Career Objectives, Group Feeling, and Legislative Party Voting Cohesion: The British Conservatives, 1959-68

Abstract

Voting cohesion has been of central concern to students of legislative politics at least since Lowell and Rice. Research on legislative-party voting behavior has grown rapidly in recent years both within and outside the United States. One significantly neglected field of inquiry, however, has been the British Conservative party. The parliamentary group of the Conservative party has a high degree of voting cohesion, and an analysis of its voting patterns can help to illuminate the bases upon which its voting cohesion has been built. The cohesion of the Conservatives is remarkably high. For the whole of the 1959-68 period, deviation from the leadership on twoor three-line whips was greater than ten percent of the backbenchers on only six divisions. This corresponds to a ratio of one vote out of approximately 300 votes, while the ratio was one to thirty for the French SFIO, one to six fcr the German CDU/CSU, one to five for the French Radical Party, and one to three for the United States parties.' What has led to such a high degree of voting cohesion? Speaking of Canadian parties, Epstein and Kornberg each postulate that the cohesion of these parties is a function of both the member's self