Unionist Party Research Articles

Ideology or National Interest? External Relations Votes in the European Parliament

Studies of roll-call votes in the European Parliament show that most party groups are very cohesive, the left-right dimension is the dominant cleavage in the chamber, and that most votes are adopted with broad majorities. This paper asks whether these findings extend to external relations, issue areas characterized by intergovernmentalism and entrenched national interests. The ‘politics stops at the water’s edge’ idiom suggests that national interests trump party politics. In contrast, recent studies of politicization in international relations find evidence for party political cleavages as regards external relations. Examining the positions of party groups and national delegations throughout the 1979-2014 period, the paper compares voting behaviour in external relations with overall patterns of party unity and coalitions whilst also differentiating between various types of foreign and security policy matters.

Intraparty Hostility: Social Identity, Subidentity, and the Hostile Media Effect in a Contested Primary

The hostile media effect (HME) has generally been tested in terms of in-groups and out-groups, with a “neutral” story in between. This ignores the nature of many social groups as comprising subgroups, often but not always sharing feelings of connectedness and purpose. In cases when bounded subgroups are at odds with one another, HME provides little guidance. A contested partisan primary provides such a case. This study takes identity centrality, candidate favorability, and perceived social network homogeneity as measures of partisanship and involvement, hypothesizing relationships between each and perceived bias against one’s candidate and party. Findings show that markers of candidate-focused social identity predict greater perceived bias against one’s candidate during the 2016 primary season, while party-focused identity fails to predict perceived bias against one’s party. This suggests that candidate support identity overrides plain partisanship during primaries, supporting concern that a heated primary might damage general election party unity. Subsequent postconvention findings suggest that the salience of candidate-focused identity fades, while homogeneity of one’s network regarding party support helps to make perceived hostility toward one’s party identity more salient. However, as campaigns become more candidate-centered, the contestation between nested candidate and party identities may grow fiercer.

“I Alone” vs. “Stronger Together”: Contrasting Visions in the 2016 Nomination Acceptance Addresses

Nomination acceptance addresses perform two major functions: They reconstitute the factions splintered by the primaries into a unified party and they frame the general election campaign as a clash between two narrative visions of America. In 2016, Donald Trump co-opted Republicans into his empire, conflated imagining and remembering to envision an American dystopia caused mainly by Clinton, claimed that he alone could fix things using unspecified mechanisms, and promised to provide an immediate American utopia. Clinton envisioned a cooperative nation with fewer recent successes than problems, explained that only together could we improve our prospects for a better future by working hard to enact unspecified policies, and warned us against making a bad man our potentate. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton performed the rhetorical functions of consolidating support and framing the campaign but, to date, no rhetor has found a way to reconcile them into a unifying American vision.

The Legislative Logic of Electoral Reform in Ukraine

Since the end of Communist rule, Ukraine has undertaken three major electoral reforms, moving from a single-member district majoritarian system, to a mixed-member system, to a closed-list proportional representation system, and back to the mixed-member system. Some argue that political parties are primarily motivated by the desire to maximise seats or improve their ability to impact on policy. I argue that existing theories of electoral reform often assume that parties are unitary actors during electoral reform. My analysis of electoral reform in Ukraine clearly demonstrates significant intra-party dissonance on electoral system preferences. This result questions the usefulness of the party unity assumption.

Towards Exit from the EU: The Conservative Party’s Increasing Euroscepticism since the 1980s

Since the 1980s, Britain’s Conservative Party has become increasingly critical of the European Union, and of the country’s membership of it. So contentious and controversial has this issue become that it was a significant factor in the downfall of three consecutive Conservative Prime Ministers, all of whom found it increasingly difficult to manage their Party in Parliament, and thereby maintain any semblance of Party unity. Initially, during the 1980s and 1990s, the intra-Party divisions were between Europhiles (pro-Europeans) and Eurosceptics, but this demarcation was subsequently superseded by a division between soft Eurosceptics and hard Eurosceptics. The development and deepening of these intra-Party divisions are attributable to a plethora of endogenous and exogenous factors, the combined and cumulative effect of which ultimately led to the ‘Brexit’ vote in the June 2016 referendum.

The Moral Economy of Loyalty: Labour, Law, and the State in Northern Ireland, 1921–1939

The state of Northern Ireland was founded in 1921 and consolidated in the inter-war period. Analysts have claimed that this was accomplished through religious discrimination and populist patronage, despite the existence of Article V of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Utilizing a case study approach, this article examines how two pieces of legislation impacted on the labour movement in the region in the period 1921 to 1939. The Special Powers Act (first passed in 1922, and a permanent act from 1933), and the Trade Disputes Act, 1927, were both legislated by the inter-war Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) government of Northern Ireland. Labour activists suffered political discrimination, while they were intimidated through the legislation and organization was curtailed. These restrictions were carried out on the basis that the labour movement was considered a ‘disloyal’ section of the Northern Ireland populace. The article concludes that during the period 1921 to 1939 the state of Northern Ireland state was administered by the UUP through a moral economy of loyalty, due to the politicized nature of regional policy. The evidence suggests that as a result of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, all those considered disloyal in Northern Ireland were liable to political discrimination, while those loyal were to be rewarded through patronage.

Loyalty to the Leadership: Validating Congressional Party Voting Scores with Party Leadership Records

Measures of party unity are commonplace in the study of legislative voting, particularly in assessments of party influence. Although scholars have employed a range of measures in studying party loyalty and reward in the U.S. House, all are proxies for the scores that House party leaders construct for their own processes, and these scores have never been examined in empirical scholarship. Drawing on archived leadership records, I construct leader loyalty scores for House Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s based on leadership-selected key votes in each session. I show that the content of the leader lists is very sensitive to political context as the leadership responds to short-term challenges, but in the aggregate, leader loyalty scores are closely related over time to other indicators. And, as predictors of party rewards—in the form of committee posts and legislative success—the leaders’ scores generally perform similarly to the usual proxies, although the leadership's measure provides clearer evidence of reward, particularly in comparison to conventional party unity scores.

Tales of the unexpected: The selection of British party leaders since 1963

Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015 stunned observers and practitioners of British politics alike. In this article, we first outline a theoretical framework that purports to explain why political parties operating in parliamentary systems choose the leaders they do. We then examine 32 leadership successions involving five major British parties since 1963, and note that many of these were unexpected, in that they were triggered by unforeseen circumstances, such as the sudden death or resignation of the incumbent. Examining each party in turn, we briefly explain why the winners won and identify at least eight cases (a quarter of our sample) where a candidate widely expected to prevail at the outset was ultimately defeated by a ‘dark horse’, ‘second favourite’ or even ‘rank outsider’. Of these, Corbyn’s election in 2015 was the most unexpected and, consistent with the findings of studies of party leadership conventions in other parliamentary systems, namely Canada and Spain, suggests that ideological and policy concerns are sometimes more important than considerations of party unity and electability, especially when a leadership contest is dominated by party activists.

Representation in the EU: multi-level challenges and new perspectives from comparative federalism

ABSTRACTThis article identifies the limits and possibilities of the federal comparison for the European Union party system. Can the literatures on parties and party systems in multi-level systems deliver more insights to the analysis of the developing life of parties and party competition in the European Union? What are the most productive dialogs between scholars of federal and multilevel parties and scholars of European Union parties? It argues that the study of representation in the EU involves two key multi-level challenges: vote choice in a multi-level setting and party system development through upward aggregation. Drawing more closely from the comparative federalism literature can provide analytical leverage for both issues.

It takes two: how Eurosceptic public opinion and party divisions influence party positions

Do parties respond to voters’ preferences on European integration in elections to the European Parliament (EP)? Following recent research that shows political party responsiveness to Eurosceptic attitudes during EP elections is conditioned by party characteristics, this article seeks to understand how party unity on European integration affects party responsiveness to Euroscepticism. It argues that when Eurosceptic attitudes among voters are high and the parties are divided in their position on European integration, parties will be more responsive to voters and take a more Eurosceptic position. To test the theoretical expectations, the study uses data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Euromanifestos Project, and European Election Study for 1989–2009 for over 120 parties across 20 European Union member states. The findings have important implications for understanding the nature of democratic representation in the European Union.

Rebel Rebel. Do Primary Elections Affect Legislators’ Behaviour? Insights from Italy

MPs elected in 2013 Italian parliamentary elections have been selected through three main procedures: open primaries, closed primaries and exclusive methods, meaning that they have been appointed directly by the party elites or party leaders. This peculiar layout of the Italian Parliament offers the opportunity to analyse the impact on the parliamentary behaviour of different selection methods within the same political context. Drawing from a large and original data set including parliamentary behaviour of all the Italian MPs elected in 2013 parliamentary elections, this article addresses the impact of candidate selection methods by focusing on the dimension of party unity. Our hypothesis is that inclusive procedures for selecting candidates may entail a low party unity degree, namely a higher MPs’ propensity to rebellion from party line. The analysis shows that the selection methods affect only marginally MPs’ parliamentary behaviour and not always in the expected direction.

Presidential Speeches Amid a More Centralized and Unified Congress

In his seminal work, Going Public, Samuel Kernell (1987) argued that changes in the congressional bargaining environment incentivized an increase in presidential speeches. Although subsequent research rejected that these changes increased speeches, Congress continues to evolve, having become more centralized and unified (by political party) since the 1970s. The purpose of this article is to revisit the changing congressional environment to assess what impact it has had on presidential speechmaking. We argue that if greater centralization and party unity are to affect speechmaking, they should decrease it, but only under unified government. We find that although congressional centralization, which should promote more bargaining between presidents and legislators, decreases speeches, the impact is not conditional on unified government. To this end, we conclude that the president's electoral not policy goals are the primary motivation for presidential speechmaking. These results have major implications for our theories of going public and our understanding of the public presidency.

Preferences and agreement in legislative parties: testing the causal chain

ABSTRACTThis research note focuses on two specific dimensions of legislative cohesion: the homogeneity of preferences within a party and party agreement. Although these two dimensions have often been considered as synonyms, it is argued that these two concepts refer to different realities. The authors therefore develop distinct measurements for these two concepts. The authors then examine their statistical relationship, putting to the test the widespread assumption that heterogeneous preferences increase the probability of disagreement. The authors do so by testing the effect of different measures of a member of parliament’s ideological distance to her/his party on her/his self-reported frequency of disagreement with her/his party. It is demonstrated that the causal chain linking both concepts is only verified in the case of a conscious ideological distance. The results have crucial theoretical and methodological implications for future research on party cohesion and party unity.

Andrew Curtin and the Politics of Union

This paper looks at Pennsylvania politics during the Civil War, focusing on Governor Andrew Curtin. Although commonly referred to as a Republican, Curtin never campaigned at the head of a statewide Republican ticket in Pennsylvania. Instead he ran in 1860 for the People's Party and in 1863 for the Union Party. Examining Curtin’s elections and record allows two core arguments about Unionism to be made: one about Union parties as a substantive political movement; and the other about Unionism as a meaningful political ideology undergirding those parties, and embodied in Curtin’s policies and principles. Historians have generally overlooked Union parties, and emphasized the survival of the two-party system in the wartime North. This close study of Pennsylvania politics demonstrates the need to recognize the fluidity of party labels and ideology, and to understand the significance of the Union Parties that emerged between the traditional Democratic and Republican organizations.

Party Unity and Intra-Party Coordination: The case of the Australian Labor Party

Party Unity and Intra-Party Coordination: The case of the Australian Labor Party

Candidacy rules and party unity: The impact of multiple candidacies on legislative voting behaviour in Italy

A common approach among scholars is depicting electoral democracy as a two-round competition for offices, starting with elections and continuing with the allocation of legislative offices among legislators. But what happens when the allocation of seats does not end at Round 1 (elections), but continues as a first stage of Round 2? This may occur when candidacy rules allow candidates to be nominated and elected in more than one district. Multiple candidacies create a pool of vacant parliamentary seats, whose allocation depends mostly on party leaders’ choices. Multi-candidacies increase therefore the centralization of candidate selection process, granting leaders greater post-election influence and decreasing the incentives to vote against party line for those MPs whose parliamentary office depends mostly on the leaders’ will. Data on legislators’ voting behaviour in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (2006–2011) support this notion.

The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How They Weaken Democracy. By Seth Masket. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

<i>The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How They Weaken Democracy</i>. By Seth Masket. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Lucy Caldwell’s The Meeting Point (2011): From Ireland to Bahrain and Back

Lucy Caldwell’s The Meeting Point (2011): From Ireland to Bahrain and Back Kelli Maloy The Meeting Point (2011), the second novel by Belfast native Lucy Caldwell, focuses on Euan and Ruth Armstrong, an Anglican minister and his wife who travel from County Down to Bahrain for a mission trip; Euan’s mission is both a response to the events of September 11, 2001, and an anticipation of the war in Iraq, which is declared during the course of the novel’s narrative.1 When they arrive in Bahrain, Euan reveals that the true nature of the mission is something quite different. The real purpose of the trip is to enter Saudi Arabia, where he and a contact will distribute Bibles and baptize converts. During the course of their month-long stay in Bahrain, Ruth has an affair with a local man, Farid, and entrusts Farid’s teenage cousin, Noor, with the Armstrongs’ toddler. Set between 2003 and 2010, the novel is framed by the impact of the global recession on the North and shaped by the international role of Ireland during the Celtic Tiger. As a voice of evangelical Christianity, Euan embodies the post-9/11 fundamentalist rhetoric that became prominent in the United States and in allied countries, as well as post-Troubles patterns of violence and xenophobia in Northern Ireland. He characterizes Muslims as non-believers “dying of thirst” for the Word of God, awaiting salvation in a land of “venomous snakes and scorpions.”2 The causes and effects of present-day Islamophobia have become increasingly complex, but reactions to the events of 9/11 remain a linchpin of the recent surge in evangelical Christianity. In a 2014 analysis of Christian dispensationalism, Grayson R. Robertson III argues that the fall of Communism in 1989 “cleared the way for Islam to once again become the primary eschatological enemy of Christianity” and that the events of 9/11 prompted “the most dramatic increase in the amount of evangelical Christian literature devoted to forecasting [End Page 41] the final biblical dispensation since the late 1960s and early 1970s.”3 President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, Robertson argues, was based largely on the advice of dispensational pre-millennialist advisors who regarded Saddam Hussein as the Antichrist, come to rebuild Babylon and launch missiles toward Israel, and saw the region as the location of the Battle of Armageddon as outlined in Revelation.4 President Bush’s use of the term “crusade” to describe the “Global War on Terror” notoriously framed American foreign policy as a response to a perceived threat to Christian hegemony. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, later stated that the term “had been intended not to signify opposition to Islam but ‘a broad cause’ that other nations should join,” an ostensibly slight semantic distinction.5 Widespread evidence of Islamophobia since 2001 would suggest that such opposition did, indeed, fuel this “broad cause” and produced a spike in evangelicalism, both in the United States and beyond. One study found that of the 450 evangelical churches in the Republic of Ireland in 2010, 60 percent had existed for fewer than ten years.6 Much as the elimination of the encroaching global threat of Communism sparked anti-Islamic Christian evangelicalism in the United States, the political nature of evangelicalism in Northern Ireland has allowed for the transfer of rhetoric once reserved for Catholics to Muslims. The role of the Rev. Ian Paisley in galvanizing followers to support the tenets of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)—specifically, to reject the Good Friday Agreement—cannot be overlooked.7 However, the collective sense of Unionist identity has waned in recent [End Page 42] decades. Claire Mitchell and Jennifer Todd trace this identity crisis both to the integration of Catholics in governance and to the fact that “the United Kingdom itself can no longer be seen as a model and upholder of the Unionist position.” Having “lost the argument with regard to the political future of Northern Ireland,” conservative evangelicals, who “thrive on opposition,” have replaced the “Catholic other” with the “Islamic other.” Some of the evangelicals interviewed by Mitchell and Todd expressed a sense of abandonment and conceded that a united...

The EU Referendum in Northern Ireland: Closing Borders, Re-Opening Border Debates

The UK decision to leave the European Union (EU) following a referendum in June 2016 fundamentally alters the country’s relationship with the EU, with its European neighbours, with the rest of the world and potentially with its own constituent units. It is clear that different parts of the UK will be impacted differently by this decision and by the unfolding exit terms and process. In this context, Northern Ireland is considered to be particularly vulnerable. This article examines the referendum campaign in Northern Ireland by detailing input from the Northern Ireland administration, political parties, civil society and external figures. The article suggests that the overall referendum campaign in Northern Ireland was hamstrung by the opposing positions taken by key political protagonists, particularly Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This produced a challenging context for the referendum debate in Northern Ireland. The post-referendum period has also been marked by persistent differences in relation to how best to approach specific Northern Ireland issues and challenges. A continued absence of clear positions and a lack of contingency planning underline a poor level of preparedness for future political developments.

A fresh start? The Northern Ireland Assembly election 2016

ABSTRACTAs voters across Northern Ireland went to the polls on 5 May 2016, it was by no means obvious that they were participating in a landmark election. The preceding campaign was largely lacklustre, voters were left uninspired, and competition for votes was primarily conducted along predictable ethno-national lines. The Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin retained their positions as the dominant unionist and nationalist parties respectively, while the Ulster Unionist Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party struggled to retain their existing support, let alone expand it. The cross-community Alliance Party remained stagnant in fifth place. However, these ostensive signs of continuity with previous elections mask deeper signs of substantive change. The establishment of Northern Ireland’s first official opposition within current structures and the publication of a draft Programme for Government framework within a month of the election are indicative of a new era in consociational power sharing. Meanwhile, the growth in support for smaller parties, a further fall in voter turnout and an audible debate around social issues suggest at least a partial decline in the salience of the ethno-national dimension in the electoral arena.