🎉   Please check out our new website over at books-etc.com.

Seller
Your price
£95.00
Out of Stock

The Acceptance of Party Unity in Parliamentary Democracies

By (author) David M. Willumsen
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom
Published: 7th Sep 2017
Dimensions: w 161mm h 240mm d 18mm
Weight: 448g
ISBN-10: 0198805438
ISBN-13: 9780198805434
Barcode No: 9780198805434
Trade or Institutional customer? Contact us about large order quotes.
Synopsis
Despite the central role of policy preferences in the subsequent behaviour of legislators, preferences at the level of the individual legislator have been almost entirely neglected in the study of parliaments and legislative behaviour. The main reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining measures of legislator preferences that are not based on their behaviour. This book explores direct measures of policy preferences through parliamentary surveys. Building on this, the book develops measures of policy incentives of legislators to dissent from their parliamentary parties, and demonstrates that preference similarity amongst legislators explains a very substantial proportion of party unity, yet cannot explain all of it. Through a quantitative analysis of the attitudes of legislators to the demands of party unity and what drives these attitudes, the book argues that the reason for the difference between observed unity and the levels of unity which can be explained by preference similarity among legislators, is the conscious acceptance by MPs that the long-term benefits of belonging to a united party (such as increased influence on legislation, lower transaction costs and better chances of gaining office) outweigh the short-terms benefits of always voting for their ideal policy outcome. The volume reinforces this argument through the analysis of both open-ended survey questions as well as survey questions on the costs and benefits of belonging to a political party in a legislature.

New & Used

Seller Information Condition Price
-New
Out of Stock

What Reviewers Are Saying

Be the first to review this item. Submit your review now