Electoral and Parliamentary Incentives for Position Taking
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Electoral and Parliamentary Incentives for Position Taking. Exploring Absence in the United Kingdom House of Commons, ÕÉÉß - óþÕþ∗ Zoltan Fazekas Martin Ejnar Hansen Syddansk Universitet Brunel University [email protected] [email protected] May óä, óþÕ¦ Abstract e ability to hold an MP accountable for his or her actions is one of the cornerstones of modern representative democracy. Voters are informed by their MPs when they, or their party, take a position on an issue, i.e. cast a vote. We argue that it is important for MPs to send signals to their constituents about their voting record and to their party about their willingness to support the party. In this respect it is interesting that a large number of MPs are absent for votes. In this paper we analyse the absence rates of MPs in the United Kingdom from ÕÉÉß to óþÕþ. We link absence rates to both parliamentary and constituency characteristics. Our ndings suggest that in terms of scheduling and work organization, government or committee service hinders the participation in votes, but more importantly we nd systematic association between the size of the constituency majority and vote participation. Likewise we nd a clear pattern in that MPs who will not run for re-election take an “early retirement” at least from participating in votes. e paper shows that absence is a more complex than previously thought and the ndings have impact not only for studies of the UK Parliament, but for studies of parliamentary voting more broadly. ∗Paper prepared for CEU Polberg Meeting, May óþÕ¦. Working paper. Õ Introduction When an election is held with a low turnout debate oen follows lamenting the decision of many voters to abstain from voting. When the abstentions happen in a parliamentary setting the outcry is much less clear, and where elections only happen infrequently absence from voting in parliaments is a daily occurrence when the parliament is sitting. Today, when a voter by chance stumbles across televised sessions of the deliberations of their parliament they will wonder where all their representatives are. In most chambers today only the number required to maintain a quorum will be present at the debate, oen those members interested in the topic. When a vote is called for a portion of the remaining members appear from around the parliamentary buildings to cast their vote for or against the proposal on the oor. Even then it is very rare that all members of the parliament turn up; indeed, it might be seen as an anomaly if that was to happen, usually signalling a very important vote where the majority of the government would be in jeopardy. us most votes and hence, most bills, are passed with an oen times high proportion of the legislators absent. While this might seem a trivial parliamentary irregularity it is far from the case; the implications of parliamentary absence essential, both from a representation perspective and a more practical parliamentary perspective. First, the strong direct relationship between voters and representatives entails that voters elect representatives to represent their views and interests and punish those who act against these preferences (Ansolabehere and Jones óþÕþ, ¢ì). Evidence from the United States (e.g. Canes-Wrone, Brady, and Cogan óþþó) lends support to the notion that representatives who deviate from the preferences of their constituents will lose oce. Newer evidence suggests that legislators use their legislative action to claim credit in order to cultivate a personal vote (Grimmer, Messing, and Westwood óþÕó). In order for this to happen it is necessary that the constituents have information about the behaviour of their representatives in parliament and that the representatives have taken a stand on the issues before parliament. Second, absence from votes is a normal occurrence in any modern day parliament and is a much used part of the toolbox of a modern day legislator, not least due to the various other tasks they are given besides voting in the chamber. Despite the o occurrence of absence there is still preciously little research on the topic, especially in parliamentary systems. It is treated as insignicant if an MP is not present at a vote or assumed to occur randomly or simply assumed that the absent member is paired (Benedetto and Hix óþþß, ßß). Despite the fact that one of the most important goals for at least the governing party is to pass its policies and in order to do so they need their MPs to vote regularly (R. Johnston et al. óþþó). However, we do not know if absence actually does happen by chance or whether there are patterns to absence. What we do know is that legislative voting is a necessity for enacting laws, and political history has seen dramatic incidents where the absence of a single legislator has had serious impact on the outcome.Õ In the latter cases it is oen times very clear who is to blame for the result by his absence. However, absence is most frequent in non-controversial votes, where it does not change the outcome. Indeed, for certain members – for instance the case of ministers – it would be surprising if they had a high attendance rates. e existing studies of absence use either bill characteristics to explain when legislators are absent or legislator or electoral characteristics. We argue that to fully understand absence it is necessary to include both sets of characteristics in a model to take into account the spe- ÕFor instance the vote which caused the fall of the Callaghan government in ÕÉßÉ could have had a dierent outcome if only one absent MP had voted in favour of the government. ó cic dynamics of the legislative institution. In this paper we explore what might explain the decision of a member of the British House of Commons to be absent from a vote. We argue that this is not a random decision, but in fact governed by both bill and legislator character- istics. We have created a dataset of all parliamentary votes cast from ÕÉÉß-óþÕþ by all MPs. In total our data includes nearly ó.¦ million individual votes cast by ¢¦ dierent MPs over Õóó days. Our ndings suggests that some of the factors inuencing absence in the U.S. Congress can also be found in the United Kingdom, whereas other variables are inuential as we would expect them to be given the institutional setup of the House of Commons. e paper con- tinues with discussions of the role of MPs in the House of Commons and on the existing literature on absence and voting. From this we present our data and model before analysing the ndings. e House of Commons Members to the UK House of Commons are elected in single-member districts with the can- didate achieving the most votes winning. is means a strong link between representative and electorate who can reward or punish their representative more directly than had it been a pro- portional electoral system. Voting in Westminster style parliament resembles a government- opposition dimension (Hix and Noury óþÕÕ) which ts well with one of the key assumption of the tasks of a parliament; to vote in a government and to vote it out if necessary (Laver óþþä). e Government controls the agenda of the House of Commons and while deliberations on opposition initiatives are guaranteed it is very rare that they get accepted. Indeed, when mem- bers are voting it is in most cases on bills and on amendments to the bills, amendments which can come from both government and opposition. However, there is another possibility to avoid providing a preference on a vote. In the day to day running of the parliament pairing is an oen occurring event; for some votes the parties agree to hold back some of their members in order to keep the power balance in the chamber, freeing some members to be present at other functions, committees, or taking care of their ministerial oces. e institution of pairing is perhaps one of the few white spots on the map of legislative studies. As pairing is a voluntary agreement between parties there are no ocial statistics on who is paired with whom, when and why, making it impossible to directly control for this in any empirical analysis. Indirectly it is possible, for instance through including a variable for cabinet membership. In the UK House of Commons the whips of the parties normally distribute a list to its legislators with the items of the agenda underlined with one, two or three lines. ree line votes cannot be paired, thus enabling the legislators to negotiate in between themselves which of the non-three line votes to be paired. It should also be noted, that as pairing is an agreement between the parties of the government and the opposition it can be terminated at any point in time. It would oen be the case if the opposition saw an opportunity to defeat the government in a salient vote. Pairing is also not an arrangement recognised by the rules of the House of Commons.ó For this particular study having the information on pairing in the just one of the three parliaments in question would be nice but as this is not the case we must make do with assumption regarding pairing, such as ministers being more absent, i.e. more paired than non-ministers. In sum, whether an MP is absent due to illness, foreign travel, strategically, or through pairing, he is not voting, and thus not taking a position in the votes. óFactsheet PÉ: Division, House of Commons Information Oce (version August óþÕþ). ì Absence can also be seen as a cousin of the much more researched legislative action of rebellion.