Time Allocation and Political Representation: How Politicians Want to Spend their Time

Parliamentarians and the understanding of their work differ. In the legislative literature, scholars distinguish MPs according to the focus of their representation (more citizen, voter, party, interested group oriented) or their different roles (e.g. Searing 1994; Saalfeld and Müller 1997; Andeweg 2014) or they put a different stress on certain aspects of their work. With these roles or understanding of their work, parliamentarians show to which principal they dedicate attention and time, be it their voters in the constituency, their party, their party group, interest groups etc. (Carey 2007) to ensure re-election. This study addresses how parliamentarians would spend their time if they had an imaginary free day in their calendar without constraints such as previously agreed meetings. Based on survey answers by national parliamentarians in six countries, we will show how electoral security, election proximity, election system and certain individual characteristics such as gender and tenure explain politicians’ time use-choices. This will be a first contribution to discuss whether time-use questions are a valid alternative to investigate parliamentarians’ roles.