Government-Opposition or Left-Right? The Institutional Determinants of Voting in Legislatures

Abstract

We use roll-call voting data from 16 legislatures to investigate how the institutional context of politics -such as whether a country is a parliamentary or presidential regime, or has a single-party, coalition or minority government -shapes coalition formation and voting behaviour in parliaments. We use a geometric scaling metric to estimate the 'revealed space' in each of these legislatures and a vote-by-vote statistical analysis to identify how much of this space can be explained by government-opposition dynamics as opposed to (leftright) policy positions of parties. We find that government-opposition interests rather than parties' policy positions are the main drivers of voting behaviour in most institutional contexts. In contrast, we find that issue-by-issue coalition-building along a single policy dimension only exists under restrictive institutional constraints; namely presidential regimes with coalition governments or parliamentary systems with minority governments. Put another way, voting in most legislatives is more like Westminster than Washington, DC.

Parliamentary Voting Procedures in Comparison

“…From the early work by Lowell (1901) and Rice (1925) on various aspects of voting cohesion scholars have developed sophisticated tools to deal with parliamentary voting data (for a survey, see for instance Poole 2005) and gone beyond the British and US parliaments to cover a wide range of legislative chambers (for some comparative work see Carey 2007aCarey , 2009Coman 2012;Depauw and Martin 2009;Hix and Noury 2007). At the same time in terms of both theoretical insights and methodological innovations, work on the US Congress has largely dominated the field.…”

“…As these voting procedures vary considerably across parliamentary chambers (see for instance Carey 2009;Carrubba et al 2008;Crisp and Driscoll 2012;Hug 2010;Inter-Parliamentary Union 1986;Saalfeld 1995), the datagenerating process that leads to roll call data inevitably varies. Nevertheless, scholars have relied on roll call data from different contexts without taking these differences into account (see for instance Carey 2007a;Coman 2012;Depauw and Martin 2009;Hix and Noury 2007).…”

“…Nevertheless, scholars have relied on roll call data from different contexts without taking these differences into account (see for instance Carey 2007a;Coman 2012;Depauw and Martin 2009;Hix and Noury 2007). Except under rather optimistic assumptions, such comparative work is fraught with considerable problems.…”

Government–Opposition Dynamics in Spain under the Pressure of Economic Collapse and the Debt Crisis

“…Voting for or against policy decisions is informative about partisan controversy and dissent, providing relevant information about the functioning of democracy (Dahl, 1966;Hix, 2013). Despite this, most studies have focused their attention on the analysis of the output of the legislative process and the spatial location of political parties on policy issues, tending to neglect the analysis of the opposition as a political actor (Mújica & Sánchez Cuenca, 2006;Parry, 1997).…”

“…That is, the economic crisis provides a unique opportunity for opposition political parties to weaken the incumbent government, increasing their possibility of winning power at the next elections. Accordingly, the first hypothesis can be defined as follows: Parliamentary behaviour is shaped, to a large extent, by formal institutions and the type of government (see, for example, Cazzola, 1974;Dahl, 1966;Duverger, 1951;Hix, 2013;Mújica & Sánchez Cuenca, 2006;Pasquino, 1995;Sartori, 1966). In general, it is expected that governments have fewer incentives to seek agreement with opposition parties when they hold a majority of seats.…”