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The study of party unity and its determinants is conceptually confusing, with terms such as 'party discipline' and 'party cohesion' used to denote both dependent and independent variables. Moreover, while the literature recognizes both anticipated sanctions and homogeneity of preferences as pathways to party unity, it ignores possibilities such as party loyalty and the division of labour within parliamentary parties. The article examines these different pathways to party unity on the basis of five waves of interviews with nearly all members of the Lower House of the Dutch parliament. The article finds least evidence for sanctions as a major determinant of party unity, with the possible exception of parties in the governing coalition. Homogeneity, loyalty and division of labour all seem to play an important role. Party unity might seem over determined, but the more likely explanation offered is that it is a case of 'different horses for different courses'.

It is often said that European Parliament elections fail as an instrument to express the will of the European people. However, while the elections are not contested at the European level and are often dominated by national issues, this does not necessarily imply that they fail to connect policy views of voters and representatives. We examine policy congruence between voters and candidates, utilizing the candidate and voter surveys of the European Election Study 2009. First, we demonstrate that policy preferences of candidates and voters are constrained by three separate policy dimensions. Second, we show that the quality of representation is high in terms of left/right, the main dimension of conflict in European politics, but lower on the cultural and European integration dimensions.Finally, we demonstrate that in some cases the aggregation of national parties in political groups in the European Parliament poses problems for effective political representation.

The mandate-independence controversy still features prominently in studies of political representation even though the problems with its theoretical foundation and empirical operationalization have long been recognized. This article proposes an alternative typology of modes of representation. By combining type of control (ex ante or ex post) with direction of the interactions (bottom-up or top-down), our study captures the most important aspects of the relationship between voters and representatives. We demonstrate how the typology can be used in a survey instrument by comparing the attitudes toward representation of Dutch members of Parliament with the attitudes held by voters, and by relating the views of the members to their behavior.

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