scholarly journals When Does She Rebel? How Gender Affects Deviating Legislative Behaviour

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Dingler ◽  
Lena Ramstetter
Keyword(s):  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Incentive Structures ◽  
Policy Content ◽  
Women In Parliament ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
German Bundestag

Abstract It is common wisdom that the increase in the number of women in parliament brought along a new diversity of perspectives presented in legislatures. So far, however, we know little about the implications of women's presence on party cohesion. Moving towards a more complete understanding of how women affect political processes, this article addresses the question, does gender affect vote defection from party lines, and if so, under what circumstances? We argue that the actual and perceived risk associated with vote defection in roll-call votes is gendered and that this is constraining the leeway of women to rebel. Analysing roll-call vote data of the German Bundestag (1953–2013) provided by Bergmann et al. (2018), we show that gender exerts a consistent effect only if electoral safety and policy content are considered: it is in feminine policy areas and at high levels of electoral security that women are more likely than men to rebel. This finding implies that taking different incentive structures into account is key if we want to understand gendered legislative behaviour.

Off the Record: Unrecorded Legislative Votes, Selection Bias and Roll-Call Vote Analysis

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLIFFORD J. CARRUBBA ◽  
MATTHEW GABEL ◽  
LACEY MURRAH ◽  
RYAN CLOUGH ◽  
ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Random Sample ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
General Study ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
Sampling Problem ◽  
The Universe

Scholars often use roll-call votes to study legislative behaviour. However, many legislatures only conclude a minority of decisions by roll call. Thus, if these votes are not a random sample of the universe of votes cast, scholars may be drawing misleading inferences. In fact, theories over why roll-call votes are requested would predict selection bias based on exactly the characteristics of legislative voting that scholars have most heavily studied. This article demonstrates the character and severity of this sampling problem empirically by examining European Parliament vote data for a whole year. Given that many legislatures decided only a fraction of their legislation by roll call, these findings have potentially important implications for the general study of legislative behaviour.

scholarly journals Roll-Call Vote Selection: Implications for the Study of Legislative Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-706
Author(s):  
CAITLIN AINSLEY ◽  
CLIFFORD J. CARRUBBA ◽  
BRIAN F. CRISP ◽  
BETUL DEMIRKAYA ◽  
MATTHEW J. GABEL ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Formal Model ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Voting Procedures ◽  
Strategic Incentives ◽  
Theoretical Results ◽  
Representative Samples ◽  
Quantities Of Interest

Roll-call votes provide scholars with the opportunity to measure many quantities of interest. However, the usefulness of the roll-call sample depends on the population it is intended to represent. After laying out why understanding the sample properties of the roll-call record is important, we catalogue voting procedures for 145 legislative chambers, finding that roll calls are typically discretionary. We then consider two arguments for discounting the potential problem: (a) roll calls are ubiquitous, especially where the threshold for invoking them is low or (b) the strategic incentives behind requests are sufficiently benign so as to generate representative samples. We address the first defense with novel empirical evidence regarding roll-call prevalence and the second with an original formal model of the position-taking argument for roll-call vote requests. Both our empirical and theoretical results confirm that inattention to vote method selection should broadly be considered an issue for the study of legislative behavior.

scholarly journals What Motivates an Oligarchic Elite to Democratize? Evidence from the Roll Call Vote on the Great Reform Act of 1832

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 773-825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toke S. Aidt ◽  
Raphaël Franck
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Members Of Parliament

AbstractThe Great Reform Act of 1832 was a watershed for democracy in Great Britain. We study the vote on 22 March 1831 in the House of Commons to test three competing theories of democratization: public opinion, political expedience, and threat of revolution. Peaceful agitation and mass-support for reform played an important role. Political expedience also motivated some members of Parliament to support the reform, especially if they were elected in constituencies located in counties that would gain seats. Violent unrest in urban but not in rural areas had some influence on the members of Parliament. Counterfactual scenarios suggest that the reform bill would not have obtained a majority in the House of Commons in the absence of these factors.

scholarly journals Power to the Parties: Cohesion and Competition in the European Parliament, 1979–2001

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON HIX ◽  
ABDUL NOURY ◽  
GÉRARD ROLAND
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Total Population ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
The Impact

How cohesive are political parties in the European Parliament? What coalitions form and why? The answers to these questions are central for understanding the impact of the European Parliament on European Union policies. These questions are also central in the study of legislative behaviour in general. We collected the total population of roll-call votes in the European Parliament, from the first elections in 1979 to the end of 2001 (over 11,500 votes). The data show growing party cohesion despite growing internal national and ideological diversity within the European party groups. We also find that the distance between parties on the left-right dimension is the strongest predictor of coalition patterns. We conclude that increased power of the European Parliament has meant increased power for the transnational parties, via increased internal party cohesion and inter-party competition.

scholarly journals Party membership, pre-parliamentary socialization and party cohesion

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110390
Author(s):  
Jochen Rehmert
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
Political Careers ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Using Data ◽  
German Bundestag ◽  
Established Democracies

Party membership seems to lose relevance for political careers in many established democracies. Increasing numbers of parties are recruiting non-members as candidates. Yet, what are the implications of a lack of long-term party membership for party cohesion? In this paper, I argue that pre-parliamentary party membership is in fact crucial for cohesion. Using data from the Comparative Candidate Survey and voting behavior of ca. 2,000 MPs of the German Bundestag on free votes from 1953 to 2013, I examine the effect of length of previous party membership and the age of joining the party on indicators of party cohesion. Examining free votes allows for credibly controlling alternative explanations of unified voting behavior. Results are in line with expectations generated from social identity theory and underscore the importance of party membership for party cohesion. The paper concludes with a discussion on the findings’ implications in light of recent developments in parties’ candidate recruitment.

The temporal dimension of issue competition

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 708-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Schröder ◽  
Christian Stecker
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Data Set ◽  
German State ◽  
Tit For Tat ◽  
Party Strength ◽  
Issue Competition

Existing accounts of issue competition have focused on content: What issues do parties choose to compete with. We complement this literature with an account of parties’ choices on when to compete. Conceiving of the object of competition – public attention – as a common-pool resource, we explain the timing of party attempts at acquiring issues as an interdependent process. Outside of election times, parties coordinate their attempts along a tit-for-tat logic. Within election times, they raise rates of their attempts, rendering coordination futile. This especially concerns opposition parties. We test our hypotheses with a novel data set on roll call vote (RCV) requests in the 16 German state parliaments. These parliaments lend themselves to comparative analysis since they are nearly identical in institutional features and political positions of parties, yet diverse as concerns party strength and government participation at any point in time. The data set covers all 4849 RCVs held in 16.968 plenary sessions in the period 1947–2011.

scholarly journals Roll-Call Votes in the German Bundestag: A New Dataset, 1949–2013

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 1137-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Sieberer ◽  
Thomas Saalfeld ◽  
Tamaki Ohmura ◽  
Henning Bergmann ◽  
Stefanie Bailer
Keyword(s):  
Roll Call ◽  
German Bundestag

Explaining Party Cohesion in Congress: The Case of Shared Policy Attitudes

1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 1156-1171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Norpoth
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Voting Decisions ◽  
Party Voting

Partisanship has often been noted as one of the most conspicuous factors in legislative voting in the U.S. Congress. This paper attempts to trace party voting to shared policy goals. After the mean attitudes of congressmen belonging to the same party were ascertained for a number of policy domains, the effect of mean party attitudes on roll-call voting was estimated by regression analysis, taking into account the deviation of individual congressmen from their respective mean party attitudes. The results demonstrate that in all three policy domains examined, i.e., social welfare, civil rights, and foreign policy, shared party attitudes leave a strong imprint on individual roll-call decisions. The voting decisions of congressmen, in fact, are found to owe more to the shared party attitudes than to their own individual attitudes. The paper also explores the communication process through which shared policy attitudes are translated within Congress into partisan roll-call votes and points to a way of reconciling the “predispositional” and the “interactional” approach to legislative decision making.

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