Do supermajority rules really deter extremism? the role of electoral competition

This study investigates how supermajority rules in a legislature affect electoral competition. We construct an extensive-form game wherein parties choose policy platforms in an election. Post election, the policy is determined based on a legislative voting rule. At symmetric equilibrium, supermajority rules induce divergence of policy platforms if and only if the parties are sufficiently attached to their preferred platform. Thus, supermajority rules may not always lead to moderate policies once electoral competition is considered.

Businessperson Deputies and Party Cohesion: Evidence from the Russian State Duma

Previous explorations of Russia’s mixed electoral system uncovered conflicting results on party discipline in legislative voting. The effect in recent convocations is modest, with single-member district deputies expressing slightly less factional loyalty than those elected under proportional representation. However, factors other than electoral mandate may also affect party cohesion. In particular, a definitive connection exists between holding public office in Russia and the opportunity to maximize personal profit-seeking. Using individual-level reading voting data on budgetary bills from the 7th State Duma, I examine how the profit-seeking behavior of deputies who previously held business positions at the executive level influences party cohesion. I find significant evidence that deputies with previous executive business positions defect from their party more frequently than those without. The effect is marginally greater for deputies elected from single-member districts rather than the party-list. These findings have greater implications for party cohesion and the involvement of businesspeople in national legislatures.

Governments in Action

How can Danish governments that are almost exclusively minority governments work and even work well? We present an analysis of legislative voting since 1973, and while it does support an impression of consensual politics, we argue that it is the option of bloc politics that can make minority governments strong and effective. When the ‘real’ opposition, i.e. the parties that would rather see a different government, know that the government can use its bloc majority to pass legislation anyway, it becomes more cooperative. This gives the government more than one possible way of passing legislation. We further argue that legislative agreements (forlig) are an important tool that helps minority governments govern. The long-term commitment that they entail makes it more attractive for opposition parties to strike deals with the government. Legislative agreements can work almost as issue-specific majority governments.

Candidacy Eligibility Criteria and Party Unity

Extant research suggests that candidate selection methods can be consequential for party unity in legislative voting. Yet thus far, only variations in the selectorate and the degree of centralization have been examined. This article argues that Candidacy Eligibility Criteria (CEC), too, have implications for party unity. I theorize that with stricter formal requirements, parties avoid adverse selection and ensure the nomination of committed candidates. By using roll-call vote data from 16 industrial democracies, candidate surveys and an original data set consisting of nearly 500 historical party constitutions, I show that parties demanding prior membership and nudging aspirants to maintain networks within the party tend to be more unified in parliamentary voting. Moreover, their candidates, too, express greater loyalty when compared with parties without formal CEC. Thus, this article contributes to the literatures on party unity and on candidate selection by showing how certain party rules, hitherto neglected, affect party unity.

Unbundling Polarization

This paper investigates the determinants of political polarization, a phenomenon of increasing relevance in Western democracies. How much of polarization is driven by divergence in the ideologies of politicians? How much is instead the result of changes in the capacity of parties to control their members? We use detailed internal information on party discipline in the context of the U.S. Congress—whip count data for 1977–1986—to identify and structurally estimate an economic model of legislative activity in which agenda selection, party discipline, and member votes are endogenous. The model delivers estimates of the ideological preferences of politicians, the extent of party control, and allows us to assess the effects of polarization through agenda setting (i.e., which alternatives to a status quo are strategically pursued). We find that parties account for approximately 40% of the political polarization in legislative voting over this time period, a critical inflection point in U.S. polarization. We also show that, absent party control, historically significant economic policies would have not passed or lost substantial support. Counterfactual exercises establish that party control is highly relevant for the probability of success of a given bill and that polarization in ideological preferences is more consequential for policy selection, resulting in different bills being pursued.

Unpacking Representation in State Immigration Policy: Latino Composition, White Racial Threat, and Legislator Partisanship

Most research studying minority representation concludes that minorities enjoy better representation when they constitute a larger share of a constituency, but only through the partisanship and race/ethnicity of the representative. Other research finds that minorities receive worse representation when they constitute a larger share of a constituency. We argue that minority composition will have an independent effect on representation, but that this effect will differ depending on the representative’s partisanship. We apply our theory to Latino composition and state legislative voting on immigration policy and find that Latino composition has no effect on voting among Democratic legislators, who are less likely to vote in a restrictive direction on immigration than Republicans regardless of the Latino composition in their district. However, Republicans are more likely to vote to restrict immigration as Latinos comprise a larger share of their district. Our findings suggest that scholars should consider the moderating effect of legislator partisanship when examining minority composition and representation.

Peer Effects in Legislative Voting

We exploit seating rules in the European Parliament to identify peer effects in legislative voting. Sitting adjacently leads to a 7 percent reduction in the overall likelihood that two members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the same party differ in their vote. Peer effects are markedly stronger among pairs of women, MEP pairs from the same country, and in close votes. Using variation in seating across the parliament's two venues (Brussels and Strasbourg), we show that peer effects are persistent: MEPs who have sat together in the past disagree less even when they are not seated adjacently. (JEL D72, Z13)

When Does the Personal Vote Matter for Party Loyalty? The Conditional Effects of Candidate-Centred Electoral Systems

When do candidate-centred electoral systems produce undisciplined parties? In this article, we examine party discipline under open-list proportional representation, a system associated with MPs cultivating personal constituencies. We present a model explaining how legislators’ preferences and support among voters mediate political leaders’ ability to enforce discipline. We show that disloyalty in candidate-centred systems depends on parties’ costs for enforcing discipline, but only conditional on MP preferences. MPs who share the policy preferences of their leaders will be loyal even when the leaders cannot discipline them. To test the model’s implications, we use data on legislative voting in Poland’s parliament. Our empirical findings confirm that disloyalty is conditioned on party leaders’ enforcement capacity and MP preferences. We find that legislators who contribute more to the party electorally in terms of votes are more disloyal, but only if their preferences diverge from the leadership. Our results suggest that the relationship between open lists and party disloyalty is conditional on the context of the party system.