Party cohesion is a crucial aspect of parliamentary systems. Yet party cohesion varies across time, parties and systems. Among the factors affecting this degree of cohesion, scholars have set forth the influence of macro-level and... more
Party cohesion is a crucial aspect of parliamentary systems. Yet party cohesion varies across time, parties and systems. Among the factors affecting this degree of cohesion, scholars have set forth the influence of macro-level and individual-level factors. Although party-level factors have been included as determinants of cohesion, a crucial element has often been neglected: party ideology. This paper seeks to fill this gap. In that purpose, the paper conceives cohesion as the extent to which legislators have integrated the norm of party loyalty, and develops an extended understanding of party ideology and of its direct and indirect effects on legislators’ integration of this behavioural norm. Using attitudinal data of 840 parliamentarians elected in 15 European national assemblies, the paper provides evidence of a ‘party ideology effect’, particularly in the green and radical right parties. These results suggest that a greater attention should be directed towards party ideology as a determinant aspect of legislative dynamics and representation style.
Party cohesion is an important phenomenon in the study of political systems. Levels of party cohesiveness are also important because they provide crucial information about how legislatures function and how they interact with the... more
Party cohesion is an important phenomenon in the study of political systems. Levels of party cohesiveness are also important because they provide crucial information about how legislatures function and how they interact with the Executive. This paper seeks to investigate the behaviour presented by the deputies of the three relevant parties in Mexico (PRI, PAN and PRD) during three legislatives terms (1997-2000, 2000-2003 and 2003-2006). With the analysis of roll call data, the main argument developed in this article is that, the cohesion levels are not only affected by political system or party system variables, but also by moment variables.
Within the literature devoted to the study of political parties, scholars have recently directed more attention towards intraparty dynamics. The ‘party as a unitary actor’ assumption seems to have withered away in the last decades. The... more
Within the literature devoted to the study of political parties, scholars have recently directed more attention towards intraparty dynamics. The ‘party as a unitary actor’ assumption seems to have withered away in the last decades. The party is increasingly viewed as a heterogeneous entity, in which dissenting attitudes are frequent. Yet the causes of intraparty dissensions remain quite obscure. My PhD project aims at providing a better understanding of the causes of dissent within parties, especially within parliamentary party groups. Intraparty conflicts, dissent or ‘voice’ phenomena have been studied through different literatures that have developed independently from each other: studies dealing with party factionalism, social-psychological and economic theories of organizations (e.g. Hirschman’s trilogy of exit, voice and loyalty), and legislative studies dealing with parliamentary party voting unity. Theoretically, the project will try to (re)conciliate these separated literatures, and will show how legislative studies, factionalism literature and theories of organizations can help to grasp why parliamentarians are more or less likely to dissent from their party line. At the empirical level, the project aims at analyzing the causes of dissent within parliamentary parties in a comparative perspective. The analysis examines parliamentarians’ attitudes across 15 European national parliaments, by using the PARTIREP MP Survey dataset. The project draws on several theoretical approaches –institutional, rational and sociological– and will test different explanatory models of dissent. These models include variables at several levels (individual, party and system levels). This paper provides an overview of the project’s substance.
Conventional wisdom suggests candidate-centered electoral systems are associated with parties with greater ideological differences, though evidence for this expectation has been mixed. We model the incentives of party leaders to achieve... more
Conventional wisdom suggests candidate-centered electoral systems are associated with parties with greater ideological differences, though evidence for this expectation has been mixed. We model the incentives of party leaders to achieve voting unity without relying on discipline, showing that candidate-centered systems have the counterintuitive effect of promoting party agreement on policies and preference cohesion. These implications derive from the degree of control over list rank held by leaders for cohesion under open lists (OLPR) and closed lists (CLPR). Because discipline is costlier in OLPR due to leaders’ lack of control over list rank, leaders seeking voting unity propose policies that promote agreement between members and leadership. Under CLPR, however, leaders can more easily achieve unity by relying on discipline and therefore lack incentives to promote internal agreement. We then extend the model to allow the party leader to replace members, showing that preference cohesion itself is greater under OLPR. Further, our baseline results hold when allowing legislative behavior to affect vote share and when accounting for candidates’ valence qualities. We interpret our results to suggest that candidate-centered systems offer stronger incentives for programmatic party development, compared to party-centered systems.
This paper investigates the impact of Central European MEPs on party cohesion in the European Parliament. By applying the principal-agent theory, it is also analyzed how loyal are the MEPs of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia... more
This paper investigates the impact of Central European MEPs on party cohesion in the European Parliament. By applying the principal-agent theory, it is also analyzed how loyal are the MEPs of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia to their European political groups and national parties. The empirical research carried out in this study demonstrates that the Central European MEPs have not brought more division to their political groups, but have been loyal members of their European parties. The Central European MEPs have not weakened the cohesion of the EP party groups, but party cohesion was even further strengthened between 2004 and 2014. Cohesion is the strongest in the biggest parliamentary groups. EPP and S&D set the direction for most politicians on most occasions. Clear 'rebel' cases, when national parties as a whole went against their European political groups are not more than 2-3 percent of all votes in the two biggest European political families. National parties have a bigger room of manoeuvre in the smaller political groups. In ECR and GUE-NGL the difference between loyalty to the national party and the European party group is significantly higher than in EPP and S&D.
Most legislative studies based on roll-call voting analysis describe European parliamentary parties as highly unified actors. However, this unity in voting behavior does not mean that parliamentary parties are homogeneous entities:... more
Most legislative studies based on roll-call voting analysis describe European parliamentary parties as highly unified actors. However, this unity in voting behavior does not mean that parliamentary parties are homogeneous entities: ‘pre-floor’ disagreements can be frequent, and MPs might display varying degrees of party loyalty. This paper views party agreement and party loyalty as two dimensions of cohesion, and investigates party cohesion across fifteen European national legislatures on the basis of the cross-national PARTIREP MP Survey. First, the paper shows that, while roll-call voting analyses give a picture of highly united parliamentary parties, these European parliamentary parties in fact vary quite a lot according to their degree of cohesion. Second, the paper investigates some of the factors that might explain these variations. On the one hand, the paper deals with the impact of electoral rules (electoral formula, ballot structure and candidate selection methods). On the other hand, the paper examines the role of ideology in determining the frequency of MP-party disagreement and MPs’ attitudes of (non)loyalty. These observations help to understand what produces parliamentary parties’ varying levels of agreement and loyalty and how institutional and sociological factors can affect distinctly each dimension of cohesion. In this way, the paper provides new insights into the study of legislative party dynamics.
PRI legislators in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies have distinguished themselves by maintaining high levels of party discipline. With the 2000 presidential loss, which signified the loss of their leader, the rupture between factions has... more
PRI legislators in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies have distinguished themselves by maintaining high levels of party discipline. With the 2000 presidential loss, which signified the loss of their leader, the rupture between factions has been made evident. However, up to what point has the lack of a unifying leader affected the internal cohesion of the legislative group? With the analysis of roll-call data this article measures the cohesion amongst the PRI’s deputies during three legislative periods (1997-2000, 2000-2003 and 2003-2006), in order to determine legislative behavior when voting. The main argument of this paper suggest that even with the presence of internal conflicts and the lack of a common leadership, the PRI maintains relatively high levels of cohesion due to its conservation of a large part of its internal organization that maintained them in power for seven decades.
1.Introduction: MEPs as Agents of Two PrincipalsDespite the fact that Central European countries have been member states of the European Union for over a decade, the knowledge about the activities of their Members of the European... more
1.Introduction: MEPs as Agents of Two PrincipalsDespite the fact that Central European countries have been member states of the European Union for over a decade, the knowledge about the activities of their Members of the European Parliament (MEPs1) is still very limited both in the academic world and among ordinary citizens. What important topics are MEPs engaged in and how these issues affect citizens often goes without significant media coverage, and it is even more so when it comes to the voting behavior of the representatives and the internal institutional mechanisms of the European Parliament.The lack of research about the activities of the Central European MEPs is especially regrettable if we take into account the outstandingly intriguing political context in which MEPs work. MEPs are selected by their national parties, which are the ones to send them to represent their values and interests in Brussels and Strasbourg. All representatives are voted for their five-year long mand...
