German Parliamentarism in 1848: Roll-Call Voting in the Frankfurt Assembly

1981 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald J. Mattheisen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Partial Revision ◽  
Government Coalition

The reputation of the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 has undergone a partial revision in the last few years. Its members used to be considered political novices from whom one could learn little about how to run a parliament (Huber, 1960: 613 is typical). Ziebura (1963) was perhaps the first to challenge this view. He showed that the Frankfurt Assembly was, in fact, run in a very professional way: It created sophisticated and disciplined political parties, and these parties actually exerted effective control over parliamentary business. They even joined together to form a coalition that gave reliable political support to a German provisional government. Kramer (1968), Boldt (1971), Botzenhart (1977), and Langewiesche (1978) have subsequently documented the skillful organization of these parties and their attempts to control members, to create extraparliamentary connections, and to maintain both a formal government coalition and an organized opposition. Kramer (1968: 175-178) has shown that they were particularly successful in applying party discipline to voting behavior: The results of voting could often be foretold simply from a knowledge of how the parties stood on the question at issue.

Roll-call Voting Behaviour in Legislatures

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Simon Hug
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Individual Accountability

Roll call votes offer rich behavioural information on individual members of parliament (MPs) and have been used to study many important research questions, also dealing with issues of representation. With the help of such votes MPs (and/or their parties) can be held to account. Thus, scholars have assessed broadly whether political parties act in a disciplined fashion and what affects the voting behavior of individual MPs, thus covering both processes of collective and individual accountability. The literature finds that evidence for such accountability relationships, is, however, also hampered by different uses of roll call votes across time and space.

A House Divided

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank C. Thames
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Representation Election ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Empirical Results

Mixed-member electoral systems embrace two views of representation by electing some legislators in single-member district elections and others in a proportional representation election. This can potentially create a “mandate divide” in legislatures, because single-member district legislators have an incentive to embrace parochial issues and proportional representation legislators have an incentive to center on national issues. Previous studies of this question have only found limited evidence of its existence. The author argues that the level of party system institutionalization will fundamentally determine whether a mandate divide will exist in a mixed-member legislature. Using roll-call voting data from the Hungarian National Assembly, the Russian Duma, and the Ukrainian Rada, the author analyzes patterns of party discipline in each legislature. The empirical results show that a mandate divide only existed in the legislature with the most weakly institutionalized party system, the Russian Duma.

The Coefficient of Party Influence

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Krehbiel
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Marginal Increase ◽  
Specific Effects ◽  
Innovative Method ◽  
One To One ◽  
Party Strength

In a 2000 article in American Journal of Political Science, James Snyder and Tim Groseclose develop and apply an innovative method for detecting and estimating the frequency and magnitude of party influence in congressional roll call voting. This paper presents a framework for assessing the coefficient that the authors interpret as “party influence.” The analysis reveals that, and shows why, the coefficient manifests two troublesome characteristics. The coefficient cannot discriminate between disparate types of party influence because the mapping between types of partison influence and signs of the coefficient is not one-to-one. Similarly, the coefficient has a responsiveness problem because a marginal increase in one party's influence can cause the estimate of the coefficient to increase, decrease, or remain constant. Because the literature on parties in Congress emphasizes majority-party strength, the inability of the coefficient to isolate party-specific effects is a serious drawback in the ongoing hunt for genuine party discipline.

scholarly journals Gender and Roll Call Voting Behavior in Congress: A Cross-Chamber Analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Frederick
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Common Space ◽  
Female Legislators ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Male House

Numerous studies have examined the roll call voting behavior of women in Congress. Much of this scholarship has focused on whether female legislators tend to be more liberal than their male colleagues. However, most of this research has examined whether gender differences exist within a specific legislative chamber. This paper seeks to build on this past research by exploring whether the relationship between the descriptive and substantive representation of women is contingent upon the institutional context in which female legislators serve. Using Common Space Scores which estimate the roll call voting behavior of U.S. Senators and U.S. House members on a scale that allows for comparisons across each chamber this study analyzes the voting records of Female Senators, Male Senators, Female House Members and Male House Members in the 109th-111th Congresses. The results show that in the contemporary Congress, gender exerts minimal influence on how legislators cast their votes with the exception of female Republican Senators who are noticeably more liberal than Republicans in both the House and Senate.

The Influence of the President and Government Coalition on Roll-Call Voting in Brazil, 2003–2006

2020 ◽  
pp. 147892992090458
Author(s):  
Tsung-han Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Spatial Voting ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
The Government

In Brazil’s legislative process, political exchanges between the government and legislature is an essential feature. This article focuses on the role of the president and political parties in Brazil’s national legislative process. Because nonideological factors influence voting, roll calls do not suffice for estimation of legislators’ policy preferences. In this article, we derive a spatial model of voting in which voting behavior is induced by both ideological motivations and coalition dynamics and develop a multilevel ideal-point model implied by the spatial voting model. After the proposed model is applied to the analysis of roll-call votes in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies between 2003 and 2006, coalition dynamics is found to influence the voting behavior of legislators. We also confirm the finding in previous studies that the ideological alignment of political parties in the legislature contrasts with the perceived positions.

The Role of Personal Attributes in African American Roll-Call Voting Behavior in Congress

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Rocca ◽  
Gabriel R. Sanchez ◽  
Ron Nikora
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Personal Attributes ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting

Politicians' Beliefs about Voters

1967 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Kingdon
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Implicit Theory ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Lewis A

The pattern of communications between representatives and constituents has become a matter of central concern to many students of legislative behavior. As Lewis A. Dexter points out, the statement that a Congressman “represents” his district is only shorthand for the fact that the Congressman “represents his image of the district or of his constituents.” This image is established, according to Dexter, by the communications between representative and constituents: “what he hears from the district as he interprets it.” Miller and Stokes explore directly Congressmen's images of their constituents' opinions. The representative's image of his district is significant because it may constitute part of the explanation for various important types of behavior, such as his roll call voting, the stands he takes on issues of public policy, and the formulation of his campaign strategies.A portion of a representative's image of his district is composed of his beliefs about voters, his explicit or implicit theory of voting behavior. Because his position is contingent upon the approval of a majority of voters in an election, he is likely to consider at least to some degree the effect that various of his decisions might have on election outcomes. In making such judgments, the representative probably makes some assumptions, conscious or not, about the manner in which voters make their choices. If he believes, for example, that voters pay close attention to his actions, he probably feels more constrained by his district's likely opinions than if he does not hold that belief.

The effects of political parties on roll-call voting in Kenya’s Parliament

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-541
Author(s):  
Christian B. Jensen ◽  
Michelle Kuenzi ◽  
Daniel J. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting
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