The acceptance of party unity in parliamentary democracies / David M. Willumsen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Willumsen, David M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political parties.

Politics, Practical.

Political participation.

Democracy.

Physical Description:

xvii, 174 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Despite the central role of policy preferences in the subsequent behaviour of legislators, preferences at the level of the individual legislator have been almost entirely neglected in the study of parliaments and legislative behaviour. The main reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining measures of legislator preferences that are not based on their behaviour. This book explores direct measures of policy preferences through parliamentary surveys. Building on this, the book develops measures of policy incentives of legislators to dissent from their parliamentary parties, and demonstrates that preference similarity amongst legislators explains a very substantial proportion of party unity, yet cannot explain all of it. Through a quantitative analysis of the attitudes of legislators to the demands of party unity and what drives these attitudes, the book explores the difference between observed unity and the levels of unity which can be explained by preference similarity among legislators alone. This difference is best explained by the conscious acceptance by MPs that the long-term benefits of belonging to a united party (such as increased influence on legislation, lower transaction costs, and better chances of gaining office) outweigh the short-terms benefits of always voting for their preferred policy. The volume reinforces this argument through the analysis of both open-ended survey questions as well as survey questions on the costs and benefits of belonging to a political party in a legislature. This book challenges our understanding of how party voting unity in legislatures functions, and in particular the idea that the threat of sanctions from the party leadership induces voting unity within the legislature. Willumsen makes innovative use of parliamentary surveys to demonstrate that united roll-call behaviour is driven by legislators' policy preferences as well as legislators' understanding of the long-term benefits that accrue to them because of that unity. This book is a must read for anyone interested in legislative behaviour and the functioning of parliaments. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Puzzle of Backbench Assent 1

Legislative Parties as Non-unitary Actors 1

The Benefits, Costs, and Sources of Unity 5

Understanding Parliamentarians' Attitudes to the Demands of Party 12

Loyalty, Discipline, Cohesion, Unity? 16

A Cross-System and Over-Time Analysis 19

Plan of the Book 21

2 Theoretical Framework 25

MPs' Incentives to Accept the Party Line (or Not) 25

Policy Preferences and Non-pure Voting 26

The Lure of Re-election 28

The Need for Re-nomination 28

The Career Incentive 29

Executive-Legislative Relationship 30

Government or Opposition 31

Agenda-Setting Powers 32

Norms, Values, and Socialization 32

Hypotheses 34

From Preferences to Policy Incentives to Dissent 41

Case Selection and Data Quality 47

3 Attitudes to Party Unity in the Nordic Countries 51

Introduction 51

The Party System(s) of the Scandinavian Countries and Iceland 53

Preference Incentives to Dissent in the Nordic Countries 55

Models, Data, and Operationalizanon 60

Results 65

Conclusion 74

4 The Acceptance of Party Unity in Sweden, 1985 to 2010 76

Introduction 76

Incentives to Dissent in the Riksdag, 1985 to 2010 78

Understanding Swedish MPs' Attitudes to Party Unity 84

Data and Operationalization 84

Model Analysis 87

Qualitative Analysis 95

Conclusion 100

5 Perceptions of Party Unity in the Visegrád Countries 103

A Legislative 'State of Nature'? 103

The Party Systems of Central and Eastern Europe in the Early 1990s 105

The Successor Parties 107

Policy Preferences and Voting Unity in the Visegrád Countries 108

Analysing Attitudes to Party Unity in the Visegrád Countries 115

Attitudes to Parliamentary 'Club' Voting Unity 115

Modelling Attitudes to Unity in the Visegrád Countries 117

Results 124

The Positive and Negative Aspects of Parliamentary Club Membership 128

Conclusion 134

6 Conclusion 137

Key Findings 137

Implications for Further Study 142.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-171) and index.

ISBN:

9780198805434

0198805438

OCLC:

1004746907