In the UK, an important part of an MP’s job is to respond to requests from their constituents (people who live in the district they represent). Sometimes a constituent will ask for help with a national or local government office- for instance, if their passport renewal is delayed or they are having trouble getting support for a disabled relative. In this case, the MP (or their staff) can send a letter to the relevant office- usually seeing a letter on official House of Commons stationery prods that office into action. MPs hold regular office hours (called “surgeries”) in their constituency where people can come and speak to them about any local issue they want to bring to their attention.
I’ve heard that in other countries with parliaments descended from the Westminster one (like Ireland, Australia and the US) representatives have a similar role, and thought it was normal everywhere.
On the other hand I recently read something about a Danish politician who said that she would never do anything like that, and considered it to be corruption.
So how does it work where you live? Can you ask your representative for help with government services? Or is it considered unfair if people who are able to take the step of contacting their representative are more likely to be helped?
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> So how does it work where you live? Can you ask your representative for help with government services? Or is it considered unfair if people who are able to take the step of contacting their representative are more likely to be helped?
You’re more than able to contact your local representative(s,) but due to the way the Danish electoral system works, you don’t have the same local representation as you do in e.g. the UK. Local representatives are elected at the level of so-called _storkredse_ of which there are 10 spread out across the entire country. This means that most of these constituencies are quite large, with the exception of Copenhagen, Copenhagen’s Vicinity, and Bornholm (the smallest _storkreds_,) which, while small, and with the exception of the last, all cover extremely diverse areas in term of demography, industry, and so-on. Lolland is in constituency with Odsherred, Hedensted with Randers, and so-on. So your local representative might only live 150 km. from you! Each constituency however, does elect multiple representatives, with the largest constituencies both having 18 constituency seats (_kredsmandater_) and the smallest, Bornholm, having only 2.
Would people do “constituency work” in the way you’re mentioning? No, I don’t think so. But I also think it is hyperbole to call it corruption, I wonder which politician said that. It would be extremely hard for an MF (Member of _Folketinget_) to help with the things you’re talking about, since these things aren’t something that national politicians exert direct control over. It’d be more meaningful for people who want help with such things, to contact their local municipal councillors, and even then, there are barriers (the liberal and social democratic destruction of the welfare state and public services being the biggest hurdle.) Most services are handled by the municipal bureaucracy, and I doubt the people behind the tables down at _Borgerservice_ would care much, even if you showed up with your local mayor or local MF’er. It’s very much a “Computer says No” system we have in Denmark, much to the detriment to the people working in municipal services, who actually want to help, or want to do what their education and trade tells them is the right thing, but which, again, social democrats and liberals alike, have destroyed their opportunities to do so.
In the Spanish parliamentary system, the representatives never do this kind of work. The members of the Parliament are in general part of the team of a parliamentary group and act in a way that they’re mostly completely interchangeable with other party members without taking in count the constituents they represent or what are the specific interests of their province. Think of the members of the Parliament as pawns of the parties they represent.
In the Netherlands MPs don’t have a constituency, unless you count the entire country.
Members are elected by popular vote across the country. So there is no local MP you can reach out too. It is quite easy to reach out to an MP, just sent an email but they won’t really help you with practical matters. I
Like your example of a passport renewal being delayed. An MP might ask questions of the government why this is slow, he or she won’t reach out to the ministry to get it done quicker.
You can certainly contact the MPs though I don’t think that they give much practical help. There are 13 electoral districts and for example Helsinki has 23 members of parliament out of 200. I’m not even certain who I would even contact if I had some matter I needed help with. There’s the person I voted for who managed to get elected but it’s her first term and I don’t think that she has much power yet.
All German MPs have offices in their constituencies with regular office hours. And in the annual calender there are many weeks reserved for the constituency where there are no plenary sessions in Berlin but MPs spend the time in teir constituencies, for instance visiting local interest groups. People can of course also contact their MP and they then act on the demands, probably not so much about individual people waiting for their passport but maybe push for a new ring road for a viallage plagued with heavy traffic or the restsuration of a historic town square.
MPs also regularly invite citizens from their constitutuency to Berlin where they have a tour through the parliament building and a guide who explains how the parliament works and then they meet with their MP and discuss about politics (or whatever). I was also once part of such a group but then or MP got a very spontaneous approval for his visa to north Korea for which he was waiting for 3 years so we didn’t have the meeting with him.
Individual MPs are worthless in Serbia’s political system. Constituencies do not exist, MPs come from party lists determined by each party’s leader, and they carry out the party leaders’ bidding to the letter. It’s either that or they lose their seat along with the offensively large salary that goes with it. Since they are worthless and recieve more than a thousand euros per month to do nothing, the Assembly is regularly almost half-empty.
Hell no. You can get in touch with a dozen or so MPs coming from your electoral district, but they are not really known to be sctive or responsive in that regard. They are there to raise hands when they are told to and collect paychecks and pensions. I mean during our average session of parliament, out of 151 MP you will rarely see more than 30 of them there.
There are no constituencies in the Netherlands. Formally we do have electoral districts, but effectively all sitting MPs are elected from nationwide lists and are candidates in every single electoral district.
The clientelist political practices that you describe in the UK are very uncommon here at the national level. There are however still ways in which local issues can be addressed to national level politicians. MPs work from Monday through Thursday, where the Friday is usually used for work visits. These work visits can include visits to locations where local issues are at play. If regional issues receive national attention they can also become a point of contention, the earthquakes due to Gas drilling in Groningen is a prime example. Lastly, during campaigning season national politicians usually join local campaigns. During regional and local elections these tend to be more organised around local issues, which can also be an opportunity to get political attention.
For the federal parliament Bundestag in Berlin, there are 299 constituencies in Germany which equal a population of ca. 250000.
There is also the Landtag, the parliament of the federal state. My federal state hast 9 constituencies for the Bundestag but 41 for the parliament of the federal state, with a population between 35000 and 50000.
So personally I have one representative in the Bundestag and one in the Landtag.
Both of them have an office in their constituency, which is opened 5 days a week by their staffers. They also offer personal consulting time, but contact via mail is much easier.
However, since the Bundestag and the Landtag have different areas of responsibility, it would not make sense to contact them with regards to an area they have no legislative power in.
The Bundestag has absolutely no say in educational policies and the Landtag has absolutely no say in the foreign and security policy.
Both of them have no say in a passport renewal matter, so I would not contact any of them. I would rather address this problem either with a Untätigkeitsklage or in the town council.
The examples you listed aren’t problems where a member of the Landtag or Bundestag could help with.
However, I have contacted my members of the Bundestag and Landtag before via mail to discuss with them about open source software and the GDPR (Bundestag) and our schools (Landtag). Among other things.
But since both parliaments do the actual work in parliamentary groups, there are better ways to do lobbying.
Seems like a weird thing to me. An MP of all people adressing individual concerns seems like bad allocation of his/her time. At that level their job is to assess and adress broad problems, not to play local city hall employee.
Each constituency has its own bench where every mp from that constituency sits regardless of Party affiliation The bench from The Hordaland Constituency contains Former Prime Minister Erna Solberg+3 more from Høire Current Minister of Labour Marte Mjøs Persen+ three lesser known people From Labour Helge André Njåstad +1 lesser known person from FRP Minister for Children Kjersti Toppe+1 lesser known mermber From the Farmers Party Audun Lysbakken From SV Sveinung Rotevattn From Venstre Former Minister for international development Dag Inge Ulstein Christian Democrats and Sofie Marhug from The red party.
God no, allowing members of parliament interfere in government services from government authorities?! Absolutely not!!! You can most certainly contact them and email them your complaints all you want but they’re not gonna help you or interfere in government authorities work.
Yes and I’d rather they focused on national issues. That’s that they’re there for after all. Lots of people ask them for help with hurrying along passport applications for example and unfortunately, this works. We have local politicians as well, but their role mainly consists of spending blocks of money the central government dishes out to them. They have almost no law making powers.
We’ve a huge crisis in housing and a persistently slow culture in the political system to change *anything*. I’m immensely frustrated when other European countries aren’t afraid to pass progressive legislation whereas everything in Ireland has to go through public consultation, dragged out planning, reports, then gets a half hearted implementation at the end. Mediocrity is the norm.
As a fellow Brit I feel duty bound to point out constituency work does usually involve this sort of minor administrative work (passport renewal help) but that’s actually not the point of it. The point should be for citizens to express their problems with current legislation, or by talking about their problems inspire the mp to push for certain laws or change their position on others.
If MPs are doing this sort of administrative work it’s because the system is failing – constituents either don’t understand what surgery/constituency work is for or (far more likely) our bureaucracy is so badly designed that people feel they have to talk to their elected officials cos nobody else will listen to them (or they don’t know about citizens advice who are supposed to help with this sort of thing)
In our constitution it is explicitly prohibited for the parliament or government to interfere with the handling of specific cases that government agencies or municipalities deal with. They are only allowed to change outcomes through laws.
MPs meet with their local people, but that’s to discuss policy, not specific cases.
It doesn’t work like that. You elect for parliament. Local issues with local politicians, at municipal, provincial, or autonomous (~federal state) level. The most important local politicians weight enough in central issues to pressure the party they belong to. The so called “barons”.