Let's talk about something else: how cabinet members divert issue attention in answers to parliamentary questions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Numerous studies have delved into issue attention in parliamentary questions directed at the executive cabinet, yet our understanding of cabinet members’ answers to these questions remains limited. Consequently, this paper investigates whether cabinet members strictly adhere to the issues raised in questions or actively divert attention in a different direction. Analyzing over 60,000 question-answer dyads from more than 3,000 question time sessions across the parliaments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, and the UK, the study reveals that over 70 per cent of answers divert from or ignore issues raised in the questions. Furthermore, diversion is prominent when the prime minister answers questions, especially those from the opposition and concerning cabinet-owned matters, particularly in the early stages of the electoral cycle. This research significantly contributes to legislative studies, emphasising the importance of examining the cabinet agenda and its dynamic interaction with the agenda pursued by members of parliament.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.085 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".