Responsible Party Government Research Articles

Local roots and rebellion: Constituency connections and legislative behaviour of British MPs, 2010–21

Abstract This study explores the relationship between the local roots of Westminster MPs and parliamentary party discipline, a central principle of the British system of responsible party government. While recently the local base of MPs has attracted increasing academic attention, only little effort has been put into investigating how this might influence the political behaviour of parliamentarians. In order to do so, this study utilizes a comprehensive database on the local base of British parliamentarians, which includes data on all Westminster MPs from 2010 to 2021, supplemented with information on parliamentary dissent. Contrary to theoretical assumptions and existing international studies, localness is shown to have no positive influence on MPs propensity for parliamentary rebellion. This suggests that the increasing recruitment of local candidates does not challenge the traditional functionality of the responsible party system of government, yet nor should localness be seen as a panacea for the perceived representational deficits of British democracy.

Comparing Responsible Party Government in the United States and the United Kingdom

Comparing Responsible Party Government in the United States and the United Kingdom

Who Answers for the Government? Bureaucrats, Ministers, and Responsible Parties

AbstractA key feature of parliamentary democracy is government accountability vis‐à‐vis the legislature, but the important question of who speaks for the government—cabinet ministers or unelected bureaucrats, and the institutional underpinnings of this behavior—receives scant attention in the existing literature. We investigate this question using the case of Japan, and data on more than four million committee speeches spanning distinct electoral and legislative institutional environments. We document how a party‐strengthening electoral system reform in 1994 facilitated a dramatic shift in the nature of government accountability to parliamentary committees: speeches by ministers increased, speeches by bureaucrats decreased, and discursive accountability between ministers and opposition legislators increased. Subsequent legislative reforms expanding junior ministerial roles and placing explicit limits on bureaucratic participation further reinforced the effects. These findings shed new light on the institutional foundations of responsible party government in general as well as its progressive development in Japan.

Congressional Approval and Responsible Party Government: The Role of Partisanship and Ideology in Citizen Assessments of the Contemporary U.S. Congress

While scholars posit an electoral link between congressional approval and majority party electoral fortunes, it is unclear whether citizens are grounding their assessments of approval on policy or valence grounds, such as retrospective economic evaluations. Whereas it is commonly understood that there is an ideological component to constituents’ job approval of their individual members of Congress, in addition to a strong partisan effect, the ideological basis of institutional approval has not been established. Using cross-sectional and panel survey data, which allow for scaling citizens and the congressional parties in the same ideological space, I demonstrate that, distinct from the partisan basis of congressional approval, citizens’ ideological distance from the majority party has a separate and distinct effect. These results suggest that the link between congressional approval and majority party fortunes is rooted in the collective ideological representation provided by the legislative majority in an increasingly responsible U.S. Congress.

What Did They Wish For? Party Government, Polarization and the American Political Science Association

In tracing the development of increased polarization in the United States, numerous scholars have noted the apparent importance of the American Political Science Association's (APSA's) Committee on Political Parties. The committee's influential (and often criticized) report,Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System, called for a wholesale transformation of political parties in the United States. On its publication in October 1950, political scientists quickly concluded that, taken together, the committee's recommendations represented a reworking of a distinct approach, usually known as “party government” or “responsible party government.” (The origins of responsible parties dated back to Woodrow Wilson's classic 1885 textCongressional Government.) Since then, the notion of party government has become a core issue in the study of American political parties, albeit a contentious one. A recent survey ranked the APSA document at seventh as a canonical text in graduate syllabi concerning parties.

Who Answers for the Government? Institutional Reform and Ministerial Accountability in Japan

A key feature of parliamentary democracy is government accountability vis-a-vis the legislature, but the important question of who speaks for the government—cabinet ministers or unelected bureaucrats, and the institutional underpinnings of this behavior—receives scant attention in the existing literature. We investigate this question with the case of Japan, and data on more than 4 million committee speeches spanning distinct electoral and legislative institutional environments. We document how a party-strengthening electoral system reform in 1994 facilitated a dramatic shift in the nature of government accountability to parliamentary committees: speeches by ministers increased, speeches by bureaucrats decreased, and discursive accountability between ministers and opposition legislators increased. Subsequent legislative reforms expanding junior ministerial roles and placing explicit limits on bureaucratic participation further reinforced the effects. These findings shed new light on the institutional foundations of responsible party government in general, as well as its progressive development in Japan.

The “Two Mr. Wilsons”: Party Government, Personal Leadership, and Woodrow Wilson’s Political Thought

Woodrow Wilson’s political thought on statesmanship and governance reveals a consistent tension between party and personal leadership. I trace three phases of Wilson’s political thought, analyzing this tension under a framework of Edmund Burke’s idea of party government and Henry Bolingbroke’s conception of the “Patriot King.” First, in his early scholarship, Wilson adopted the Burkean notion of unifying the legislative and executive branches to promote effective party government. Second, in his later scholarship and political career, Wilson embraced a view of the president as having the ability to bring about responsible party government through the power of personal leadership—implicitly using Bolingbroke’s means for Burke’s ends. Third, as his presidency came to focus more on foreign affairs, Wilson defended presidential prerogatives for personal leadership akin to a patriot king. This tension influenced Wilson’s presidency and subsequent American political development.

From Pledge-Fulfilment to Mandate-Fulfilment

The article presents a theoretical synthesis that could serve as the conceptual framework for empirical studies of the fulfilment of electoral pledges in modern democracies. Studies related to the program-to-policy linkage derived their hypotheses, for the most part, from an implicit, common sense model of mandate theory. The article presents a realistic version of positive mandate theory, one that is stripped of its normative assumptions and is suitable for empirical testing. It is informed by five theoretical building blocks: the concept of the binding mandate, the party theory of representation, the doctrine of responsible party government, modern normative mandate theory and the conceptual pair of delegation and mandate. The resulting framework incorporates the information content of the campaigns, the definiteness of the authorization and the strength of pledge enactment as its core components.

Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government

This Article argues that the Supreme Court’s party jurisprudence is predicated on a set of theoretical assumptions that do not hold true in the real world of contemporary American politics. In this regard, the Supreme Court’s recent decisions denying certiorari in two cases implicating the rights of political parties — one involving a challenge to the federal ban on so-called soft money and the other involving a challenge to state mandated open primaries — provide a much needed opening to explore alternate paths to democratic responsiveness and to identify opportunities for First Amendment doctrine to increase rather than decrease the odds of responsive and responsible party government. Without claiming that there are easy solutions to our democratic dysfunctions, and drawing on a substantial body of empirical literature, the Article maintains that an alternative path to democratic responsiveness emerges when one focuses on the associational qualities of partisan networks. Viewed as associations, the capacity of political parties to foster a functioning democracy depends less on their capacity to speak and the coherence of their platform and more on the depth and breadth of their political networks. This is because social connections turn out to be more central to political mobilization, organization, and information transmission than many, especially in law, appreciate. As such, strengthening and broadening social ties within partisan networks presents an alternative and, as yet underappreciated, path to responsive and responsible governance. Integrating these insights into existing First Amendment doctrine provides a new scale with which to weigh the burdens on a party’s First Amendment rights and a new ability to allocate First Amendment rights in such a way as to encourage political parties to attend to the concerns of their constituents and to govern in the public interest.

Dynamic party unity: the US Congress in comparative perspective

Moises Ostrogorski once denounced political parties for burying diverse concerns of pluralistic societies under monolithic electoral options. E.E. Schattschneider celebrated them for the same reason: organizing choice and ‘responsible party government’ amid pluralistic complexity. Comparativists have found both dynamics in European legislatures: most European parties exhibit the high average levels of voting unity that Schattschneider’s theory implies, but also display rather Ostrogorskian cycles of discipline, stifling dissent on divisive issues at election time. We use comparativists’ tools to explore the dynamics and normative quality of party unity in the different terrain of the US Congress. We find similar cycles of unity in roll-call voting, but in the American context – with more loosely organized parties, especially historically but still today – Ostrogorskian stifling of dissent operates against a less Schattschneiderian background. In comparative perspective, Congressional parties muffle divisive issues more effectively than they deliver governance, with tenuous implications for representation.

Responsible Party Government in a World of Interdependence

This article opens up the closed model of the responsibility of a national government to its national electorate by adding constraints on its capacity to enact effective economic, national security and political policies. These constraints come from policy interdependence. The European Union exerts a denationalising influence through the Council, a multinational effect through the European Parliament, and the eurozone is designed as a transnational technocracy. Intergovernmental institutions spanning continents add further constraints. The result is a growing gap between the efforts of a national government to deliver outputs that match the preferences of voters and a reduction in the capacity of national electorates to hold accountable institutions outside their country that have a major impact on national outcomes. The conclusion considers three prospective possibilities: a growing frustration with a policy-irrelevant rotation of parties in office; institutional reform at the supranational level; and a learning process in which a recognition of the constraints of interdependence leads to a change in expectations.

Can National Governments Be Responsible in a World of Interdependence?

This paper expands the conventional model of responsible party government to take into account the effect of trans-national constraints on nationally elected governments. It starts by systematically comparing the closed model of national party government with that of a governing party subject to the constraints of a world of interdependence. European Union constraints concurrently exert a denationalizing influence through the Council, a multinational effect through the European Parliament, and an aspiring economic technocracy. Interdependence is increased in institutions of a wider Europe or global in scope, and trans-national influences of markets and non-state crime can operate without any formal institution being accountable or in control. As an alternative to electorates rotating their choice between a succession of parties that fail to meet national preference, the conclusion proposes a learning model by which parties and voters may adapt expectations to meet the constraints of interdependence.

Sub-Party Coalitions in the Congress: the Evidence Against Realignment

The research reported in this paper, based on a hierarchical cluster analysis of roll-calls with goodness-of-fit testing in seven Senates from the 86th to the 100th Congresses, identifies the same four sub-party groups persisting from one Senate to another even across the supposed Reagan Realignment. The authors’ previous research concluded that the Senate is organized into a small number of multi-issue coalitions composed of such groups. The implication of the further research here is that such multi-issue coalitions represent a third view on the working of Congress which is alternative to the views that Congress is: (i) a type of Responsible Party Government led by the two main political parties, or (ii) a legislature composed of individual operators.

Liberals, Labor, and Party Government

Republican party government during the presidency of George W. Bush prompted liberal academics and intellectuals to reconsider the theory of responsible party government (RPG). While liberal thinkers traditionally had viewed party government positively, the onset of robust conservative government led some to question its desirability. This article examines this momentary turn in liberal thought and argues that it misconstrues the arguments for RPG, overstates the extent to which contemporary conditions constitute a fulfillment of the model, and exaggerates the degree to which Bush-era Republicans were able to shift policy to the right. Most important, recent critics misunderstand the ways that stronger parties help organized labor and favor a left-liberal political agenda.

The Economic Records of the Presidents: Party Differences and Inherited Economic Conditions

Several studies of the post-war American political economy find that Democratic presidents have been more successful than Republicans. Most recently, Bartels (2008) found that economic growth had been greater and that unemployment and income inequality had been lower under Democratic presidents since 1948. If true, these findings combined with the frequent success of Republicans in presidential elections pose a challenge to theories of retrospective voting and responsible party government. This reexamination of these findings indicates that they are an artifact of specification error. Previous estimates did not properly take into account the lagged effects of the economy. Once lagged economic effects are taken into account, party differences in economic performance are shown to be the effects of economic conditions inherited from the previous president and not the consequence of real policy differences. Specifically, the economy was in recession when Republican presidents became responsible for the economy in each of the four post-1948 transitions from Democratic to Republican presidents. This was not the case for the transitions from Republicans to Democrats. When economic conditions leading into a year are taken into account, there are no presidential party differences with respect to growth, unemployment, or income inequality.

Theory Driven Bias in Ideal Point Estimates—A Monte Carlo Study

This paper analyzes the use of ideal point estimates for testing pivot theories of lawmaking such as Krehbiel's (1998, Pivotal politics: A theory of U.S. lawmaking. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago) pivotal politics and Cox and McCubbins's (2005, Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representations. New York: Cambridge University Press) party cartel model. Among the prediction of pivot theories is that all pivotal legislators will vote identically on all successful legislation. Clinton (2007, Lawmaking and roll calls. Journal of Politics 69:455–67) argues that the estimated ideal points of the pivotal legislators are therefore predicted to be statistically indistinguishable and false when estimated from the set of successful final passage roll call votes, which implies that ideal point estimates cannot logically be used to test pivot theories. I show using Monte Carlo simulation that when pivot theories are augmented with probabilistic voting, Clinton's prediction only holds in small samples when voting is near perfect. I furthermore show that the predicted bias is unlikely to be consequential with U.S. Congressional voting data. My analysis suggests that the methodology of estimating ideal points to compute theoretically relevant quantities for empirical tests is not inherently flawed in the case of pivot theories.

Who Wants Electoral Competition and Who Wants to Win?

This article employs data gathered in a 2006 national survey to study how the American electorate evaluates a trade-off between competitive elections and winning to implement preferred policies. The results show that voters do not share in the prevailing elite consensus about the overriding virtues of competition. A multilevel model indicates that ideological extremism, partisanship, social trust, and several other individual-level variables have predictable relationships with preferences for winning or competition. In addition, electoral margin in the 2006 congressional district election interacts with support for winning or losing candidates. Voters supporting candidates who are soundly defeated take refuge in competition, whereas those supporting candidates who win decisively view victory as a means of implementing policy preferences. Additional analyses show that preferences for winning and competition influence various forms of political participation. By emphasizing public involvement in policy making, voters expressing a preference to win echo “responsible party government” critiques of the democratic shortcomings of the American political system.

Does globalization affect public perceptions of ‘Who in power can make a difference’? Evidence from 40 countries, 1996–2006

Economic globalization is often said to promote policy convergence between political parties in government in democratic states, and thus substantially constrain voters’ choice options. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) modules one and two, this paper tests whether and how cross-national differences in exposure to the international economy may influence the voter perceptions that are needed to underpin expectations of differences between alternative governments, one of the main preconditions for the effective practice of responsible party government. It identifies two dimensions of economic globalization, trade dependence and international financial integration (IFI), and uncovers initial evidence that IFI appears to encourage pessimism about ‘making a difference’. However, this appears to be an artefact of a contingent association between powerful presidential systems and low levels of financial globalization.

Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives

Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives. By Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 336p. 24.99 paper.In this volume, Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins elaborate on the “cartel” theory of parties in the U.S. Congress that was first set forth in their earlier book, Legislative Leviathan (1993), and present a substantial body of new evidence in support of this theory. The central thesis of the new book is that a form of party government has been present continuously in the House of Representatives since the adoption of the Reed Rules in the 1890s.

Austin Ranney

Austin Ranney, the eminent political scientist and leading American authority on political parties and elections died, peacefully, at his home in Berkeley on July 24, 2006. He was 85 years old and for a number of years had been battling the debilitating effects of congestive heart failure and diabetes. Ranney's doctoral dissertation, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government (1954), and his Jefferson Lectures at Berkeley, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction (1975), are major explorations of the role that parties play in the overall scheme of the American political system. The broad-gauged view adopted by these studies, theoretically informed but also rigorously disciplined by wide-ranging empirical study, was typical of Ranney's style of work, which extended to important contributions on democracy and the party system, referendums, presidential primaries, the measurement of party competition, the impact of television on elections, and the recruitment of candidates for public office, among other topics. His collaborators in some of these projects included Willmoore Kendall of Yale University and David Butler of the University of Oxford.