Electoral Rules and Legislative Parties in the Ukrainian Rada

Critics of Ukraine's single‐member district majoritarian and mixed‐member majoritarian electoral systems argue that they undermined the efficiency of the Supreme Rada by permitting nonpartisan single‐member district deputies to enter the legislature in large numbers. Such deputies changed parties and ignored party positions. This article argues that the effect of the differences in how legislators are elected is dependent upon whether legislators are partisans. The statistical analysis of party switching and party cohesion in the Rada from 1998 to 2002 shows that nonpartisan single‐member district deputies were the most likely to switch parties and the least cohesive.     

The hidden electoral connection: analysing parliamentary questions in the Chilean Congress

Legislators in presidential countries use a variety of mechanisms to advance their electoral careers and connect with relevant constituents. The most frequently studied activities are bill initiation, co-sponsoring, and legislative speeches. In this paper, the authors examine legislators’ information requests (i.e. parliamentary questions) to the government, which have been studied in some parliamentary countries but remain largely unscrutinised in presidential countries. The authors focus on the case of Chile – where strong and cohesive national parties coexist with electoral incentives that emphasise the personal vote – to examine the links between party responsiveness and legislators’ efforts to connect with their electoral constituencies. Making use of a new database of parliamentary questions and a comprehensive sample of geographical references, the authors examine how legislators use this mechanism to forge connections with voters, and find that targeted activities tend to increase as a function of electoral insecurity and progressive ambition.     

Legislative Behavior in Romania: The Effect of the 2008 Romanian Electoral Reform

This article analyzes the impact of electoral rules on legislators’ rate of vote defection from their party position in legislatures while accounting for how party‐leadership strength mediates this impact. To this end it looks at the effect of the 2008 Romanian electoral reform. The reform shifted the electoral system from a closed‐list proportional representation to one in which all candidates run in single‐member districts. The analysis finds that because party leaders have maintained their leverage intact, the impact of the reform was minimal, with legislators being more likely to defect in less important votes only, in which party leaders allow defection. Also, after the reform legislators are more likely to use other means to impress their voters, such as legislative initiation and cabinet questioning. These forms of behavior are more accepted by party leaders.     

Electoral Influences on Legislative Behavior in Mixed‐Member Systems: Evidence from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada

Abstract: This article addresses how mixed‐member systems that combine proportional representation (PR) and single‐member districts (SMD) into a single election can influence legislators' voting behavior. Scholars have generally extended standard expectations of behavior to mixed‐member systems by assuming that legislators occupying PR seats in mixed‐member parliaments should be more cohesive than those occupying SMD seats. I argue that controlling for seat type alone does not take into account the interaction between PR and SMD in mixed‐member systems. Using voting data from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, I show that controlling for dual candidacy and the “safety” of the deputy's district or list position increases our understanding of the factors motivating legislative cohesion.     

Parliamentary party groups and their parties: A comparative assessment

This article presents a comparative study of the interrelationship between parliamentary party groups and their extra‐parliamentary party organisations in liberal democracies. Starting with a historical overview of the most important party changes that have taken place since the 1960s, a typology of parliamentary party/party organisation relations is suggested. The following variables are identified as being of particular importance in shaping the structure of power in political parties: position of parliament in the political system; (non‐)existence of the incompatibility rule; effects of the electoral system; competition structure and degree of polarisation of the party system; political culture; conditions under which parties emerged; (non‐)existence of public funding for parties; degree of professionalisation of the political elite.     

Electoral Reform – Cui Bono? Attitudes of Romanian MPs to the Electoral System Change

Drawing on an original parliamentary survey, an analysis is undertaken of what motivates MPs elected in a closed proportional representation (PR) setting to consider changing this electoral system. Moves in this direction are quite rare and for this reason a case study of Romanian parliamentarians is proposed. Bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques are used to assess the impact of both power maximisation incentives and values. The main findings indicate that MPs were willing to replace the closed-list PR with a single member district alternative only when they perceived clear benefits for them (that is, re-election) or their party (that is, a positive impact, either at intra-party level or within the party system). These self-interested motivations are prioritised over nomination-related reasons and the possibility of a constituency-centred focus of representation.     

Party Strategies,Constituency Links,and Legislative Speech

This article examines how parties organize legislative speech. Electoral incentives and legislative institutions affect speech participation. When electoral systems create personal vote‐seeking incentives, parties are less concerned with screening speeches and more supportive of members seeking to garner name recognition. But in many countries, legislative rules and norms constrain opportunities for individual position taking during the lawmaking debates. We argue that parties resolve this dilemma by organizing speech participation into nonlegislative speeches and lawmaking debates. In each instance, different types of legislators are more likely to speak. We examine the case of Chile and test the implications of our theory with data on congressional speeches.     

Turning over a new leaf? Cohesion and discipline in the Italian parliament

The literature on parties suggests various hypotheses about the conditions under which the cohesion and discipline of parliamentary parties will be greater or lesser. Since one such hypothesis concerns party‐system characteristics, Italy offers an opportunity to investigate what happens to cohesion and discipline when a system characterised by the permanence in office of a large, centrally located party and based on the permanent exclusion of left and right extremes, is replaced by one characterised by strong bi‐polar tendencies and the alternation in office of two competing coalitions. Italy's transformation appears to have produced more cohesive and disciplined behaviour in parliament.     

Limiting Party Representation: Evidence from a Small Parliamentary Chamber

Parties are seen as vital for the maintenance of parliamentary government and as necessary intermediaries between voters and legislators; an elected parliamentary chamber not controlled by parties is highly anomalous. This study contrasts the party‐controlled Tasmanian lower house with its Independent‐dominated elected upper house and finds that the major source of constraints on party representation is not a clientelistic style of politics but the persistence of a distinctive institutional design and electoral rules based on fixed terms and annual staggered elections. The consequences of these rules are explored for their effects on voter choice and legislative behaviour.     

The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems and Intraparty Candidate Selection Processes on Parties' Behavior

How do electoral systems and intraparty candidate selection procedures affect party unity? In this article, I distinguish theoretically and empirically between electoral systems and candidate selections and argue that the influence of selection processes on parties' behavior is conditional on electoral system (and vice versa). Measuring parties' unity using Rice and weighted Rice scores, and applying hierarchical models to a new data set of 249 parties in 24 countries, I find support for the claim that the influence of selection processes on behavior is greater under electoral systems that encourage personal vote‐seeking incentives than under electoral systems that encourage party centeredness.     

Throwing the rascals out? The electoral effects of corruption allegations and corruption scandals in Europe 1981–2011

Corrupt politicians have to a surprisingly great extent been found to go unpunished by the electorate. These findings are, however, drawn from case studies on a limited number of countries. This study, on the contrary, is based on a unique dataset from 215 parliamentary election campaigns in 32 European countries between 1981 and 2011, from which the electoral effects of corruption allegations and corruption scandals are analyzed. Information about the extent to which corruption allegations and scandals have occurred is gathered from election reports in several political science journals, and the electoral effects are measured in terms of the electoral performances—the difference in the share of votes between two elections—of all parties in government, as well as the main incumbent party, and the extent to which the governments survive the election. The control variables are GDP growth and unemployment rate the year preceding the election, the effective number of parliamentary and electoral parties, and the level of corruption. The results show that both corruption allegation and corruption scandals are significantly correlated with governmental performances on a bivariate basis; however, not with governmental change. When controlling for other factors, only corruption allegation has an independent effect on government performances. The study thus concludes—in line with previous research—that voters actually punish corrupt politicians, but to a quite limited extent.     

Is Personal Vote‐Seeking Behavior Effective?

Does representatives' legislative activity have any effect on their electoral performance? A broad theoretical literature suggests so, but real‐world evidence is scarce as empirically, personal and party votes are hard to separate. In this article, we examine whether bill initiation actually helps MPs to attract preference votes under flexible list electoral systems. In these systems, voters can accept the party‐provided rank order or vote for specific candidates, which allows a clear distinction between personal and party votes. The empirical analysis uses data on bill initiation by Belgian MPs in the period 2003–2007 to explain their personal vote in the 2007 elections. We find that particularly single‐authored proposals initiated shortly before the upcoming elections are associated with a larger personal vote.     

Rules and Speeches: How Parliamentary Rules Affect Legislators' Speech‐Making Behavior

By extending existing theories of legislative speech making, this study explores the importance of parliamentary rules governing floor debates for government and opposition parties. An original data set including speeches of members of the Italian Chamber of Deputies between 2001 and 2006 is used to test two hypotheses under different institutional scenarios, that is, rules either restricting or granting open access to the floor. Parliamentary rules are found to affect allocation of speaking time within both governing and opposition parties. Governing parties' leaders exploit their agenda control to a higher degree when allocating speaking time. Under restrictive rules, government party leaders control their MPs by essentially limiting the number of speeches and allocating them to frontbenchers. Restrictive rules give opposition party leaders an important chance to select MPs who are closer to their own position.     

Executive Particularism and Ministerial Selection in India

Why do political parties in parliamentary systems undertake actions, such as joining a coalition government, that will entail significant costs for their members in subsequent elections? Recent research points to the incentive structures faced by differentially positioned members of a parliamentary party: unlike backbenchers, MPs who hold a ministerial portfolio can use the prerequisites of executive office to shield themselves from the costs of governance. This article tests the theory of executive particularism by examining the electoral fortunes of government ministers in India. Sitting government ministers are found to outperform other candidates; however, tests of causality fail to demonstrate that holding a ministerial portfolio causes this electoral benefit. Instead, it appears that a candidate’s electoral performance enhances the likelihood of being granted a ministerial portfolio in the first place. This finding raises questions about the generalizability of claims that party elites can use ministerial office to shield themselves from the costs of governing.     

Balancing Competing Demands: Position Taking and Election Proximity in the European Parliament

Parties value unity, yet members of parliament have incentives to deviate from the party line. This article examines how members of the European Parliament (EP) respond to competing demands from national parties and European party groups. We examine ideological shifts within a single parliamentary term to assess how election proximity affects party group cohesion. Our formal model of legislative behavior suggests that when EP elections are proximate, national party delegations shift toward national party positions, thus weakening EP party group cohesion. Our Bayesian item‐response analysis of roll calls in the 5th EP supports our theoretical predictions.     

Wasting or saving time? How government and opposition parties use time during legislative debates. Evidence from the Italian case

The use of plenary time during legislative debates has consequences for the enhancement of party goals. Hence, parties have different preferences on how legislative time should be managed: while some parties would like time not to be ‘wasted’ on the floor, other parties may instead try to ‘consume’ as much time as possible. Speeches delivered in the plenary signal these preferences. Focusing on plenary debates on legislation, this paper proposes a theory for explaining party speech-making behaviour that takes into consideration parties’ preferences on the use of time and their incentives related to the divide between government and opposition. The theoretical argument also emphasises the role of issue salience and party cohesion, which interact with the incentives faced by government and opposition parties. Hypotheses are tested against data from over 21,000 speeches delivered in the Italian parliament. Results highlight the importance of considering the different incentives faced by government and opposition parties when analysing speech making in parliamentary settings, and suggest some interesting avenues for future enquiry.     

Do Ideological Preferences Explain Parliamentary Behaviour? Evidence from Great Britain and Canada

Are parliamentary parties cohesive because leaders successfully impose discipline on their MPs or because MPs prefer - hence support - the same policies as their leaders do? If the latter is correct, and party cohesion is produced largely by members' concordant preferences, then models that explain cohesion as a function of the disciplinary mechanisms available to parties once the MP is in Parliament (for example, the distribution of patronage or the threat of de-selection) are not useful. This article uses British and Canadian MPs' responses to candidate surveys to estimate MPs' positions on a variety of ideological dimensions and then shows that MPs' preferences on these ideological dimensions only partially explain how often they vote against their parties. Indeed, even after one controls for an MP's ideological preferences, party affiliation remains a powerful predictor of the MP's loyalty or dissent - suggesting that party discipline does, in fact, contribute to cohesion. Additional tests indicate that these results are not spurious.     

The Unequal Distribution of Speaking Time in Parliamentary‐Party Groups

Parliamentary debates provide an arena where Members of Parliament (MPs) present, challenge, or defend public policies. However, the “plenary bottleneck” allows the party leadership to decide who participates in a debate. We argue that in this decision the timing of a debate matters: in proximity of elections, the leadership should be concerned with maintaining its brand name and therefore restrict floor access, in particular if the debate is salient for the respective party. We evaluate our hypotheses in a cross‐country study drawing on a novel data set covering all speeches given during one or two legislative terms in six European parliaments. We find that the electoral cycle matters for the distribution of speaking time: Party leaders do restrict parliamentary speechmaking to a smaller number of MPs at the end of the term. This has important implications for our understanding of parliaments as an electoral arena and for our understanding of intraparty politics.     

Invisible Politics: Institutional Incentives and Legislative Alignments in the Russian Duma, 1996–99

Previous analysis of legislative voting has focused on the behavior of nominal legislative parties, regardless of whether the country under examination was an established democracy or a newly democratized country. This approach is inadequate for countries with young party systems. To establish the extent to which legislative coalitions are party based, scholars must allow for the possibility that institutional incentives predominate over party influence. For this study, I applied a Bayesian discrete latent variable method to identify the legislative coalitions in the 1996‐99 Duma. I found that legislative alignments cut across party lines: electoral incentives and support for the president contribute to divides within parties that lack coherent platforms. Here I present a novel methodological approach to the identification of intraparty divisions and the major determinants of legislative coalitions in many legislative settings. This approach allows a comparison of the importance of party influence relative to other institutional incentives. It is especially useful for analyzing legislative voting in young party systems and where constitutional frameworks and electoral systems subject legislators to competing pressures.     

Orchestrating Party Talk: A Party‐Based View of One‐Minute Speeches in the House of Representatives

Previous studies of House members' speech‐giving behavior treat the behavior as a product of members' individual goals. By uncovering leadership memoranda soliciting member participation in one‐minute speech giving, I find, first, that parties significantly structure one‐minute speech giving, with party‐orchestrated message campaigns accounting for about one‐third of the speeches given. Second, I find that a party‐based explanation illuminates individual members' speech‐giving behavior. Ideological proximity to the party leadership and party organizational factors strongly influence a member's willingness to be “on message.” These findings have important implications for studies of both party message politics and members' speech‐giving behavior.