Parliamentary Staff Size Around the World

ABSTRACT This article is the first to take a global perspective on parliamentary administrations, which are vital for democratic governance. Basic facts like what drives the number of parliamentary staffers are unknown to political science. Drawing from a functionalist framework, we propose that staff plays different roles which lead to different possible drivers: if staff primarily serves to relay information from and to the population, population size is likely a major driver. If staff primarily serves to advise MPs in their oversight work, stronger parliaments will have more staff. If staff primarily serves to assist MPs in their day‐to‐day work, assembly size drives staff size. As an alternative, we apply the notion of institutional isomorphism. Parliaments in shared networks will likely emulate each other. We analyze data from 144 countries. We find that staff size reflects assembly size, population size and parliamentary power.