This study asks which individual parliamentarians take an interest in foreign and defense policy and what predicts that attention, using parliamentary questions as a window into elected officials’ priorities. It introduces an original dataset of 10,180 questions on foreign and defense matters in India’s Lok Sabha and uses analysis of those questions to show which aspects of foreign security politicians emphasise and which politician-level characteristics are associated with greater attention.
Original dataset of 10,180 parliamentary questions Parliamentary questions as speech-as-data Politician-level predictors (electoral security, party, representation, geography)
Data and methods
The author compiles an original dataset of 10,180 parliamentary questions on foreign and defense topics posed in India’s Lok Sabha. The abstract describes using those questions as data to identify the specific aspects of foreign security policy that attract legislators’ attention and to link variation in attention to characteristics of individual MPs.
Main findings
According to the abstract, analysis of the questions reveals that the topics MPs focus on do not align with the expectation that mass political salience alone determines legislative attention. Instead, the study reports that factors at the politician level—electoral security, membership in opposition parties, representation of historically disadvantaged groups, and the geographic location of a politician’s constituency—predict different levels of attention to foreign security matters.
- The dataset is presented as a resource for international relations and foreign policy analysis because parliamentary questions can reveal topic-level emphasis by elected officials.
- Politician-level traits (electoral security, party status, descriptive representation, constituency geography) are identified as predictors of attention in this sample of Indian MPs.
