Party Cohesion in Westminster Systems: Inducements, Replacement and Discipline in the House of Commons, 1836–1910

Abstract

This article considers the historical development of a characteristic crucial for the functioning and normative appeal of Westminster systems: cohesive legislative parties. It gathers the universe of the 20,000 parliamentary divisions that took place between 1836 and 1910 in the British House of Commons, construct a voting record for every Member of Parliament (MP) serving during this time, and conducts analysis that aims to both describe and explain the development of cohesive party voting. In line with previous work, it shows that – with the exception of a chaotic period in the 1840s and 1850s – median discipline was always high and increased throughout the century. The study uses novel methods to demonstrate that much of the rise in cohesion results from the elimination of a rebellious ‘left tail’ from the 1860s onwards, rather than central tendency shifts. In explaining the aggregate trends, the article uses panel data techniques and notes that there is scant evidence for ‘replacement’ explanations that involve new members behaving in more disciplined ways than those leaving the chamber. It offers evidence that more loyal MPs were more likely to obtain ministerial posts, and speculates that this and other ‘inducement’-based accounts offer more promising explanations of increasingly cohesive parties.

Bonding in Pursuit of Policy Goals: How MPs Choose Political Parties in the Legislative State of Nature

“…The second distinct result of our study is that functioning parliamentary parties can emerge within a few months whereas previous accounts focused on gradual processes over years or even decades (Aldrich ; Eggers and Spirling ; Godbout and Høyland ). This finding is relevant because the continuous and uninterrupted processes of democratization documented for Anglo‐Saxon countries are rather exceptional.…”

The Meaningful Votes: Voting on Brexit in the British House of Commons

“…The available evidence suggests that voters pay some attention to how their representatives vote, at least when the issue is controversial, and that they reward them for rebelling (e.g., Longley 1998;Johnston et al 2002;Pattie et al 1994;Bertelli and Dolan 2009;Vivyan and Wagner 2012;Campbell et al 2019). The evidence also shows that career concerns play a role (e.g., Benedetto and Hix 2007;Eggers and Spirling 2018) although the evidence on whether parties actually punish individual politicians for voting against the party line is mixed (Eggers and Spirling 2016;Kauder et al 2017). We contribute to that empirical literature by studying how ideology, career concerns and voter preferences shaped the pattern of rebellion within the Conservative Party in the British House of Commons on an especially high stakes bill.…”

“…The evidence on whether party leaders in actual fact punish rebels by denying them promotion is mixed. Eggers and Spirling (2016) study over 20,000 parliamentary divisions that took place between 1836 and 1910 in the British House of Commons and show that more loyal MPs were more likely to obtain ministerial posts. In contrast, Kauder et al (2017) study 218 roll call votes in the German federal parliament (Bundestag) and ask if rebels are punished by party leaders by being allocated a less attractive position on the party list in the next election.…”

Taking the Leap: Voting, Rhetoric, and the Determinants of Electoral Reform

“…First, the political parties of the 1860s lacked the formal parliamentary institutions associated with British parties of the twentieth century and beyond. Most notably, the prime minister and cabinet had yet to take the full control of the business of the house associated with modern party government (inter alia Cox 1987;Eggers and Spirling 2014;Lowell 1926). Gash (1974, 393) refers to this era as one of "club government," when associations were based not on tightly organized parliamentary parties but London social clubs with shared but hardly monolithic political views.…”