De facto Veto? The Parliamentary Liberal Democrats |
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| Authors: | ANDREW RUSSELL ED FIELDHOUSE DAVID CUTTS |
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| Institution: | Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester;his recent publications include Neither Left nor Right? The Liberal Democrats and the Electorate;(Manchester University Press, 2005) co-authored with Ed Field-house. Professor of Social and Political Science at the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, University of Manchester;his recent publications include Neither Left nor Right? The Liberal Democrats and the Electorate;(Manchester University Press, 2005) co-authored with Andrew Russell. Simon Research Fellow at the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, University of Manchester, and is author of '"Where we work we win": a case study of local Liberal Democrat campaigning', Journal of Elections, Parties and Public Opinion;, Vol.16, no. 3. |
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| Abstract: | The parliamentary party of the Liberal Democrats is a symbol of the third party's growth in recent years. As a result of successful election targeting and an improvement in electoral reach, the party has seen its number of MPs at Westminster more than triple since 1992. It has been claimed that the increase in size of the parliamentary party has been accompanied by an increase in its power, so that the parliamentarians now have a de facto power of veto over policy despite the official policy-making structures as laid out in the Liberal Democrat constitution. This article investigates the make-up of the parliamentary Liberal Democrats and their contemporary influence over policy formation, and the parliamentary party's relationship with the conference and the party leader—and especially the events leading to the change of Liberal Democrat leader in 2006—to establish the veracity of this claim. |
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| Keywords: | constitution Liberal Democrats parliamentary party veto |
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