|
|
 |
|
Ulrich Sieberer, "Using MP statements to explain MP voting behaviour in the German Bundestag: An induvidual level test of the Competing Priciples Theory" Party Politics, 21 (March 2015), 284-294. [Available at http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue2/]
One key challenge for legislative research in parliamentary democracies is explaining why members of parliament (MPs) vote with or against their party. Various studies have explained party unity as the aggregate result of self-interested behaviour of MPs (e.g.Carey, 2007, 2009; Depauw and Martin, 2009; Kam, 2009; Saalfeld, 1995; Sieberer, 2006,2010). The most prominent recent rational choice model of party unity – John Carey’s Competing Principals Theory (CPT) – uses a principal–agent model to explain dissenting votes based on the behaviour of MPs facing cross-pressure from more than one principal. While the theory has been quite successful in explaining cross-country and cross-party differences in unity, there have been few attempts to test its causal mechanisms on the level of individual MPs, mostly because MPs’ decision calculus cannot be studied solely based on roll-call voting behaviour.
Table 1: Ideal typical scenarios of cross-pressure and strength of competing priciples and their consequeces for the usage and types of EoVs Table 2: Estimation results for multi-level multinominal logit regression models with sample selection My
findings open up three perspectives for future research on EoVs and
similar statements. First, the analysis of this article should be
extended over time to see whether the results, especially on the
unexpected differences between the two cabinet parties, are caused by
the special conditions of the Grand Coalition cabinet or reflect
systematic variation between the party holding the chancellorship and
junior coalition partners. Comparing the results in this article with
earlier findings (Becher and Sieberer, 2008) leads me to expect that
the effects of government status and leadership positions hold over
time, while the electoral system effect may vary. Second, future
analyses could study the arguments used in EoVs searching for
references to competing principals and the strategies MPs use to
balance between contradictory demands in their pursuit of re-election
and career advancement. Finally, instruments similar to EoVs in other
parliaments (for example in Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy) open up
the potential for comparatively studying the determinants of individual
voting behaviour and aggregate party unity in parliaments using the
additional leverage provided by this new data source. |