Brave rebels stay home : assessing the effect of intra-party ideological heterogeneity and party whip on roll-call votes
Articolo
Data di Pubblicazione:
2015
Citazione:
Brave rebels stay home : assessing the effect of intra-party ideological heterogeneity and party whip on roll-call votes / A. Ceron. - In: PARTY POLITICS. - ISSN 1354-0688. - 21:2(2015 Mar 16), pp. 246-258. [10.1177/1354068812472581]
Abstract:
Sanctions and homogeneity of intra-party preferences are the two main pathways to party unity in roll-call votes. However,
only a few works have managed to properly measure the degree of polarization within the party, and therefore the link
between ideological preferences and parliamentary voting behaviour has not yet been fully tested. Looking at the internal
debates held during party congresses and analysingmotions presented by party factions through quantitative text analysis, the
present article provides a new measure of intra-party polarization that is exogenous to the parliamentary arena. Thismeasure
is used to disentangle the effect of ideological heterogeneity on MPs voting behaviour, net of the party whip. Our results show
that factional heterogeneity negatively affects party unity. This effect, however, is conditional on the strength of whipping
resources available to the party leader.When the electoral systemor the intra-party candidate selection process allows strong
discipline to be enforced, the negative effect of heterogeneous preferences on party unity is lower or no longer significant.
However, since absences can be a strategy by which to express dissent while avoiding sanctions, they should be considered
as an additional voting option and this is crucial to understanding the impact of intra-party heterogeneity on party unity
Tipologia IRIS:
01 - Articolo su periodico
Keywords:
administering discipline; content analysis; Italy; legislative cohesion; party factionalism
Elenco autori:
A. Ceron
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