Constituency Demands and Limited Supplies: Comparing Personal Issue Emphases in Co‐sponsorship of Bills and Legislative Speech

Parliamentary party groups typically comprise members of parliament (MPs) with diverse preferences and different personal issue emphases. At the same time, speaking in plenary debates is a scarce resource controlled and allocated by parliamentary party group leaders. This has led recent research to investigate how speakers for plenary debates are selected. This contribution connects with this literature by asking whether MPs’ personal issue emphases deviate from their parliamentary party groups’ issue emphases. In order to answer this question, the issue emphases which individual MPs devote to a set of issues in an open access parliamentary instrument is measured and compared to the emphases MPs devote to these issues in speeches. The results for the 2005–9 legislative period of the Norwegian Storting indicate that MPs differ in how closely aligned their issue emphases are in these two instruments and that these differences vary in a way consistent with theories on candidate selection and individualized MP behaviour.     

Selecting the party leader in Britain

Abstract. Unlike most European countries, party leadership roles in Britain are largely concentrated into the hands of one person. The pattern was established in the nineteenth century, when the posts of Prime Minister and party leader were intertwined, and has been maintained by the modern parties. Each of the main British parties has changed its method of selecting its leader in the last thirty years and between them the parties use, or have used relatively recently, the four basic methods of selection—by the party elite, by parliamentarians, by activists and by party members. The broad trend has been for the parties to make their procedures more open and participatory. While this pattern has reflected the 'spirit of the age' the major reasons for the change have been political considerations. The Conservatives changed from selection by party elites to selection by MPs in an attempt to modernise their image. Labour adopted an electoral college as a result of power struggles between left and right in the party. The Liberals eventually accepted that it was not sensible for their leader to be selected by just a dozen or less MPs (and the Social Democrats and Liberal Democrats duly followed this logic). Despite the adoption of more open procedures the selectorates are still relatively small (with only the Liberal Democrats involving all members), while control over the process of nomination remains firmly in the hands of the MPs. One consequence of this is that British party leaders have been characterised, above all, by the extent of their parliamentary experience. Within that characteristic, however, the detailed rules of the different selection procedures have been crucial in determining which particular parliamentarians would emerge.     

MPs’ principals and the substantive representation of disadvantaged immigrant groups

This article provides an alternative understanding of the substantive representation of immigrant-origin citizens compared to previous work in the ‘politics of presence’ tradition. Rather than assuming that the representational activities of members of parliaments (MPs) are underpinned by intrinsic motivations, it highlights extrinsic motives. Drawing on principal–agent theory, the article conceptualises MPs as delegates who are to act on behalf of their main principals, constituents and party bodies. This approach permits the rigorous analysis of the impact of electoral rules, candidate selection methods and legislative organisation on substantive representation. Based on an analysis of more than 20,000 written parliamentary questions tabled in the 17th German Bundestag (2009–2013), empirical findings suggest that electoral rules do not influence the relationship between MPs and their principals in relation to the substantive representation of disadvantaged immigrant groups; however, results indicate that candidate selection methods as well as powerful parliamentary party group leaderships do.     

MPs' Pay 1911–1996: Myths and Realities

The controversial 26 per cent salary increase voted for by MPs in July 1996 re-ignited the vexed issue of politicians and pay. This paper firstly develops a framework to review the history of MPs' pay. Secondly, an empirical examination is undertaken with regard to its value relative to prices and earnings, the ruling political party and the overall period disaggregated by decade. This suggests that MPs have been more successful insulating themselves against the ravages of inflation than changes in earnings and that the party in power appears to be influential.     

Toe the line,break the whip: explaining floor dissent in parliamentary democracies

This article analyses the drivers of individual dissent in floor voting in parliamentary regimes. It focuses on the effect of ideological heterogeneity in legislative parties on individual MPs’ voting behaviour, as well as the different incentives caused by the differing consequences of defection and abstention. Combining individual-level survey and voting data from the Swedish Riksdag, neither of which is subject to selection bias, the study overcomes several limitations of previous research. It shows that MPs’ decisions to dissent are partly driven by ideological differences with their party, but also by the imperatives of maintaining a government majority in a parliamentary regime, along with the level of influence MPs exert on legislation. It also highlights the importance of distinguishing between abstaining from voting and defecting. Merely pooling the two oversimplifies the behaviour of MPs.     

Are Party Activists the Party Extremists? The Structure of Opinion in Political Parties

In re-examining May's law of curvilinear disparity, this article analyzes the structure of opinion of political parties. May suggests that voters, party leaders and party activists have different incentives to participate in politics, and therefore voters and leaders have more moderate positions on issues than party activists. This article is based on the extensions of May's law made by Kitschelt, who argues that curvilinear disparities, although not general phenomena, are bound to occur in specific circumstances. We have focused on the level of cleavage conflict in the system, the variable that Kitschelt himself found to be critical for explaining party radicalism among sub-leaders. Using the Norwegian multiparty system as a test case, we propose that radicalism among party activists is conditioned by the relative saliency of different policy dimensions. The empirical analysis, which is based on surveys of MPs, party members and voters in connection with the general election of 1993, gives very little support to our proposition.     

Explaining Media Attention for Norwegian MPs: A New Modelling Approach

This article provides a new perspective on why the quantity and tone of media coverage vary between groups of politicians. The analysis makes three key distinctions: first, between the volume of reporting and its tendency; second, between attention‐seeking politicians and blame‐avoiding politicians; and third, between attention due to characteristics of media outlets and those of politicians. These distinctions, along with a comprehensive dataset and a multilevel analysis approach, comprise the building blocks of an empirical analysis of press coverage devoted to Norwegian parliamentarians between 2001 and 2005. The results suggest that politicians who appear regularly in the newspapers, such as party leaders and long‐serving MPs, face a greater amount of negative media coverage than those who do not. Female MPs receive less, but more positive, coverage. Reporting by the tabloids is more negative than that of other newspapers, especially with regard to party leaders.     

The Impact of Radical Right-Wing Parties on the Positions of Mainstream Parties Regarding Multiculturalism

What are the political effects of rising radical right-wing parties (RRPs) in Western Europe? Does the rise of the parties drive mainstream parties (MPs) to become more restrictive on issues mobilised by RRPs, such as multiculturalism? Analysing manifesto data from 1981 to 2008, it is found that the rise of RRPs makes right-wing MPs adopt more restrictive positions regarding multiculturalism. However, left-wing MPs do so only when the opinion of party supporters on foreigners becomes more negative or when the parties lost more votes in the previous election than their opponent right-wing MPs did. The result implies that niche parties with extremist positions can benefit from their own electoral success by dragging MPs toward their own positions. However, the impact of rising niche parties on MPs should be understood against a broader background of party competition, and the impact can be dissimilar between MPs with different ideological commitment and strategic opportunities.     

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.     

Manipulating Electoral Rules to Manufacture Single-Party Dominance

This article argues that the LDP manufactured its parliamentary dominance in postwar Japan by strategically altering specific facets of the electoral system. More generally, I demonstrate that intraparty politics play a crucial role in determining when and how electoral rules are changed. Despite widespread evidence that the LDP would win more seats under an SMP electoral formula, party leaders were repeatedly blocked from replacing the postwar MMD-SNTV system by intraparty incumbents, who feared that such a change would harm their individual reelection prospects. However, party leaders had greater leeway in altering rules that generated fewer intraparty conflicts. Between 1960 and 1990, the LDP implemented approximately fifty changes to campaign regulations, most of which were aimed at enhancing the incumbency advantage of all rank-and-file MPs. Statistical tests confirm that absent pro-incumbent revisions to the electoral code, the LDP would have succumbed to declining public popularity and lost its majority at least a decade earlier.     

Institutional Foundations of Legislative Speech

Participation in legislative debates is among the most visible activities of members of parliament (MPs), yet debates remain an understudied form of legislative behavior. This study introduces a comparative theory of legislative speech with two major implications. First, party rules for debates are endogenous to strategic considerations and will favor either party leadership control or backbencher MP exposure. Second, in some systems, backbenchers will receive less time on the floor as their ideological distance to the party leadership increases. This leads to speeches that do not reflect true party cohesion. Where party reputation matters less for reelection, leaders allow dissidents to express their views on the floor. We demonstrate the implications of our model for different political systems and present evidence using speech data from Germany and the United Kingdom.     

Female leaders and citizens' perceptions of political parties

ABSTRACT

Do female leaders affect voters' perceptions of political parties' placement on the left-right spectrum? Using public opinion data on 269 parties in 35 countries between 1976 and 2016, I show that female-led parties are perceived as more moderate than male-led organizations, even when accounting for voters' prior beliefs about the party and the organization's stated policy positions. I then demonstrate that these results cannot be explained by the policy platforms authored by male- and female-led parties. The electoral manifestos produced by female-headed organizations are neither more left- leaning nor more moderate than those authored under male leaders. Together, these results provide important insights concerning citizens' (mis)perceptions of parties' ideological positions, party leaders' effects on voters behavior, the importance of gender stereotypes in politics, and the policy consequences of women's increased access to power.     

Walking the line: Electoral cycles and the shift in legislative priorities among German parliamentarians

This article sheds light on how MPs' priorities change in the course of legislative terms. We purport that members of parliament (MPs) balance a variety of incentives over the electoral cycle. While they emphasize issues that relate to the policy-making agenda of their party right after an election, competition with other parties increasingly gains influence over legislators’ priorities as the next election day approaches. We show supportive evidence for these patterns based on a unique longitudinal dataset combining information on sponsorship of legislative proposals, public opinion, party manifestos, and committee chair positions in Germany between 1990 and 2013. By bringing variation within the electoral cycle to our attention, the results enhance our understanding of the factors that set the incentive structure for MPs and the relationship between party competition and legislative behavior.     

The Parliamentary Party

The Conservative parliamentary party will fulfill three important functions for any incoming Conservative government: it will be the focus of attention for the national media; it will be the bulk vote that will deliver its legislative programme; it will form the talent pool from which members of any incoming government will be recruited. A majority Conservative government could see a majority of its MPs newly elected, with more Conservative women and ethnic minority MPs than ever before (although there will be little change in the socio-economic background of their MPs). These new MPs will present problems in terms of party management, although they will be less likely to rebel than longer-serving MPs. There are also relatively few signs of discontent among incumbent Conservative MPs (the article identifies the most rebellious Conservative MPs). Any new Conservative government will also have to deal with a reformed House of Lords, in which it will no longer have a majority.     

The economic organization of legislatures and how it affects congressional voting

Congress confronts two major organizational problems that affect the behavior of legislators, party leaders, and groups doing business with congressional committees: The costly nature of monitoring and the absence of explicit mechanisms for upholding agreements. The problem of monitoring implies that party leaders will have a difficult time influencing decisions made in decision-making arenas where the actions of legislators are less visible, as in congressional committees. While legislators can evade leadership monitoring of their actions within committees, once an issue leaves a committee, the costs of monitoring decline, and leadership influence increases. The absence of mechanisms for assuring that legislators keep their bargains means that groups will place an emphasis on dealing with reliable legislators — those who can be counted upon to uphold their end of a bargain. Thus, party leaders are more effective in influencing floor voting because of their better ability to monitor legislator behavior; however, obligations to important interest groups will be more immune to leadership influence because of the incentives for committee members to adhere to their bargains.     

Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps

Partisanship often colors how citizens perceive real‐world conditions. For example, an oft‐documented finding is that citizens tend to view the state of the national economy more positively if their party holds office. These partisan perceptual gaps are usually taken as a result of citizens' own motivated reasoning to defend their party identity. However, little is known about the extent to which perceptual gaps are shaped by one of the most important forces in politics: partisan elites. With two studies focusing on perceptions of the economy—a quasi‐experimental panel study and a randomized experiment—we show how partisan perceptual differences are substantially affected by messages coming from party elites. These findings imply that partisan elites are more influential on, and more responsible for, partisan perceptual differences than previous studies have revealed.     

Voting Against Your Constituents? How Lobbying Affects Representation

Citizens delegate the representation of their political preferences to members of Parliament (MPs), who are supposed to represent their interests in the legislature. However, MPs are exposed to a variety of interest groups seeking to influence their voting behavior. We argue that interest groups influence how MPs cast their vote in Parliament, but that this effect varies across groups. While lobbying by sectional groups provides incentives for MPs to defect from their constituents, we expect that cause groups in fact strengthen the link between MPs and their voters. We test our argument based on an innovative study of 118 Swiss public referenda, which allows for directly comparing voter preferences with legislative voting of 448 MPs on these issues. Drawing on a multilevel regression analysis, this study shows that interest groups considerably affect the link between MPs and their voters. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of political representation.     

Focus Group Follies?

Abstract

Media coverage of the contemporary British Labour party routinely suggests party leaders, notably Tony Blair, have been overly reliant on using focus group as a means of obtaining voter feedback. The paper explores this popular understanding by considering how and when qualitative forms of opinion research began to play a significant role in developing campaign strategy. Following their incorporation into party planning during the mid-1980s, focus groups provided an increasingly influential (and at the time more discreet) source of data and support for the leadership's Policy Review later that decade. Following the 1992 election defeat selective findings from the party's qualitative research programme became integral to the public relations' initiatives of Labour's self-styled “modernisers,” particularly in their largely successful attempt to delegitimise and then marginalise the role of the party's once formidable affiliated union supporters in internal affairs. Crucially this contributed to a climate that enabled the key moderniser Tony Blair to emerge and win the leadership.     

Ending in Failure? The Performance of ‘Takeover’ Prime Ministers 1916–2016

When Theresa May became Prime Minister in July 2016, she joined a list of eleven previous UK takeover leaders in the past 100 years. While the popular image is of Prime Ministers arriving in power after a general election victory, more than half of the Prime Ministers who governed since 1916 have acceded as ‘takeover leaders’ through an internal party process. This article analyses how such takeover leaders perform, concluding that May is likely to face greater obstacles and enjoy fewer advantages than if she had been popularly elected. Takeover leaders have less time in power and less chance of winning subsequent elections, and are generally rated as worse‐performing.     

Electoral Incentives and Partisan Conflict in Congress: Evidence from Survey Experiments

Does partisan conflict damage citizens’ perceptions of Congress? If so, why has polarization increased in Congress since the 1970s? To address these questions, we unpack the “electoral connection” by exploring the mass public's attitudes toward partisan conflict via two survey experiments in which we manipulated characteristics of members and Congress. We find that party conflict reduces confidence in Congress among citizens across the partisan spectrum. However, there exists heterogeneity by strength of party identification with respect to evaluations of members. Independents and weak partisans are more supportive of members who espouse a bipartisan image, whereas strong partisans are less supportive. People with strong attachments to a political party disavow conflict in the aggregate but approve of individual members behaving in a partisan manner. This pattern helps us understand why members in safely partisan districts engage in partisan conflict even though partisanship damages the collective reputation of the institution.