduce more bills in the parliament to compete effectively with ruling parties in government position; 2) Female parliamentarians are less eager to introduce bills in comparison to their male parliamentarian colleagues for their relative low interest in political power; and 3) At the age of their fifties, politicians will be most active in their parliamentary activities. Hypotheses 1 and 3 should be convincingly accepted, while Hypothesis 2 does not seem to be true.
Despite several drawbacks in terms of lack of methodological requirements, these findings seem to be of great importance and meaning for measuring political effectiveness and productivity necessary for building democratic instituionalization.