Dissent and rebellion in the House of Commons: a social network analysis of Brexit-related divisions in the 57th Parliament

Carla Intal,Taha Yasseri

doi:10.1007/s41109-021-00379-2

Abstract

The British party system is known for its discipline and cohesion, but it remains wedged on one issue: European integration. We offer a methodology using social network analysis that considers the individual interactions of MPs in the voting process. Using public Parliamentary records, we scraped votes of individual MPs in the 57th parliament (June 2017 to April 2019), computed pairwise similarity scores and calculated rebellion metrics based on eigenvector centralities. Comparing the networks of Brexit- and non-Brexit divisions, our methodology was able to detect a significant difference in eurosceptic behaviour for the former, and using a rebellion metric we predicted how MPs would vote in a forthcoming Brexit deal with over 90% accuracy.

Highlights

The British party system is widely known to be a strong and disciplined one
That the cohesion and unity in the modern British party system is persistently wedged by one issue, which is that of European integration
It has been observed in history at least twice—first, in the 1970s as the UK elected to join the European Economic Commission (EEC); and second, in the 1990s as -Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously retracted her support to the priorities and direction of the European Union (EU)

Summary

Introduction

Throughout its contemporary history, its two main parties—Labour and Conservative—has lent credibility to the Parliamentary process, setting the landscape for the effective implementation of policies in the British government. It is notable, that the cohesion and unity in the modern British party system is persistently wedged by one issue, which is that of European integration. Empirical studies often cite the Rice score as a standard measure for cohesion and conformity in politics (Rice 1938; Norton 1980; Collie 1984; Garner and Letki 2005; Sieberer 2006; Tzelgov 2014) This is a metric between zero and one, and is a ratio comparing those

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Conclusion