Unpacking Comparative Patterns in Legislative Debates

This chapter examines the empirical patterns of the politics of legislative debates in thirty-three liberal democracies. There are three take-home messages in this chapter. First, twenty out of the thirty-three legislatures analyzed experience some sort of gender imbalance. Even controlling for potential confounders such as seniority, position in the legislative party, and committee chairs, empirical evidence suggests that women tend to have less access to the floor than men. Second, we find that seniority plays a role in determining floor access. More senior legislators tend to speak more often. Third, against our expectations, comparative results suggest that roughly half of the countries analyzed in this volume do not privilege party leaders in floor access. In addition to discussing comparative empirical patterns, the chapter discusses the road ahead in research on legislative debates.