Measuring party loyalty

Measuring party loyalty (and party effects, more broadly) in roll call voting has long been a contentious matter in the study of legislative behavior. While techniques for measurement in this arena are numerous, most of them suffer from a fatal flaw: they improperly (or insufficiently) separate measures of preferences from party effects. A significant part of this measurement challenge is the identification of: (a) which roll calls leaders care about and, (b) in which direction do they desire their members to vote. In this paper, we use a novel dataset of party leader speeches from the 101st to 113th Congresses to develop a model of party effects and measure them across members and time. Unlike existing techniques, we allow for party effects to vary across members, parties, and time. Critically, using this approach, we are able to estimate legislator ideology free of party and party loyalty effects independent of preferences. After validating these measures using examples from contemporary Congresses, we show that using our measures of loyalty calls in to question several findings in the existing literature on party effects. Namely, we show that, contrary to the findings of Minozzi & Volden (2013), ideological extremists are less loyal than moderates. Additionally, we find that the electoral costs of party loyalty are much more nuanced than the findings of Carson et al. (2010) and Canes-Wrone, Brady, & Cogan (2002).

Post-election socialisation has frequently been identified as a source of parliamentarians’ disposition towards party loyalty. Yet a recent study of the socialisation experiences of new members in the British Parliament, using tenure as proxy for socialisation, found little evidence of an effect on party loyalty (Rush and Giddings, 2011, Parliamentary Socialisation: Learning the Ropes or Determining Behaviour? London, Springer). This paper develops a new model of parliamentary socialisation and uses the same data to demonstrate that post-entry socialisation did in fact change legislators reported likeliness to behave in accordance with their party leadership’s wishes. Specifically, a framework based on information exchange (advice giving) is used to show that positive interactions with party actors are associated with increased loyalty. Controlling for initial levels of loyalty, members who received more useful advice from party actors were more likely to rate themselves as highly influenced by the party leadership.

ABSTRACTIn this article, we study the U.S. Senate to understand how legislators' previous experiences in elected office influence their political behavior. We posit that, as a result of their experiences in office, former governors in the Senate are less partisan than their colleagues. We code the political jobs held by senators between 1983 and 2015 and analyze the effects of these careers on party loyalty in Senate floor votes. We find that gubernatorial service is associated with a 7–8% decrease in Party Unity. We test several hypotheses for the observed “governor effect” and find that, relative to their colleagues, former governors are supported by donor networks that are less ideologically extreme. We conclude that the unique experiences associated with serving as governor, along with the personalized nature of governors' electoral support coalitions, affect a senator's relationship with the party. Ultimately, our analysis illuminates how personal attributes, such as prior experience in elected office, can inform the study of legislative behavior.

The changing political character of American farmers: 1954–2008

Party leaders and committee leaders in the United States Congress, while sometimes adversaries, are more often collaborators in the legislative process. Much congressional research has centered upon committee structure and operations; another extensive focus of study has been party leadership. Unfortunately, we have only a rudimentary knowledge about the range of possible relationships between party leaders and committee leaders. This paper explores several alternative, if not supplementary, mechanisms for strengthening the party leadership and committee structure in the House of Representatives. First, it outlines some developments taking place in the House Democratic Caucus during the opening months of the 93rd Congress—1973 to 1974. Second, the paper speculates on the implications of creating two new supracommittees—a Committee on the Budget and a Committee on the Agenda—adding the party leadership and bringing about a wholesale consolidation of the remaining House committees. Neither House nor Senate committee structure and jurisdiction can be analyzed in a vacuum: what affects committee powers will obviously have an effect on party leadership. It does not follow, however, that relationships between party leaders and committee leaders are a zero sum game in which the gains of one are necessarily the losses of the other. On the contrary, it may be possible to strengthen party leadership, to enhance the organization and the effectiveness of the committees and, ultimately, to increase the overall powers of the Congress.

Previous studies find that legislators who adopt a partisan voting record are penalized come election time. To date, these studies examine the electoral effects of aggregate legislative behavior. While useful for identifying macro-level relationships, this approach discards valuable information about the timing of elite partisanship that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between legislative behavior and election outcomes. After all, studies find that recent elite behavior tends to factor more prominently in voters’ decision calculus. We offer a model that more explicitly accounts for the timing of elite partisanship, and we test it using US House elections data from 1956 to 2004. Even when accounting for aggregate party voting, we find that electoral success is significantly dependent on the temporal patterns of members’ party loyalty as elections approach. We attribute this, in part, to voters paying disproportionate attention to legislative activity around elections.

Even as they competed for power, influence, and material goods, the Communist Party functionaries and the Chekists (state security personnel) were closely united by their common purpose of consolidating the occupation regime, the so called Soviet system, and by their aim to consolidate the autocratic power. Until 1947, the independent work of the LKP(b) CC (the Lithuanian Communist (Bolshevik) Central Committee) and its divisions in districts was restricted by the VKP(b) (All-Union Communist (Bolshevik) Party) CC Lithuanian bureau and the agent of the USSR NKVD-NKGB for Lithuania, Ivan Tkachenka. It was actually not the puppets in Vilnius who had the real power, but the power structures of the occupiers, the influence of which remained decisive even after 1947, when the pretence was created that all decisions would be made in Vilnius. After 1947, the LKP(b) CC bureau, especially the First Secretary, Antanas Sniečkus established considerably more control over the Chekists, especially over their personnel, and, to some extent, over their activities. The CC bureau would depose the heads of the MGB district divisions, while the party district committees had authority to expel the division heads of MGB local districts. In order to replace the district division heads, the Central Committee had to be consulted. To maintain relations with the Chekists, a special sector in the CC operated until 1949; later there was an administrative division, headed by A. Moskvinov (until 1950) and V. Bylinski, which had great influence. The Chekists would be replaced and generally criticized mostly for their inability to fight; as well they would be accused of transgressions and even crimes, such as drunkenness, thefts, various other violations. Moreover, the Party committees were required to fight against real enemies; not simply shooting or arresting innocent persons, while the true "bourgeois nationalists" were free. However, they were not in fact able to select the replacements they wished, they did not even know the Chekist personnel, especially those continuously sent from the East. The MVD-MGB would appoint new Chekists at their own discretion. The CC and Party district committees would strictly control the deployment of the Chekist army posts; some district Party committees would also attempt to control their operational plans. Sometimes, they attempted to implement plans together with the Chekists, although most often they obeyed general orders, which were derived from the decisions of the CC bureau. In addition to matters of personnel and other general plans, the Party exerted influence on the Chekists by debriefing oral reports or examining their written reports which had to be submitted to the Party committees by the middle of 1945. If Chekists were seeking or were already ensconced in their positions, the Party organs would write references and recommendations which could determine a career path for the Chekists. In general, the Party committees could control the tactics of the Chekist organs to some extent, while the strategic aims of both, that is, of the Party and the Chekists was the same.

Although political parties in U.S. legislatures cannot compel discipline with the threat of expulsion from the legislature, they can encourage greater party loyalty by strategically bestowing benefits upon favored members. This article explores the use of plum committee assignments to encourage legislators' loyalty to their parties. I outline a theory of how party leaders can use committee assignments strategically to encourage more loyal legislative behavior. This occurs when legislative rules meet two criteria: (1) parties and their leaders can determine who serves on committees and (2) committees have real authority over policy outcomes. I test the theory using data from five state legislatures that differ on the relevant set of legislative rules, finding more party loyalty shown by legislators who receive plum committee assignments when rules meet both criteria and no effect when they do not.

The question of why members of parliament (MPs) overwhelmingly toe the party line is receiving increasing scholarly attention. Adding to discipline‐based approaches, party loyalty, that is, a feeling of allegiance not related to policy agreement or disciplinary pressures, is an important part of the explanation. In this article, we employ a more nuanced view on party loyalty than previous observational studies and conceptualize it as the result of socialization processes of most politicians into the structures of their party prior to their mandate. We test our argument quantitatively using data for whipped votes in the German Bundestag (1949–2017). The results support our propositions that MPs who didn't hold party offices prior to their mandate have a higher probability of vote defection and that the behavioral differences related to pre‐parliamentary socialization vanish the longer MPs serve in parliament. Our work has important implications for research on intraparty politics, legislative behavior, and representation.

A fundamental controversy in political theory from ancient times until the present concerns the rationality of political actors, what it is, if it exists at all, and whether or not humans display it in politics. Many political scientists are impatient with this controversy because it remains open after so much (apparently futile) discussion. But they ought not be. The problem of rationality is necessarily imbedded in even the simplest kinds of political research, where, if overlooked, it can occasion misinterpretation and even outright error.Suppose, for example, in an investigation of legislators one uses the notion of party loyalty as an independent variable to explain behavior. This notion seems simple and straightforward enough and not, therefore, likely to involve one in philosophical controversy. But in fact party loyalty can be interpreted in a variety of ways and the choice among them necessarily involves a choice on one side of the controversy over rationality. Loyalty can be thought of, for example, as a truly independent variable, as a product of political socialization, as an expression of affect, and hence as an essentially irrational motive. On the other hand, it may be thought of as itself dependent on bargains rationally satisfying the preferences of legislators. Such bargains may be either short term or long term so that a legislator's manifest party loyalty may result from a series of advantageous bargains with party leaders on particular bills or from an implied bargain with them on career advantage.

The direction leadership of Lai Chau Province Party committees and authorities at all levels, from the province to the local government, following the documents of the Central Party Committee, plays an important role in the implementation of social insurance (SI) and unemployment insurance (UI) policies. As can be seen, after 9 years of implementing Resolution No. 21/NQ-TW, dated November 22, 2012, of the Politburo, on enhancing the Party's leadership on SI and health insurance (HI) policies in the 2012-2020 period, the awareness of the Party Committee, authorities, officials, party members, and ethnic groups in the province has increased significantly. The direction leadership of implementing resolutions of Party committees and authorities at all levels has been strengthened to properly fulfill policies that affirm the role of SI and UI policies in the social security system. Besides, many insurance policies have been implemented effectively, in line with the province's socio-economic development. The SI management system has been gradually consolidated, modernized, and operated effectively; facilities, service quality is increasingly improved.

During the late Stalin era, many of the USSR's local party control officials and prosecutors entered into a protracted conflict over who had the right to judge the conduct of communists; prosecutors charged that party committees were shielding communists from prosecution, while control officials claimed that party organs were deferring to prosecutors and abandoning their traditional oversight role. This article will argue that although some party committees were interfering in the courts, the dominant story of party–procuracy relations under post-war Stalinism involved the disengagement of party organs from the oversight of administrative wrongdoing, with long-lasting consequences for the Soviet regime's attitude toward corruption.

Mode of the electoral system reform of township head has generally been a cause for concern in China, despite promote direct election of the township has not yet become national policy, but this means that a gradualist style grass-roots democracy political development, has been able to create the incentives for reform and supply innovation for the space of grassroots democratic system. Reform township head election goal is to change the corrupt behavior of local officials, to improve the quality of local governance and strengthen the legitimacy of the power of the local party-state. Attitude free with the stance and hesitation of the party-state system on township mayoral electoral reform, and the lack of consistency consensus hinder the comprehensive development of the direct election of township head. This paper tries to explore the party-state system from an organizing principle of ”the party-controlled cadres”, analyzing the influence from the interventional principle of township electoral system change and encounter dilemmas of development. Meanwhile, the mode of ”public nomination, direct election” toward the secretary of townships' party committee has been taken by the party-state system as alternative approach to reform, modify or respond to the township direct election requirements. The maximum resistance of the township electoral system reform was from the party-state system, local party-state fear of loss and the consolidation of the party leadership, policy support, and the impact of the deepening of rural governance system contradiction. The results of this study pointed out that ”the party-controlled cadres” principle, this inertia deeply bound the township head election reform, most experimental elections failed to escape the control of the party. The mode of direct election of township party secretary has gradually replaced the direct election mode of township head. This shows that the CCP has chosen the reform of ”inner-party democracy” as an alternative program to change ”grass-roots democracy”. China's township electoral system reform and directly elected development are still faltering and uncertain in the near future.

IN THE AFTERMATH of the New Deal, and particularly after the end of World War II, the traditional loyalty of the South to the Democratic Party was strained by the commitment of the party's national leadership to civil rights and economic liberalism. In Congress, the Southern revolt against the national Democratic Party manifested itself in a high level of disloyalty on party votes. Describing the situation in the late 1960s, W. Wayne Shannon observed that party loyalty among Southern Democrats in Congress had fallen dramatically since World War II, necessitating a revision of Key's earlier conclusion that the phenomenon of Southern Democratic disloyalty had been greatly exaggerated.' During the 1960s, the conservative coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans became a regular feature of congressional voting and a powerful obstacle to liberal social and economic legislation.2 By the 1970s, however, important changes were evident in

The basic reason for the tremendous achievement made by the Anshan Iron and Steel Works is its resolute implementation of the Party Center's and Comrade Mao Tse-tung's thought and line — adherence to exercising the Party's absolute leadership over the enterprise, launching extensive mass movements, and carrying out in depth the political and ideological revolution. In the last few years a struggle between two ideologies and two lines has been going on consistently in the course of development of the Anshan Iron and Steel Works. One line is the correct proletarian line of running enterprises — featuring an adherence to putting politics in command, exercising the Party's absolute leadership over the enterprise, and applying the work method of mass line so that the Party's concentrated leadership can be integrated with extensive mass movements and the system of factory director assuming responsibility under the Party committee's leadership can be earnestly carried out. Another is the mistaken capitalist line...