Project

parliament; accountability; institutional design; political parties; voting; roll call votes; party discipline

Lead
Lay summary
LeadAn increasing number of parliamentary studies draw on roll call votes to generate information on individual members of parliament. Such studies often neglect, however, that roll call votes are a subset of all votes in a given parliament. To understand whether information based on roll call votes is in some way biased, we need a better understanding of the institutional rules and practices that lead to roll call votes.SummaryThe study starts with a survey of parliamentary experts around the world to generate systematic information on the institutional rules that regulate the requests for roll call votes. In addition more context specific information on the practical reasons for roll call vote requests will be collected. This data will be used in combination with more detailed information on the characteristics of votes in several parliaments (the Swiss lower house, the Polish Sejm, the European parliament etc.) to test the empirical implications of theoretical models developed on the basis of different motivations for roll call vote requests. A major endeavour will consist of understanding whether party cohesion determined on the basis of roll call votes provides an accurate description of the overall cohesion of parties (also in secret votes).GoalApart from providing a new dataset on institutional rules and practices related to roll call votes, the project also aims at offering a better understanding of the role roll call votes play in different parliamentary contexts. It aims also at offering new suggestions how insights drawn from roll call votes need to be adjusted to offer a more accurate picture of parliamentary processes in general.ImportanceGiven the increased use of roll call votes in parliamentary research, our newly collected data will offer researchers a sounder base on which to ground their studies. Our empirical results are also likely to offer a much improved view on how roll call votes affect parliamentary behavior and thus offer new views on issues of representation and accountability in different parliamentary regimes.

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 21.02.2013

Active participation

Active participation

Communication	Title	Media	Place	Year

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

Analyses of roll call votes have developed to form a mainstay ofparliamentary research. By their development both in terms of methodsused as in substantive (and geographic) areas covered, more and moreresearchers have become aware that in many instances roll call votesonly give us a partial glimpse at parliamentary behavior. The reason forthis is that in many parliaments roll call votes need to be requested oroccur only on particular proposals. Based on this observation theproposed project wishes to address the following overarching researchquestion:Under what circumstances are roll call votes requested in nationalparliaments and how do these circumstances affect our inferences onparliamentary behavior based on roll call votes?To answer this research question the project is based on threeinterdependent goals. The first goal is to establish a detailedinventory of the institutional rules under which roll call votes occurin all national parliaments around the world. To achieve this goal aninternet-based survey will be carried out among experts of the variousnational parliaments following the lead example of a recent handbook.Based on this inventory an existing theoretical model will be expandedto consider different motivations for making roll call requests, namelythe disciplining of party members, the signaling of party positions andthe shaming of other parties for their voting behavior. This theoreticalmodel will allow for a more precise assessment of the relationshipbetween observed voting behavior in parliaments through roll call votesand unobserved behavior in secret (or voice votes).The implications of this theoretical model will be submitted toempirical tests, which forms the third goal. More specifically theempirical tests envision to study the consequences that the differentrules and reasons for requesting roll call votes have on empiricalanalyses based on roll call votes. These empirical tests should alsoallow for insights how the results from roll call votes analyses have tobe corrected for, given that they are based on only a (non-random)sample of all votes in most parliaments.