IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jexpos/v2y2015i01p63-72_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Attitudes to Moonlighting Politicians: Evidence from the United Kingdom

Author

Listed:
  • Campbell, Rosie
  • Cowley, Philip

Abstract

Research has explored the impact of politicians holding second jobs, or moonlighting, on their performance and recruitment, but less is known about how citizens respond to such behavior. Citizens may react negatively to Members of Parliament (MPs) moonlighting, viewing outside earnings as a conflict of interest or a distraction, or instead they might view MPs with second incomes positively, seeing them as a connection with the “real world” beyond politics. Utilizing a series of survey experiments, we assess how British citizens respond to MPs moonlighting. We demonstrate preferences more complex than those revealed by traditional survey instruments. Citizens respond to both size and source of income. They do not respond negatively to all second incomes; they are more sympathetic to the entrepreneur who continues to draw an income than medical doctors or lawyers who continue to practice. They are most hostile to politicians who take on part-time company directorships.

Suggested Citation

  • Campbell, Rosie & Cowley, Philip, 2015. "Attitudes to Moonlighting Politicians: Evidence from the United Kingdom," Journal of Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 63-72, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jexpos:v:2:y:2015:i:01:p:63-72_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2052263014000219/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giommoni, Tommaso, 2024. "A fistful of dollars: Rent seeking behaviour and local tax manipulation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 453-469.
    2. Christian Staat & Colin R. Kuehnhanss, 2017. "Outside Earnings, Electoral Systems and Legislative Effort in the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 368-386, March.
    3. Björn Kauder & Niklas Potrafke, 2016. "Supermajorities and Political Rent Extraction," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(1), pages 65-81, February.
    4. Wochner, Timo, 2022. "Part-time parliamentarians? Evidence from outside earnings and parliamentary activities," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jexpos:v:2:y:2015:i:01:p:63-72_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/xps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.