Political Behaviour in the United Kingdom: an Examination of Members of Parliament and Voters
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Political behaviour in the United Kingdom: An examination of Members of Parliament and Voters Supervisors Author Prof. Jonathan B. Slapin Patrick A. Leslie Dr. Daina Chiba A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Government University of Essex Colchester, England 2018 For Mum and Dad Summary This thesis builds on quantitative British politics scholarship with four papers unified by a strong emphasis on positivist theory, research design and cutting edge statistical methodology. I examine political behaviour among representatives in the UK's House of Commons and voting behaviour in the 2016 EU Referendum. I show that the UK parliamentary system's reliance on strong party discipline has important adverse consequences for public approval. Firstly, I show how high-salience debates such Prime Minister's Questions bring out the worst behaviours in MPs. As parties' access to the floor (ability to make speeches) is reduced, MP behaviour becomes more aggressive. Secondly, with co-authors, I examine the conditions under which ideologically extreme MPs are more likely to vote against their party. We find that the impact of such behaviour affects party unity more often when in government, meaning that parties are more likely to appear united until they elected, at which point party divides become more apparent once again. Thirdly, I show that career progression in the House of Commons rewards `insider' behaviour such as increased attendance and participation in House of Commons debate and a focus on national rather than local issues. The power political parties have over the future of political leadership tends to centralise power and reward party politicians to whom the general public feels no strong affinity. In the final paper, we analyse voting behaviour during the 2016 EU Referendum assessing the potential effect of rainfall on the referendum result. We find that if the referendum had occurred on a sunny day, the likely result would have widened the margin of victory for Vote Leave. In the most comprehensive statistical analysis of the referendum to date, we concur with earlier analyses that that the surprise result was driven by strong Brexit support in districts of economic and social deprivation, particularly in rural and suburban locations. Acknowledgements This thesis is the final product of a long and protracted interest in politics and the political. It is also the final product of my long education, one that I feel very privileged to have been allowed to pursue, and even more privileged to have had so many wonderful people to guide me and help me to succeed through the years. I thank Daina Chiba, David Sanders and Jon Slapin who served as my Ph.D supervisors during my time at Essex. Their advice has been invaluable to my progression as a scholar, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have had their input on this project. I'd also like to thank Nottingham master's supervisor Anja Neundorf and Elias Dinas (my first stats teacher) for introducing me to quantitative research and encouraging me to be one of the first Nottingham politics students to fully embrace stats and to come to Essex to develop my skills. To everyone who taught me at the University of Essex and the Essex Summer School (Alejandro Quiroz Flores, Jon Slapin, Jeff Gill, Denis Cohen, Jon Kropko, Martin Elff, James Lo and Royce Carroll): I know now far more about stats than I ever thought I could know, but I'm also keenly aware of how much more I have to learn. I'd also like to thank James Lo, Martin Elff, and Alejandro Quiroz Flores for having me as their lab assistants during their courses, and to Melanie Sawers just for being brilliant. I'd also like to give thanks to my co-authors: Jon Slapin, Justin Kirkland, Joseph Lazarro and Tom O'Grady, who were fantastic to work with and I could not imagine a better or more instructive introduction to academic publishing than our paper submitted and (eventually) accepted to the American Political Science Review, one of the best and most respected journals in political science. Barı¸sArı (my other iii co-author and Ph.D buddy) and I decided to write a paper about Brexit, and found ourselves bringing all our methods training to bear on the problem, and learnt much about statistics, computer programming, geography, electoral politics and many other things in the process. It just goes to show that research can be so much more fun when done with friends. Thanks too to everyone else at Essex and elsewhere who helped me along my way: Steve Willliamson, Nicola Rowley, Becky Cordell, Katerina Tkacova, Masoud Farokhi, Linda Urselmanns, Roman Olar, Chingun Anderson, Jasper Finkeldey, Larissa Kirsten, Kristian Gleditsch, Ian Budge, Christine Stednitz and Jan Br¨ulle. I'd also like to thank the Essex ESRC Doctoral Training Centre for funding my research and giving me the opportunity to study my Ph.D free of financial worry. The ESRC also gave me a chance to visit the Australian National University as part of my studies, where I have met so many wonderful people and where I am beginning my academic career. At the ANU's School of Politics, I would like to thank Keith Dowding for hosting me and guiding me through my first solo journal submission. I would also like to thank Matt Kerby, who saw my presentation at APSA and suggested I come to the ANU to work on Australian politics. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues at the ANU who have been so welcoming and such good company: Mitiana Arbon, Nathan Attrill, Emily Look, Richard Reid, Jillian Sheppard, Feo Snagovsky, Marija Taflaga and Rajith Vidanaarachchi. I would also like to give special thanks to my new boss Marisa Fogarty at the ANU's Centre for Social Research and Methods for taking a punt on me and giving me a job analysing gambling policy and public health in Australia. I'm also thankful to those who provided data for the research. John Bercow, Kevin Gardner and the staff at the Speaker's Office of the House of Commons were kind enough to provide me data to analyse Prime Minister's Questions and Benjamin Lauderdale provided election forecast data to verify our rainfall paper results. Writing a Ph.D can be a long and often lonely task. Through all of my ups and downs along the way, I have been able to rely on my Mum, Dad, Brother and also my close friends Barı¸sand Nihan Arı and Jill Sheppard. They are quite simply wonderful people and without their kindness, patience, humour and compassion I would most likely have given up long before reaching this stage. Patrick Leslie Sheffield, May 2018 Statement of Contributions in Co-Authored Chapters Chapter 3 was written with four other authors. My contributions were: • responsible for coding and merging leadership, career length data, and electoral majority data • The data analysis relied on a dataset indicating monthly status in the House of Commons between 1979-2016. I updated an existing dataset provided by Jon Slapin and Ole Proksh that covered up to 2001. The leadership variable was crucial to categorising MPs between backbench and frontbench positions. • I collected data on the electoral majorities of MPs between 1992-2015. • Early in the paper's development, I suggested that we identify ideologically extreme MPs by checking memberships of intra-party parliamentary groups and I compiled initial lists of intra-party groups of backbench MPs. These were then revised by Tom O'Grady for use in the word-scores analysis. • I drafted the discussion section 3.5. Chapter 5 was written with a single co-author, Baris Ari (BA). My contributions here were: • Collection and merging of electoral data • Except for the rainfall data (BA) and the forecasting data (Ben Lauderdale), I was responsible for collecting and merging together all data used in the statistical analyses. • I was responsible for drafting the paper. I worked with BA in revising the paper, including his suggested revisions for structure and clarity into the text. • Research design strategy • All statistical analyses except the robustness check using rainfall to improve forecasts (BA) • All tables, statistical figures and formulas were my own except for the map figures (BA). vii Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.0.1 Four Studies in British Politics . .2 2 PMQs: Access to the Floor and Aggression in the Chamber 5 2.1 Introduction . .5 2.2 Literature: Party Unity, Time Scarcity and Speechmaking . .8 2.3 Research Design . 12 2.3.1 Prime Minister's Questions: Types of Question and Their Role 12 2.3.2 Data . 13 2.3.3 Dependent Variable: Partisan Questions . 13 2.3.4 Independent Variable: Random Access to the Floor . 15 2.4 Results . 19 2.5 Conclusions . 22 3 Ideology, Grandstanding and Strategic Party Disloyalty in British Parliament 25 with Jonathan B. Slapin, Justin Kirkland, Joseph Lazzaro & Tom O'Grady 3.1 Voting in the Westminster Systems . 27 3.2 Ideology and Grandstanding in the House of Commons: A Theory . 30 3.3 Data on Divisions, Defections, and Debates . 36 3.4 Analyses of Rebellion . 39 3.4.1 Wordscores Ideology . 44 3.4.2 Rebel Speeches . 49 ix 3.4.3 Evidence for a Constituency Connection . 53 3.5 Discussion: The Labour Party under Corbyn . 54 3.6 Conclusion . 55 4 Talking the talk: Parliamentary Debate and Early Career Progres- sion Among British Members of Parliament 57 4.1 Literature: Ambition and Office Seeking Across Legislative Systems . 59 4.1.1 The Differential Effect of Speechmaking on Parliamentary Role Allocations . 63 4.1.2 Participation .