TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wegmann, Simone
A1  - Evequoz, Aurelien
T1  - Legislative functions in newly democratised countries: the use of parliamentary questions in Kenya and Zambia
JF  - The Journal of Legislative Studies
N2  - A large literature exists examining the functions of legislatures and the behaviour of MPs in established democracies. But little efforts have been made to observe how MPs behave in new democratic assemblies. This article seeks to address this shortcoming through an exploration of the use of parliamentary questions in two new democracies: Kenya and Zambia. Analysing an innovative dataset we offer one of the few attempts to directly measure legislative behaviour in new democracies. We examine how the factors found in the literature on parliamentary questions in liberal democracies react to this shift of context and to what degree legislatures in these countries fulfil their core functions. Results show that opposition MPs are not necessarily among the most active but that electoral incentives such as the margin by which MPs have won their seats or the number of voters they represent explain the use and content of parliamentary questions.
KW  - Parliamentary questions
KW  - new democracies
KW  - opposition
KW  - Sub-Sahara Africa
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/13572334.2019.1697057
SN  - 1357-2334
SN  - 1743-9337
VL  - 25
IS  - 4
SP  - 443
EP  - 465
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  -