DOI: 10.7910/dvn/k8j8ic
title: Replication Data for: Dissertation TitleTalk Matters: Three Essays on the Strategic Use of Public Speech in Parliamentary Politics

description: Does political speech serve a purpose beyond merely articulating political positions? Until recently, scholars have treated the language politicians use in public – in parliamentary debates, in media appearances, or at campaign rallies – as simply a reflection of the existing power structures and interests in place at any given point in time. Rather than playing an independent role in shaping the political sphere, speeches simply hold a mirror to it. In this view, a powerful speech given in the course of a parliamentary debate acts only as the representation of a position held by supporters of the speaker, and all the speaker does in presenting the speech to the chamber is give voice to that constituency. In this sense, the words uttered have no meaning separate from the conveyance of policy.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Questioning this view, recent scholars of party competition reconceptualized the use of speech as a strategic means of position taking to optimize electoral returns.
In this line of study, politicians strategically time speeches to present or emphasize ideological positions deemed electorally
advantageous. For example, prior to an election, speeches by party politicians tend to coalesce around a set of key issues or talking points in order for the party to appear united (Bäck et al., 2019).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The ability to sufficiently analyze speeches at scale has historically held back further progress on the analysis of politicians’ strategic use of speech; however, advances in modern computing, aided by efforts by national governments to digitize parliamentary proceedings, have opened the field up to systematic study by researchers.
In this dissertation, I leverage the advances in computing capabilities and historical document digitization to dive deeper into the idea of political speech as strategic and substantively meaningful in multiple arenas. In an extension of the current understanding, I argue that speech time – being limited either by parliamentary rules or popular attention spans – is a scarce resource that individual politicians and/or their parties use to promote their views. I demonstrate my argument and its implications across three papers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
In the first, “Ideological Control in Parliamentary Debate: Evidence from the 18th German Bundestag,” I consider the ways in which party leadership uses the controls they have over the access to legislative debate to reign in rebel legislators (MPs). Here, I leverage parliamentary rules that allocate speaking time by parliamentary party; therefore, party leaders control who of their delegation is allowed to speak in the chamber as well as the topics they discuss. Contrary to existing scholarship, I find that rebel MPs are not restricted outright from speaking on the parliamentary floor; indeed, they do so at similar levels to their “loyal” co-partisans. Rebels, I show, are only restricted from discussing the most salient topics on the parliamentary floor. Using a dataset of over 200,000 speeches from the German Bundestag combined with MPs’ self-reported ideology from the German Longitudinal Election Survey, I show that indeed, rebels in the governing coalition are significantly less likely to speak on the salient topics of Macroeconomics and Immigration, while there is no difference in speech frequency on less-salient topics such as transportation. This paper shows that legislative debate can be used to control party messaging in legislatures with strong parties.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
In the second paper, “Political Responses to Rapid Socioeconomic Changes: Ireland during the Celtic Tiger Expansion,” I provide extensive evidence of the ways in which MPs use legislative debate to increase their chances of re-election. Here, I break down the dimensions on which politicians use speech to increase their chances at reelection. Rather than considering solely socioeconomic position-taking, I broaden the scope of political speech and position-taking to include district-specific appeals for targeted spending. Leveraging historical census data to map the tumultuous socioeconomic transformation of Ireland from a pastoral land of farmers to one of specialized industry and high-skilled service work, I show how MPs respond to the uncertainty brought about by the windfall of success. In this case, legislative debates become much trickier for MPs to navigate when the position of the median voter in their district is unknown. Rather than position-taking, as one might expect from speeches on the floor of the national legislature, MPs from districts that shifted most drastically from mainly agricultural work to mainly service work focused on deliver ing local goods to constituents. Instead of staking out a position on a well-established ideological axis of political competition, MPs used legislative debates to redirect national funds to their districts. In so doing, they were able to advertise their political work to their constituents, without the fear of alienating some by advocating for programmatic policies that would be rejected by their constituents.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Finally, in "Legislative Paths to Cabinet Appointment," I show how legislative debates can act as a means by which MPs train to become cabinet ministers. Drawing on 3.4 million speeches from over 60 years of records from the Irish lower house, I extend our understanding of who is appointed to cabinet, and propose several theories for why they are. Specifically, I argue that MPs who are able to embed themselves within the legislative apparatus and learn the ins and outs of parliamentary activity are better suited to the demands of being a cabinet minister, as their career progresses. Indeed, I show that MPs who enter parliament and enter debates alongside ministers are much more likely to be appointed to cabinet over the course of their careers. Moreover, MPs who speak in parliament more often also reach cabinet sooner than MPs who speak less often. This paper highlights the role that legislative debate plays in the process of socialization and learning undertaken by new, ambitious MPs.