Party Switching in American State Legislatures*
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Politician Overboard: Jumping the Party Ship
INFORMATION, ANALYSIS AND ADVICE FOR THE PARLIAMENT INFORMATION AND RESEARCH SERVICES Research Paper No. 4 2002–03 Politician Overboard: Jumping the Party Ship DEPARTMENT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY ISSN 1328-7478 Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2003 Except to the extent of the uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written consent of the Department of the Parliamentary Library, other than by Senators and Members of the Australian Parliament in the course of their official duties. This paper has been prepared for general distribution to Senators and Members of the Australian Parliament. While great care is taken to ensure that the paper is accurate and balanced, the paper is written using information publicly available at the time of production. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Information and Research Services (IRS). Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion. Readers are reminded that the paper is not an official parliamentary or Australian government document. IRS staff are available to discuss the paper's contents with Senators and Members and their staff but not with members of the public. Published by the Department of the Parliamentary Library, 2003 I NFORMATION AND R ESEARCH S ERVICES Research Paper No. 4 2002–03 Politician Overboard: Jumping the Party Ship Sarah Miskin Politics and Public Administration Group 24 March 2003 Acknowledgments I would like to thank Martin Lumb and Janet Wilson for their help with the research into party defections in Australia and Cathy Madden, Scott Bennett, David Farrell and Ben Miskin for reading and commenting on early drafts. -
Party System in South and Southeast Asia
PARTY SYSTEM IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA A THEMATIC REPORT BASED ON DATA 1900-2012 Authors: Julio Teehankee, Medet Tiulegenov, Yi-ting Wang, Vlad Ciobanu, and Staffan I. Lindberg V-Dem Thematic Report Series, No. 2, October 2013. Prepared for The European Union, represented by the European Commission under Service Contract No. EIDHR 2012/298/903 2 About V-Dem Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a new approach to conceptualization and measurement of democracy. It is a collaboration between some 50+ scholars across the world hosted by the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame, USA. With four Principal Investigators (PIs), three Project Coordinators (PCs), fifteen Project Managers (PMs) with special responsibility for issue areas, more than thirty Regional Managers (RMs), almost 200 Country Coordinators (CCs), a set of Research Assistants (RAs), and approximately 3,000 Country Experts (CEs), the V-Dem project is one of the largest ever social science research-oriented data collection programs. V-Dem is collecting data on 329 indicators of various aspects democracy tied to the core of electoral democracy as well as six varying properties: liberal, majoritarian, consensual, participatory, deliberative and egalitarian dimensions of democracy. A pilot study in 2011 tested the preliminary set of indicators and the data collection interfaces and procedures. Twelve countries from six regions of the world were covered, generating 462,000 data points. In the main phase, all countries of the world will be covered from 1900 to the present, generating some 22 million data across the 329 indicators, as well as several indices of varying forms of democracy. -
Party Formation in Parliamentary Democracies
Party Formation in Parliamentary Democracies Selcen C¸akır∗ May, 2018 Abstract The political power of elected representatives is determined by politicians' member- ship negotiations with parties. In parliamentary systems, party control over govern- ment functions generates club goods, which increases the value of party membership. Moreover, in party-centered parliamentary systems, getting influential positions re- quires party leader's approval, which gives the leader monopsonistic recruiting power. As a result, politicians may relegate their political power to leaders when membership is more rewarding than acting independently. I develop an equilibrium model of party formation in a parliamentary democracy that incorporates parties' provision of club goods, rent sharing between politicians and party leaders, as well as politicians' outside options. Politicians' rankings of parties critically depend on the size of the party as well as on their own political assets. Through their control of government functions, bigger parties can provide greater club goods but tax politicians' rents more upon entry. Because of this, politicians with more assets tend to prefer smaller parties. I structurally estimate my model for Turkey with a unique dataset of 33 parties, 2,000 politicians who gained seats in parliament, and 35,000 politicians who were on party ballot lists between 1995 and 2014. My model matches the high level of party switch- ing (28.5%) that is characteristic of many party-centered systems. I find that Turkish parties accumulate club goods more easily than they produce rents, which leads to ever stronger party control. I also find that politicians with good labor market options are not productive in the political arena. -
A Delayed Return to Historical Norms: Congressional Party Polarization After the Second World War* Hahrie Han Wellesley College
A Delayed Return to Historical Norms: Congressional Party Polarization After the Second World War* Hahrie Han Wellesley College David W. Brady Stanford University Forthcoming, British Journal of Political Science ABSTRACT: Although a rich body of research has explored the sources of party polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives, it has focused only on the House since the late 1970s. Drawing on a dataset of historical election outcomes, legislative voting, and survey data, we take an alternative approach that examines both the U.S. Senate and the House in their broader historical contexts. We argue that the unusually bi-partisan era of the 1950s created a set of circumstances that enabled congressional parties to remain relatively un-polarized throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Although the national parties became more ideologically distinct in the mid-1960s, congressional parties lagged behind. As a result, a group of moderate legislators emerged who were cross-pressured between their national parties and their constituencies. Only when natural patterns of electoral loss and retirement replaced these legislators did congressional party polarization re-emerge. Introduction The question of why congressional parties in the U.S. have polarized so much since the late 1970s has been a topic of rich scholarly debate in recent years. Existing explanations range from endogenous institutional changes that increased partisanship in Congress, to exogenous political changes that altered the configuration of congressional parties. Research -
INTER-PARTY MOBILITY AMONG PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES in POST- COMMUNIST EAST CENTRAL EUROPE Goldie Shabad and Kazimierz M
PARTY POLITICS VOL 10. No.2 pp. 151–176 Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi www.sagepublications.com INTER-PARTY MOBILITY AMONG PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES IN POST- COMMUNIST EAST CENTRAL EUROPE Goldie Shabad and Kazimierz M. Slomczynski ABSTRACT The development of stable partisan commitments among political elites is crucial for party-system institutionalization in the new democracies of post-communist Europe. Little is known, however, about the partisan behavior of those who compete for national office. This study begins to fill this gap through an analysis of inter-party mobility among all candi- dates who ran for the lower house of parliament in two pairs of consec- utive elections in Poland (1991–3 and 1993–7) and in three pairs of consecutive elections in the Czech Republic (1990–2, 1992–6 and 1996–8). We consider the overall extent of inter-party mobility, struc- tural versus voluntary components of mobility, patterns of movement between types of parties and electoral payoffs of stable and shifting partisan affiliations. Although the overall rate of party-switching has declined substantially in the Czech Republic but not in Poland, changes in other characteristics of inter-party mobility indicate that party-system institutionalization is taking place in both countries. KEY WORDS elite party-switching party-system institutionalization political mobility The continual formations of entirely new parties, some of which acquire ‘overnight’ success, and the ongoing disappearance, schisms and mergers of established parties, together with high rates of electoral volatility, attest to the under-institutionalization of the party systems of new democracies in East Central Europe. -
When Do Partisans Cross the Party Line?
When Do Partisans Cross the Party Line? George Kwaku Ofosu∗ March 30, 2021 Abstract When will partisans cross party lines to elect a potentially better-performing opposition politician? Individuals in developing countries vote for politicians in expectation of public goods. Partisan ge- ography influences voters’ beliefs about politicians’ ability to exclude them from such goods. Since voters believe they are better able to replace poorly performing incumbents in competitive districts, partisans in non-segregated, competitive constituencies are more likely to vote for opposition can- didates than those in other settings. Using a conjoint experiment administered to voters that ran- domized the characteristics of parliamentary candidates in Ghana, I find that voters in competitive, non-segregated districts are the most willing to cross party lines. Additional data on actual public goods distribution supports the mechanism. Data from Ghana’s 2020 parliamentary elections con- firm the external validity of the findings: party switching is highest in this type of district. My results demonstrate the influence of constituency characteristics on electoral accountability. ∗Assistant Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science. Email: [email protected]. Web: www. georgeofosu.com/. Samuel Kweku Yamoah and Mahmouda Ainoo provided excellent field research assistance. I am grateful to Kojo Asante, Sarah Brierley, Danny Choi, Florian Foos, Adam Harris, Eric Kramon, Evan Morier, Galen Mur- ray, Noah Nathan, Franklin Oduro, Daniel Posner, Andrea Vilán, Michael Wahman, Josef Woldense, and Stephane Wolton for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank participants of the Midwest Workshop in Empirical Political Sci- ence and Comparative Politics Seminars at UCLA, UCL, Oxford’s Nuffield College, the Institutions and Political Inequality research unit at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), and UW-Madison for helpful feedback and suggestions. -
Laws Against Party Switching, Defecting, Or Floor-Crossing in National Parliaments
Laws Against Party Switching, Defecting, or Floor-Crossing in National Parliaments Kenneth Janda Northwestern University [email protected] The Legal Regulation of Political Parties Working Paper 2 August 2009 © The author(s), 2009 This working paper series is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC research grant RES- 061-25-0080) and the European Research Council (ERC starting grant 205660). This paper was prepared for delivery at the 2009 World Congress of the International Political Science Association held in Santiago, Chile July 12-16, 2009. Special Section 01.280 “Party Democracy and Party Law: The Legal Regulation of Political Parties in Modern Democracies” Work in progress . Please check with the author before citing or quoting. To link to this paper : http://www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl/uploads/wp0209.pdf This paper may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. ISSN: 2211-1034 The Legal Regulation of Political Parties, working paper 02/09 Laws Against Party Switching, Defecting, or Floor Crossing in National Parliaments Kenneth Janda Abstract Many western scholars may be surprised to learn that parliamentary members who switch parties during the session may be expelled from parliament because they violate the law in their country. This paper studies such “anti-defection” laws. It investigates the extent of such legislation; why and how often legislators switch parties; how this phenomenon has been studied; why some scholars favor banning party switching; why politicians have legislated against party defections; and the consequences of such bans for political parties and party systems. -
The Evolution of Party Systems Between Elections
The Evolution of Party Systems between Elections Michael Laver Trinity College Kenneth Benoit Trinity College Most existing theoretical work on party competition pays little attention to the evolution of party systems between elections as a result of defections between parties. In this article, we treat individual legislators as utility-maximizing agents tempted to defect to other parties if this would increase their expected payoffs. We model the evolution of party systems between elections in these terms and discuss this analytically, exploring unanswered questions using computational methods. Under office-seeking motivational assumptions, our results strikingly highlight the role of the largest party, especially when it is “dominant” in the technical sense, as a pole of attraction in interelectoral evolution. he existing political science account of party com- (Heller and Mershon 2001; de Dios 2001), or problems of petitionpayslittleattentiontotheevolutionof leg- party consolidation (Agh´ 1999; Verzichelli 1999). Every Tislatures between elections, despite the fact that, defection from some party, however, implies that some in all real legislatures, there is a great deal of politics other party is willing to accept the defector. Existing work between elections. In particular, legislators may defect on party switching focuses exclusively on the rationale of from one party and join another, parties may split and the switchers, while ignoring the incentives of the parties fuse, and the party system may thereby evolve into one that the switchers are attempting to join. Finally, existing quite different from that produced by the election result. models have nothing to say as to which party switchers This carries obvious analytical implications for model- will wish to join when there are several possibilities. -
The Cross-National Determinants of Legislative Party Switching
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2017 The rC oss-National Determinants of Legislative Party Switching Cassie Millet Knott Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Knott, Cassie Millet, "The rC oss-National Determinants of Legislative Party Switching" (2017). LSU Master's Theses. 4501. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4501 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE CROSS-NATIONAL DETERMINANTS OF LEGISLATIVE PARTY SWITCHING A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Political Science by Cassie Millet Knott B.A., Southeastern Louisiana University, 2012 August 2017 Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................ iii 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 2 Cross-National Analysis of Party Switching............................................................... -
Social Identity, Political Ambition, and Group-Based Legislative Party Switching
Strength in Numbers: Social Identity, Political Ambition, and Group-based Legislative Party Switching Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Peter Jan Tunkis, M.A. Graduate Program in Political Science The Ohio State University 2018 Dissertation Committee: Anthony Mughan, Advisor Goldie Shabad Thomas Nelson Sara Watson © Copyright by Peter Jan Tunkis 2018 Abstract Party switching, or changing one’s political party affiliation, is a surprisingly widespread and persistent phenomenon among members of parliament (MPs) in old and new democracies alike. Switching gives voters the impression of a lack of legislator accountability and representation, and may indicate weak parties or government instability. Why do some MPs risk their careers, prestige, and chances of reelection for oftentimes uncertain payoffs? Extant research on party switching frames this behavior as an individual phenomenon, based on rational calculations to further goals of vote, office, or policy-seeking. Yet in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, I find that party switching is largely a group phenomenon, which has heretofore received little attention. Building upon established research on political parties, party systems, and legislator behavior, I develop a theory of group-based defection that addresses this gap in the literature. I argue that MPs pursue political ambition in groups in which they share political goals—the pursuit of collective ambition is thus an alternative means to achieving their objectives. These groups are formed around, or defined by, social identities that are common or shared among individual MPs. By switching political parties as part of a group, individual MPs are able to more effectively pursue their political ambition. -
Secular Partisan Realignment in the United States
PASXXX10.1177/0032329219861215Politics & SocietyKitschelt and Rehm 861215research-article2019 Article Politics & Society 2019, Vol. 47(3) 425 –479 Secular Partisan Realignment © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: in the United States: sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329219861215DOI: 10.1177/0032329219861215 The Socioeconomic journals.sagepub.com/home/pas Reconfiguration of White Partisan Support since the New Deal Era Herbert P. Kitschelt Duke University Philipp Rehm Ohio State University Abstract White American voters have realigned among the two dominant parties by income and education levels. This article argues that the interaction of education and income provides a more insightful—and stark—display of this change than treating them individually. Each group of voters is associated with distinctive “first dimension” views of economic redistribution and “second dimension” preferences concerning salient sociopolitical issues of civic and cultural liberties, race, and immigration. Macro- level hypotheses are developed about the changing voting behavior of education- income voting groups along with micro-level hypotheses about the propensity of vote switching. The hypotheses are tested with data from the American National Election Studies 1952–2016. A profound realignment is revealed between (groups of) white voters and the two main US parties that is consistent with the theoretical expectations developed in the article. Keywords vote switching, partisan realignment, party politics Corresponding Author: Philipp Rehm, Political Science Department, Ohio State University, Derby Hall 2186, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Email: [email protected] 426 Politics & Society 47(3) Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election caught most observers by surprise. But should it have been surprising? To explore this question, we analyze the voting behavior of the American electorate during the last half-century. -
PARTY ORGANIZATION, IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE, and ELECTORAL SUCCESS a Comparative Study of Postauthoritarian Parties
PARTY ORGANIZATION, IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE, AND ELECTORAL SUCCESS A Comparative Study of Postauthoritarian Parties Grigorii V. Golosov Working Paper #258 - September 1998 Grigorii V. Golosov teaches comparative politics at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute during the 1998 spring semester. Professor Golosov obtained an MA in Russian History and a PhD in Social Philosophy at Novosibirsk State University, an MA in Political Science from SUNY/Central European University, Budapest, and postgraduate study diplomas from the University of Oslo and Southern Illinois University. He has also been a Research Associate at the Center for Slavic and East European Studies, University of California at Berkeley, and a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Institute of Russian and East European Studies, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. In support of his research, he has been awarded grants from the USIA and the MacArthur and Soros Foundations. His most recent publications include Modes of Communist Rule, Democratic Transition, and Party System Formation in Four East European Countries (University of Washington, 1996); “Russian Political Parties and the ‘Bosses’: Evidence from the 1994 Provincial Elections in Western Siberia,” Party Politics (1997); “Regional Party System Formation in Russia: The Deviant Case of Sverdlovsk Oblast,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics (with Vladimir Gelman, forthcoming); and “Who Survives? Party Origins, Organizational Structure, and Electoral Performance in Post- Communist Russia,” Political Studies (forthcoming). He has also published several books and many articles in Russian. I would like to thank the Helen Kellogg Institute for granting me a residential fellowship that made my research possible.