Measuring MPs’ Responsiveness: How to Do it and Stay Out of Trouble

Abstract

This article reviews the issues raised by the reaction to an audit experiment, studying the responsiveness of British MPs to their constituents, in November and December 2020. The experiment was part of a wider comparative project investigating the linkage between legislators and their constituents. We sent two short emails to all MPs asking how they and their party were going to respond to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were required by our ethics committee to debrief the subjects, providing the opportunity to withdraw from the analysis. The scale of the reaction to the debriefing email was neither desired nor anticipated (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56196967). We explain how we got ourselves into such difficulty, how we might have stayed out of it and the wider implications of our experience for experimental research on politicians. We reflect on the ethical issues raised by the reaction to our research, alongside the role that communications with legislators, the wider parliamentary community and the media should play in research design when conducting experiments with politicians as subjects.