scholarly journals Elites and Brexit: Ideological Realignment in the House of Lords, 2000-2020

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc S. Jacob ◽  
Ugur Ozdemir
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Optimal Classification ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

The UK House of Lords has increasingly attracted public attention due to several government defeats of Brexit bills. Despite this growing attention, there is little research on how coalitions' and individuals' voting behavior in the upper house of the UK Parliament has transformed since its major reform in 1999. This paper addresses this gap by shedding light on the transformation of Lords' voting behavior between 2000 and 2020. We argue that the British party system's growing bipolarity along the UK's future relationship with the EU had substantive repercussions for decision-making processes in the Lords. Analyzing about 2,400 roll call votes with Optimal Classification (OC) ideal point estimation models, we show that, in the post-Brexit period, partisan clusters among peers dissolved and new voting coalitions emerged, leading to an increasingly unidimensional voting space in the Lords. Our results suggest that the UK's second chamber has undergone a process of ideological realignment after the 2016 Brexit referendum.

scholarly journals Attempts to change the British House of Lords into a second chamber of the nations and regions: explaining a history af failed reforms

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-299
Author(s):  
Meg Russell
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
The Uk

Abstract The House of Lords is the world’s longest-established and probably best-known second chamber. Wholly unelected, with most members appointed for life, it appears a vestige of the ‘elite’ form of bicameralism once common throughout Europe. Hence calls for major reform are commonplace. However successful changes have been piecemeal and rare. Meanwhile the UK is not federal, but is nonetheless a ‘union state’, comprising the territories of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each with its own distinct governing arrangements. These were most recently boosted by the 1997 Labour government’s devolution programme. Hence for decades, and particularly the last 20 years, devolution and Lords reform have both been on the UK’s political agenda. Throughout this time attempts to create a ‘second chamber of the nations and regions’ have repeatedly failed. This paper reviews the proposals made, and the obstacles they faced - drawing lessons for Britain, and territorial bicameralism more widely.

10. EU Legislation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Beale ◽  
Libby Kurien ◽  
Eve Samson
Keyword(s):  
Direct Access ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
Eu Legislation ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

This chapter examines the ways in which the UK Parliament formally constrains the government and engages with European Union (EU) institutions. The House of Lords and the House of Commons both have processes to ensure that legislation proposed at the EU level has been properly reviewed before it takes effect in UK law. The ‘scrutiny reserve’, which stipulates that ministers should not agree to proposals under scrutiny, is used to elicit information about the government's negotiating position. Parliament also has a role in examining EU legislation and providing direct access to European institutions. The chapter first provides an overview of the EU legislative process, focusing on three principal EU institutions: member states, the European Parliament (EP), and the European Commission. It also considers the formal role of national parliaments in the EU legislative process, the UK Parliament's scrutiny of the EU legislation and its effectiveness, and parliamentary scrutiny after Brexit.

3. Decision-making and democracy in the EU

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-87
Author(s):  
Sylvia de Mars
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Big Events ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

This chapter analyses what EU academics have termed the ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU. In EU law, the concept of the ‘democratic deficit’ is used to classify the EU as a system that may hold some of the qualities of a democratic government, but is lacking others. The chapter then investigates just how much ‘democracy’ exists in the EU decision-making processes. There are those who claim that the EU will never be democratic, and those who argue that the EU actually does not suffer from true shortcomings. The chapter evaluates both of those claims, and considers if recent big events in the EU — such as the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, and the so-called Eurozone financial crisis — impact upon the debate. It also looks at the nature of Brexit during the Withdrawal Agreement's transition period, as well as the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

Nonparametric Ideal-Point Estimation and Inference

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Tahk
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hypothesis Tests ◽  
Consistent Estimation ◽  
Nonparametric Approach ◽  
Ideal Points ◽  
Ideal Point Estimation

Existing approaches to estimating ideal points offer no method for consistent estimation or inference without relying on strong parametric assumptions. In this paper, I introduce a nonparametric approach to ideal-point estimation and inference that goes beyond these limitations. I show that some inferences about the relative positions of two pairs of legislators can be made with minimal assumptions. This information can be combined across different possible choices of the pairs to provide estimates and perform hypothesis tests for all legislators without additional assumptions. I demonstrate the usefulness of these methods in two applications to Supreme Court data, one testing for ideological movement by a single justice and the other testing for multidimensional voting behavior in different decades.

Monetary Policy Committees and Voting Behavior

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-58
Author(s):  
Sylvester Eijffinger ◽  
Ronald Mahieu ◽  
Louis Raes
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Point Estimates ◽  
Monetary Policy Committees ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Ideal Point Estimation

In this chapter we suggest to use Bayesian ideal point estimation to analyze voting in monetary policy committees. Using data from the Riksbank we demonstrate what this entails and we compare ideal point estimates with the results from traditional approaches. We end by suggesting possible extensions.

scholarly journals An Evolutionary View of the U.S. Supreme Court

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Noah Giansiracusa
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Hyperbolic Metrics ◽  
Tree Estimation ◽  
Evolutionary View ◽  
Euclidean Setting

The voting patterns of the nine justices on the United States Supreme Court continue to fascinate and perplex observers of the Court. While it is commonly understood that the division of the justices into a liberal branch and a conservative branch inevitably drives many case outcomes, there are finer, less transparent divisions within these two main branches that have proven difficult to extract empirically. This study imports methods from evolutionary biology to help illuminate the intricate and often overlooked branching structure of the justices’ voting behavior. Specifically, phylogenetic tree estimation based on voting disagreement rates is used to extend ideal point estimation to the non-Euclidean setting of hyperbolic metrics. After introducing this framework, comparing it to one- and two-dimensional multidimensional scaling, and arguing that it flexibly captures important higher-dimensional voting behavior, a handful of potential ways to apply this tool are presented. The emphasis throughout is on interpreting these judicial trees and extracting qualitative insights from them.

scholarly journals ‘Winning Back Control’: Migration, Borders and Visions of Political Community

2021 ◽  
pp. 002088172110020
Author(s):  
Oliver Schmidtke
Keyword(s):  
Policy Formation ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Integration Project ◽  
The Eu

This article focuses on the governance of migration and borders as key issues of Brexit in a dual sense: as a contested political issue centrally fueling the Brexit debates and as an area of policy formation. First, the article addresses how Brexit has changed free movement as a key principle of the European integration project and transformed cross-border mobility between the European Union (EU) and the UK in a post-Brexit European border regime. Second, it discusses how the politicization of migration during the Brexit campaign has accentuated competing visions of political community. With a view to the effects of Brexit on the governance of migration and borders in Europe, the article demonstrates how the Brexit debates have emphasized the prominence of exclusionary nationalism, while they have simultaneously created new opportunities for the EU to launch a major reform of its migration and asylum policies.

Parliamentary Report

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-348
Author(s):  
Frank Cranmer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Act ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Careful Thought ◽  
The Eu

On 9 May, the EU Justice Sub-Committee of the House of Lords, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, published a report on the Government's proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a new Bill of Rights – and suggested that there was a forceful case for a Government rethink: The proposals the Secretary of State outlined did not appear to depart significantly from the Human Rights Act – we note in particular that all the rights contained within the ECHR are likely to be affirmed in any British Bill of Rights. His evidence left us unsure why a British Bill of Rights was really necessary. If a Bill of Rights is not intended to change significantly the protection of human rights in the UK, we recommend the Government give careful thought before proceeding with this policy … the repeal of the Human Rights Act and its replacement by a Bill of Rights would be a constitutional change of the greatest significance.

Large-Scale Ideal Point Estimation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Michael Peress
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Computation Time ◽  
Large Data ◽  
R Package ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Ideal Point Estimation ◽  
Data Matrices

Abstract Recent advances in the study of voting behavior and the study of legislatures have relied on ideal point estimation for measuring the preferences of political actors, and increasingly, these applications have involved very large data matrices. This has proved challenging for the widely available approaches. Limitations of existing methods include excessive computation time and excessive memory requirements on large datasets, the inability to efficiently deal with sparse data matrices, inefficient computation of standard errors, and ineffective methods for generating starting values. I develop an approach for estimating multidimensional ideal points in large-scale applications, which overcomes these limitations. I demonstrate my approach by applying it to a number of challenging problems. The methods I develop are implemented in an r package (ipe).

scholarly journals Multiple Ideal Points: Revealed Preferences in Different Domains

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Moser ◽  
Abel Rodríguez ◽  
Chelsea L. Lofland
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
Revealed Preference ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Revealed Preferences ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Ideal Points ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWe extend classical ideal point estimation to allow voters to have different preferences when voting in different domains—for example, when voting on agricultural policy than when voting on defense policy. Our scaling procedure results in estimated ideal points on a common scale. As a result, we are able to directly compare a member’s revealed preferences across different domains of voting (different sets of motions) to assess if, for example, a member votes more conservatively on agriculture motions than on defense. In doing so, we are able to assess the extent to which voting behavior of an individual voter is consistent with a uni-dimensional spatial model—if a member has the same preferences in all domains. The key novelty is to estimate rather than assume the identity of “stayers”—voters whose revealed preference is constant across votes. Our approach offers methodology for investigating the relationship between the basic space and issue space in legislative voting (Poole 2007). There are several methodological advantages to our approach. First, our model allows for testing sharp hypotheses. Second, the methodology developed can be understood as a kind of partial-pooling model for item response theory scaling, resulting in less uncertainty of estimates. Related, our estimation method provides a principled and unified approach to the issue of “granularity” (i.e., the level of aggregation) in the analysis of roll-call data (Crespin and Rohde 2010; Roberts et al. 2016). We illustrate the model by estimating U.S. House of Representatives members’ revealed preferences in different policy domains, and identify several other potential applications of the model including: studying the relationship between committee and floor voting behavior; and investigating constituency influence and representation.

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