Effects of age and tenure on MPs’ legislative behaviour in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT

Democratic regimes are based on the idea of reflecting the public’s plurality of opinions. However, parliamentary representation of some groups of citizens is inadequate. Unlike the underrepresentation of women or ethnic minorities, insufficient participation of young and old age cohorts has not received enough attention yet. To enrich public debate, I scrutinise effects of age and tenure on MPs’ parliamentary performance. I utilise a large-N quantitative study of the legislative behaviour of deputies in the Czech Republic from 1996 to 2017. The results suggest that the legislators’ age affects their voting attendance and activity positively, while tenure does so in a negative direction. Older MPs propose more bills and more experienced representatives address more speeches compared to their younger colleagues and novices, respectively. Moreover, the MPs’ age and tenure positively influence their gains of praesidium posts in intra-parliamentary bodies. Considering the results implying that age influences MPs’ parliamentary performance, more equal parliamentary representation of different age cohorts is a justifiable goal.

KEYWORDS:

• Parliament
• legislative behaviour
• age
• tenure
• Czech Republic
• chamber of deputies

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lukáš Hájek is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. His research on politics in the Czech Republic, legislative behaviour, and parliamentarism has appeared in The Journal of Legislative Studies, Czech Journal of Political Science or Central European Political Studies Review. He finished political science study programmes at Charles University, Masaryk University, and the University of Mannheim.

ORCID

Lukáš Hájek http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9142-6055

Notes

1 The point of 180 days (six months) was chosen by two different approaches that confirm the very same result. The first method finds out the approximate length of time spent in the office after which the deputies become active (addressing speeches, proposing bills, or delivering interpellations). The second method is a brief survey conducted among deputies asking ‘after how much time spent in the office is a deputy able to perform her mandate responsibly’.

2 Voters broke both records in 2017 legislative elections. Dominik Feri (TOP 09) was elected at the age of 21 years, three months, and 10 days. Karel Schwarzenberg (TOP 09) entered the chamber after 79 years, 10 months, and 11 days since his birth.

3 Czech MPs have the right to propose new laws either individually or in groups. Bills may be also introduced by the Senate, the government, or representative bodies of higher self-governing regions.

4 Even though an MP can preside over one committee and one subcommittee at most, the number of held vice-presidency positions is not restricted.

5 Descriptive statistics of the variables is provided as a supplementary material to this article.

6 These are Organisational Committee, Petition Committee, and Mandate and Immunity Committee.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by the Charles University, project GA UK No 234217.