ABSTRACT
Wahlke and his associates' pioneering 1962 study on legislatures describes a legislature as 'a network of relationships among legislators and others, all taking roles in certain ways'.1 In the early 1990s, Searing brought role theory back to the forefront of legislative research.2 As part of the neo-institutional resurgence and the popularity of rational-choice models, it has become acceptable once again to discuss how institutional constraints and norms influence the behaviour of, in our case, parliamentary members and leaders.3 More recently, a special issue of the J o u r n a l of L e g i s l a t i v e S t u d i e s in 1997 was devoted to the roles and behaviour of members of parliament.4 In their theoretical introduction, Saalfeld and Miiller agree with Wahlke's description, and argue that role theory can be adopted as a useful theoretical device for linking distinct but interdependent traditions in legislative studies, such as the institutional, the behavioural and the functionalist approaches.5
