Advocates of climate action? The age of members of parliament and their activity in legislative debates on climate change

The study investigates whether the age of Members of Parliament (MPs) affects their participation in parliamentary debates on climate change. It situates the question within the central role of parliaments in agenda-setting, policy formulation, and public communication, noting that many groups, including young people, are descriptively underrepresented in legislatures. Climate change is highlighted as a long-term, highly salient issue, particularly for younger generations, creating incentives for younger MPs to emphasize this topic for both substantive and career-seeking reasons. The authors hypothesize that younger MPs will give more speeches in climate-related debates, linking personal characteristics to strategic behavior aimed at renomination, reelection, and public visibility.

The paper reviews research on how legislators’ sociodemographic characteristics shape legislative behavior, including gender, migration background, and disability, showing that personal attributes influence activity and issue emphasis. Despite frequent inclusion of age as a control, the specific role of MPs’ age has been largely overlooked. Prior work documents the underrepresentation of young adults (under 35) in parliaments and mismatches between voter preferences for younger politicians and the overrepresentation of older politicians. The authors integrate office-seeking theories (where reelection and renomination are primary goals) with accounts of strategic issue positioning under conditions of high public salience. They argue that personal characteristics can confer perceived competence and credibility on salient issues; for climate change, younger MPs can credibly claim personal stakes in long-term outcomes. Consequently, when climate issues are salient—especially among younger citizens—MPs’ age should influence their likelihood to speak in related debates, independent of factors like party affiliation or committee membership.

The authors use an original dataset covering all parliamentary debates in the German Bundestag that focus on climate change from 2013 to 2021, spanning two legislative periods. They measure MPs’ activity by counting speeches contributed to climate-related debates and examine whether MPs’ age is associated with higher participation. The period includes a surge in public attention to climate issues. The analysis assesses overall trends in speech activity and tests whether younger MPs contribute more, while accounting for a variety of other key explanatory variables (e.g., party affiliation and institutional roles).

- Younger MPs contribute more speeches in parliamentary debates related to climate policy than older MPs. - Across the period, all MPs tend to give more speeches on climate-related issues as public salience of climate change increases (notably 2017–2021).

Findings support the expectation that MPs’ age influences legislative behavior on highly salient issues: younger MPs are more active in climate-related debates. This indicates that personal characteristics matter for substantive representation and that younger MPs can act as credible advocates of climate action, potentially benefiting their parties’ perceived competence on the issue and advancing their own career-seeking goals. The results align with theories of office-seeking behavior and strategic issue emphasis under public salience.

The study shows that MPs’ age is a meaningful determinant of legislative debate activity on climate change in the German Bundestag (2013–2021). Younger MPs are more active in climate-related debates, underscoring the link between descriptive characteristics and substantive representation on salient, long-term issues. The findings suggest that personal characteristics of legislators shape policy attention and can help bring climate issues onto parliamentary agendas.