Parliamentary debate is key to both representation and policymaking in democracies. However, in many parliamentary systems, access to the floor is controlled and restricted and MPs become spokesperson of a specific policy portfolio. They speak only on that issue and are primarily responsible for formulating and articulating their party’s position on that issue in parliament. This study examines what criteria political party groups use to decide which MPs serve as designated spokesperson on an issue.

The key concept in our paper is specialization: the assignment of spokespersonships is the outcome of a process of careful consideration for the party because they distribute and delegate decision-making and policymaking power on day-to-day business in parliament. We build on the literature on committee assignments, which points to informational, distributional and partisan rationales behind legislator’s specialization. The informational rationale suggests that MPs become spokesperson on the issues that they have specialist knowledge of. The distributional rationale predicts MPs to be spokesperson on those issues for which they have ties to relevant groups outside parliament, such as voters and interest groups. Finally, according to the partisan rationale, parties will assign issue portfolios that the party leadership prioritizes to the more prominent MPs in the parliamentary party group.

We analyse a database of the parliamentary and pre-parliamentary careers of all Danish MPs (2011 – 2020), while observing who holds each spokespersonship in each party. Our analysis sheds important light on how parliamentary party groups function, in particular how they divide labour within their ranks.