Understanding MEPs (varying) use of written parliamentary questions: domestic political culture and MEPs career patterns

Despite a growing scholarship focusing on the use of parliamentary questions in the EP, we still know little about the personal motivations as well as national cultural political differences that drive MEPs to invest time in the use of parliamentary questions. The paper provides an analysis of MEPs’ use of written parliamentary questions (WpQ) in the 28 member states covering the 4th to 8th legislative terms, i.e. from 1994 to 2019 (about 163.894 WPQ). In particular, this paper investigates the impact that the domestic parliamentary culture of MEPs (i.e. macro-level variable) in combination with MEPs career patterns (i.e. individual-level variable) have on the use of WpQs. We argue that MEPs, when they enter the EP, bring their ‘vision’ of how to behave and act in parliament as per their own domestic parliamentary culture (i.e., how things are done in my country). In addition, for MEPs who have been directly socialized in such culture (because of former direct domestic experience in parliaments and/or executives), we expect that the ‘replication’ of such work habits would be even stronger. Our (preliminary) findings highlight that MEPs originating from a country having a strong culture of using written parliamentary questions ask more questions in the EP. In addition, the data also outlines that the effect of the parliamentary culture is even stronger when considering the previous domestic experience of MEPs (i.e. previous ‘domestic’ socialization).