Questioning scrutiny: the effect of Prime Minister’s Questions on citizen efficacy and trust in parliament

ABSTRACT

In most democratic regimes, the public often dislikes and distrusts parliamentarians. This should not surprise: the public likes neither compromise nor conflict, both of which are legislative hallmarks. One of the most famous examples of parliamentary conflict is Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the British House of Commons. It is the most viewed and commented upon part of the parliamentary week, but attracts strong criticism as a noisy charade promoting a poor image of politics. Does PMQs undermine individual levels of political efficacy and trust in Parliament, as some commentators suggest? We use an experimental design to answer this question and find evidence to suggest that, contrary to its negative reputation, PMQs does not adversely affect most citizens’ perceptions.

KEYWORDS:

• Trust
• legislatures
• democracy
• Prime Minister’s Questions
• parliaments

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this project was presented at the American Political Science Association’s Annual meeting in 2019. We gratefully acknowledge the thoughtful comments and feedback from Jean-François Daoust and Marc Geddes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 When the Leader of the Opposition uses crowd-sourced questions, personal attacks appear to be lower (Bull & Waddle, 2019).

2 20 February 2019. Tweet.

3 Compared to 38% for bankers, 67% for television news readers, and 85% forprofessors. See https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/politicians-remain-leasttrusted-profession-britain.

4 See the November 2019 Eurobarometer: https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Chart/getChart/chartType/lineChart//themeKy/18/groupKy/97/savFile/187.

5 Appendix A (See supplemental data) details the sample’s demographics. A similar number of residents from England and Scotland were included to test for possible national differences. However, no meaningful differences emerged.

6 The demographic characteristics of respondents were balanced across experimental conditions, confirming random assignment (Appendix B, see supplemental data). The exchange from which the clip was obtained occurred on 31 October 2018 and available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqfR9Ihk9vE. We avoided Brexit given its potential to prime subject’s frustrations with Parliament’s inability to implement the referendum. The austerity exchange represents a classic policy divide between the Conservative and Labour parties.

7 See Appendix C, supplemental data for the survey instrument and appendix D (See supplemental data) for response distributions. After viewing the clip, respondents were asked about the subject matter of PMQs. Respondents answering incorrectly were removed from the analyses due to inattentiveness. Roughly 78% of respondents in the treatment correctly identified the subject matter. This did not affect demographic balance across conditions.

8 Conflict management styles were balanced across the control and treatment, indicating that PMQs did not alter respondents’ conflict orientation (Appendix B, See supplemental data).

9 Marginal effects reflect a change in probability that a respondent would select a response above the midpoint of the 5-point scale for each outcome variable. Outcome variables were collapsed to three-point scales to derive marginal probabilities (Appendix F, See supplemental data).

10 27 February 2019. Tweet.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Montana State University College of Letters and Science; University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science Strategic Research Support Fund.

Notes on contributors

Alan Convery

Alan Convery is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh and Lead Editor of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Pavielle Haines

Pavielle Haines is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rollins College.

James Mitchell

James Mitchell is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh and co-editor of The Scottish Parliament at 20.

David C. W. Parker

David C.W. Parker is Professor and Head of Political Science at Montana State University.