Who's Got MPs' Back? Understanding the Drivers of Specialisation in the Offices of MPs

Being an elected MP comes with numerous time-consuming and work-intensive tasks that exceed the capacity of a single individual. While not universal, in many parliamentary democracies, MPs receive funds to employ personal staff, who take on substantial portions of this workload by advising and supporting MPs in their daily political activities. Although the role of parliamentary administrations has received growing scholarly attention, the question of how tasks are divided within MPs' offices-particularly what drives the specialisation of staff-remains underexplored. This article addresses this gap by investigating the drivers of task specialisation in MPs' offices through a comparative study of Germany, Luxembourg, and Austria. Drawing on 15 semi-structured expert interviews with staff from the three countries, we show that the main drivers of specialisation in teams of personal staff are team size, party organization, government-opposition dynamics, MPs' working style, and the trustee relationship between MPs and their staff. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of organisational diversity among European parliaments more broadly and pave the way for Large-𝑁 comparative studies on the factors that shape the division of labour within and between staff groups. We highlight the importance of considering both institutional and individual-level factors when studying and comparing parliamentary support structures.