Abstract
While African legislatures have been receiving increasing academic attention in recent years, efforts to expand our understanding of these institutional bodies have been hampered by a dearth of reliable quantitative data regarding their activity and output. To rectify this issue, we have collected and issue-classified data on the legislative agenda in 13 African countries. We leverage this new dataset to explore how democratic development affects the legislative agenda. We show that legislatures in more democratic countries have a larger, broader, and more dynamic agenda, and we propose an extensive future research agenda for legislative politics in Africa.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 623-655 |
| Number of pages | 33 |
| Journal | Legislative Studies Quarterly |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 5 Oct 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Aug 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editor of for their constructive and insightful comments and suggestions, which significantly improved our article. Earlier versions of this project have benefited greatly from comments by Michaela Collord, Ej Fagan, Nick Or, Michael Wahman, Tevfik Murat Yildirim, and participants at the CAP 2021 Conference in Aarhus. Data collection for this project was in part generously funded through a grant from the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University and made possible through the diligent research assistance of Eda Kösk and Damian Koch.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Legislative Studies Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Washington University in St. Louis.
Keywords
- Africa
- democratic development
- election quality
- legislative agenda
- political agenda setting
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science