Part 2

Discipline

Bibliographic Data

ID7315948
AuthorsSam Depauw (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume9
Issue4
Pages130-146
Publication date2003-12-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Legislative Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1357-2334 • E-ISSN: 1743-9337
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1357233042000306308
OpenAlexW2328330448
LanguageEN
Citations received32

In recent years the level of cohesion in parliamentary parties has continued to increase. Whereas in Congress the party leadership's capabilities to solve collective action problems and to reduce transaction costs have been in doubt, in parliamentary systems little seems to warrant such doubt. Therefore, the aim of this article is to trace the party leadership's particular capabilities to secure party unity in parliamentary systems by means of (i) contract design, (ii) screening and selection, (iii) monitoring and information requirements, and (iv) institutional checks. To the extent that these capabilities affect members differently, it is possible to sketch their contours on the basis of who the rebels are. It is apparent that discipline is not readily explained in terms of rewards and punishments. Factions and tendencies provide perhaps the most valid prediction for dissent in France and the United Kingdom, whereas in Belgium the extra-parliamentary party leadership and a detailed policy agreement have a strong impact on members' discipline. Acknowledgments The author would like to express his gratitude to the Lord Norton of Louth for the data on the 1992 House of Commons, as well as M. Daladier, D. Angle's d'Auriac, and M. Mainvialle at the National Assembly and F. Graulich at the Belgian Federal Parliament for data on their respective institutions. He would also like to thank the participants of the RCLS Conference for their helpful comments. Notes R. Rose 'British MPs: More Bark than Bite?' in E. Suleiman (ed.), Parliaments and Parliamentarians in Democratic Politics (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986), p.37. D.W. Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Post-Reform House (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991). G.W. Cox and M.D. McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan. Party Government in the House (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). J.H. Aldrich, Why Parties ? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p.28. W.C. Müller, 'Political Parties in Parliamentary Democracies: Making Delegation and Accountability Work', European Journal of Political Research, 37 (2000), p.314. Note, however, that dependence as a concept denotes an obedience beyond mere compensation. Because the party controls the sole route to members' goals, it can bargain for more than it offers by way of rewards. M. Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987). Cox and McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan, pp.125–34. J.H. Aldrich and D.W. Rohde, 'Measuring Conditional Party Government', paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 23–25 April 1998, p.5. K. Krehbiel, 'Where's the Party?' British Journal of Political Science, 23 (1993), p.238. MPs' corrections to votes cast are attached to recorded divisions in the minutes, often regarding a division that took place months earlier. Self-evidently these corrections were taken into account when dissenting votes were collected. Not considered dissenting votes are: abstentions that are the result of pairing; corrections that adapt the vote to the party line; and abstentions that are a device to obtain the floor following the division according to article 49. They typically reiterate the party position. R. Waller and B. Criddle, The Almanac of British Politics (London: Routledge, 1996). X, Qui est qui en France (Paris: Lafitte, 1992/93). R. Decan, Wie is wie in Vlaanderen 1985–93 (Brussel: BRD, 1989); M. Leszczynska, Qui est qui en Belgique francophone et au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg 1990–1991 (Bruxelles: Appel, 1990); X, Politiek Zakboekje: Politicowie (Antwerpen: Kluwer, 1993/94). P. Cowley and P. Norton, 'Are Conservative MPs Revolting? Dissension by Government MPs in the British House of Commons 1976–96' (Centre for Legislative Studies Research Paper, University of Hull, 1996/2), pp.33–4. Müller, 'Political Parties in Parliamentary Democracies: Making Delegation and Accountability Work', p.317. S. Schüttemeyer, Fraktionen im Deutschen Bundestag 1949–97 (Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1998), p.248. D.R. Kiewiet and M.D. McCubbins, The Logic of Delegation. Congressional Parties and the Appropriations Process (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp.27–37. S. Bowler, D. Farrell and R. Katz, 'Party Cohesion, Party Discipline, and Parliaments', in S. Bowler, D. Farrell and R. Katz (eds.), Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp.6–7. H. Klingemann, R. Hofferbert and I. Budge, Parties, Policies and Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), pp.238–9. L. De Winter, A. Timmermans and P. Dumont,'Belgium: On Government Agreements, Evangelists, Followers and Heretics', in W. Müller and K. Strøm (eds.), Coalition Governments in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.319–22. G. Rahat and R. Hazan, 'Candidate Selection Methods: An Analytical Framework', Party Politics, 7/3 (2001), p.314. L. De Winter, 'Twintig jaar polls of de teloorgang van een vorm van interne partijdemocratie', Res Publica, 22 (1980), pp.563–85. D. Denver, 'Britain: Centralised Parties with Decentralised Selection', in M. Gallagher and M. Marsh (eds.), Candidate Selection in Comparative Perspective. The Secret Garden of Politics (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1988), pp.51–4. J. Thiébault, 'France: The Impact of Electoral System Change', in Gallagher and Marsh (eds.), Candidate Selection in Comparative Perspective. The Secret Garden of Politics, pp.73, 75 and 77. Denver,'Britain: Centralized Parties with Decentralized Selection', pp.57–8. Thiébault, 'France: The Impact of Electoral System Change', p.77. In France, the 'habitations à loyers modérés' were used instead and in Belgium the proportion of households occupying a house with minimal comfort. D. MacRae, 'The Relation between Roll-Call Votes and Constituencies in the Massachusetts House of Representatives', American Political Science Review, 46 (1952), pp.1046–55. B.J. Gaines and G. Garrett, 'The Calculus of Dissent: Party Discipline in the British Labour Government, 1974–79', Political Behavior, 15/2 (1993), p.124. Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity, p.78. Thiébault and Dolez, 'Parliamentary Parties in the French Fifth Republic', pp.62 and 67. Because 40 per cent of the MPs do not dissent even once, the dependent variable does not lend itself to OLS regression. In addition, the measurement is non-categorical and discrete. As a result, the article opted for Poisson regression models. Because the conditional variance eclipses the conditional mean, a negative-binomial model is best suited. Moreover, a distinction can be made between MPs who did not dissent once, because they would never dissent, and MPs who did not dissent once, because the circumstances that would tempt them to do so never came up. This statistical distinction clearly makes sense in the case of cabinet ministers. Additional support is to be found in the fact that the zero-inflated model is particularly valid in the British case, yet not in the French case as ministers are not part of the PPG then. The appropriateness of both models is tested with the α-test and Vuong-test, both included in the table. It is unfortunate that the LL statistic only allows us to compare nested models. J. Long Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables (London: Sage, 1997), pp.218–19 and 233–48. J. Piper,'British Backbench Rebellion and Government Appointments 1945–87', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 16 (1991), p.227. J. Thiébault,'The Political Autonomy of Cabinet Ministers in the French Fifth Republic', in M. Laver and K. Shepsle (eds.), Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.148. A test of means has a value of 0.38 (df 304) and a probability of 0.71 (with equal variances). Due to limits of space the results will not be shown in full. D. Baker, A. Gamble and S. Ludlam,'Whips or Scorpions? The Maastricht Vote and the Conservative Party', Parliamentary Affairs, 46 (1993), p.158. Members' positions on the death penalty and lowering the age limit for consensual homosexual relations were coded for this purpose. Because the variable was constructed on the data reported in R. Waller and B. Criddle, The Almanac of British Politics (London: Routledge, 1996), a residual category was constructed of MPs whose voting record was not mentioned on the subject. As a result only the staunchest supporters of either stance are coded: as such this provides a rather conservative test. P. Cowley and P. Norton,'Rebels and Rebellions: Conservative MPs in the 1992 Parliament', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1 (1999), p.96. C. Kam, 'Do Ideological Preferences Explain Parliamentary Behaviour? Evidence from Great Britain and Canada', Journal of Legislative Studies, 7/4 (2001), p.99. Müller, 'Political Parties in Parliamentary Democracies', p.329. De Winter et al., 'Belgium: On Government Agreements, Evangelists, Followers and Heretics', pp.319–22

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