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Introduction
Late one evening of November 2000, an observer of the parliamentary process could have been surprised by the diversity of activities taking place on the floor of the French Assemblée Nationale (Lower House of the French Parliament). While a couple of Deputies1 were debating a governmental amendment to a new bill, a few others could be seen listening to the discussion with seemingly great interest, while some were reading the newspaper, studiously reviewing memos prepared by their assistant, or writing questions for submission to ministries. The assembly was mostly deserted, however, indicating that most Deputies were either in their district, participating to a legislative party meeting, or doing whatever Representatives usually do on weekday evenings.
What can account for this diversity of legislative behavior? How do legislators decide how to allocate their time between these different activities? Would have all the Deputies present been more attentive to the legislative debate had their constituents been witnessing the proceedings?
These questions have led to important debates among legislative politics scholars. More specifically, American political scientists have asked whether and to what extent electoral considerations influence legislative behavior. While some have argued that the constituency had little impact on the decisions legislators make (Miller and Stokes, 1963), the dominant paradigm is that district opinions at least partially influence legislators when deciding what vote to cast (Kingdon, 1989) or how much to participate to the deliberations of bills (Hall, 1996). Some authors have also made the powerful argument that this electoral connection can serve as a parsimonious departure assumption to explain most aspect of legislative activity, from the organization of Congress (Mayhew, 1974) to policy outputs (Arnold, 1990). Most of these studies, however, concentrate on how district influence impacts the lawmaking process, broadly understood. Comparatively, much less research has been conducted to test the validity of the electoral connection model to the non-lawmaking activities of Congress. Johannes's (1984) work, in which the author examines the relations between electoral incentives and the amount of casework Representatives do, constitutes an example of such studies. In line with Johannes' research, this study is about the non-lawmaking activities of legislators. More specifically, I examine the procedure of questions écrites (written questions) in the French Assemblée Nationale . The procedure of...