Staff Matters: The Effect of Political Group Staff on MP Activity in the Netherlands

Abstract

The small but growing literature on parliamentary staff is largely composed of qualitative descriptive studies of staff roles and activities. A key assumption that underlies all of these studies is that “staff matters” for parliamentary activity, but this assumption has never been formally put to the test. This article presents a first cut at filling this lacuna and attempts to quantify the effect of political group staff. We examine the Dutch lower house. Our central question is: How does the availability of different forms of staff support within political groups affect the activity of MPs? For each political group in the lower house, we gauged how many ghostwriters and marketeers they employ. We then relate this to a variety of indicators of parliamentary activity of individual MPs, such as the number of motions, written questions, and amendments submitted, as well as activity on social media (specifically X, formerly Twitter). For questions, motions, and amendments, we do see a staff effect on MP activity, but with social media presence, the results suggest that staff constrains rather than promotes the number of tweets.