Rules and Speeches: How Parliamentary Rules Affect Legislators' Speech-Making Behavior

By extending existing theories of legislative speech making, this study explores the impo rtance of parliamentary rules governing floor debates for government and oppositi on parties. A n original data set including speeches of members of the Italian Ch amber of Deputies between 2001 and 2006 is used to test two hypotheses under diff erent insti tut ional scenarios, that is, rules either restricting or granting open access to the floor. Parliamentary rules are found to affect allocation of speaking time within both governing and oppositio n parties. Governing parties’ leaders explo it their agenda control to a higher degree when allocating speaking time. Under restrictive rules , government party leaders control their MPs by essentiall y limiting the number of speeches and allo- cating them to frontbench ers. Restrictive rules give opposition party leaders an important chance to select MPs who are closer to their own position.