Is All Politics Indeed Local? A Comparative Study of Dual Mandate-Holders’ Role Attitudes and Behaviours in Parliament

Abstract

The practice of dual mandate-holding, i.e. the simultaneous occupation of a political mandate at the (sub)national and the local level, is understudied in the comparative literature. Dual mandate-holders embody the most direct link between local and central government, yet research has disregarded whether these actors actually feel and act as local ambassadors in parliament. In this article, we study whether councillors in parliament feel responsive for local grievances in terms of their respective role attitudes and behaviour, using the PARTIREP Comparative MP Survey. The estimated regression models demonstrate that dual mandate-holders indeed perceive themselves as local brokers, even when controlling for various systemic-, party- and individual-level factors. On the other hand, they struggle to translate their localized attitudes into localized parliamentary behaviour, which could call one of the main arguments in favour of dual mandate-holding into question.