Achieving party unity in the Netherlands: Representatives’ sequential decision-making mechanisms at three levels of Dutch government

Abstract

How do parties at different levels of government get their representatives to vote according to the party line? Employing the sequential decision-making approach to party unity, we explore the relative importance of cue-taking, party agreement, party loyalty, and party discipline as individual representative decision-making mechanisms. On the basis of the Dutch version of the PartiRep comparative Member of Parliament survey, we find few differences between national and subnational representatives when it comes to the first two mechanisms, but party loyalty and party discipline seem to play a less important role in determining representatives’ decision whether to vote with the party group line. This is, in part, in line with our theoretical expectation that subnational representatives are less likely to be motivated by office-seeking and vote-seeking than their national counterparts.

Scrutiny and policymaking in local councils: how parties use council tools

“…These suggest that local councillors attach high value to setting their municipality's main policy goals and scrutinising the actions of the local government, but that they feel less content with their actual contributions to these activities (Klok and Denters 2013). Many of these studies do not include parties into their analyses, even though the importance of political parties in local councils has been widely acknowledged (Razin 2013;Van Vonno 2019). At the same time, political scientists have gained a greater understanding of how parties in national legislatures use their parliamentary tools in recent years: that is under what conditions they submit questions or amendments (e.g., Höhmann and Sieberer 2020;Otjes and Louwerse 2021).…”

Loyal Activists? Party Socialization and Dissenting Voting Behavior in Parliament

“…Surprisingly, both strands of the literature—on whipped and unwhipped votes—only rarely investigate the influence of party loyalty, except from studies using survey instead of observational data (e.g., Close 2018; Kam 2011; van Vonno 2019; Willumsen 2017). When party loyalty is included, scholars have often conceptualized it as the result of parliamentary socialization, albeit with mixed results.…”

Mavericks or Loyalists? Popular Ballot Jumpers and Party Discipline in the Flexible-List PR Context

“…Political parties can use different strategies to keep the costs of candidate screening at a reasonable level (Carroll and Nalepa 2021). First, strict membership requirements might disqualify or disadvantage those aspirants who are yet to internalize important party norms of party loyalty ( van Vonno 2019). What is more, the bottom section of the ballots can be filled with the party's long-term regional-or local office holders who lack the aspirations of pursuing a political career at the national level.…”

“…In the parliamentary arena, political parties can use their role as gatekeepers to various valuable political resources to enforce unity within their ranks (Andeweg and Thomassen 2011; Rich 2014; van Vonno 2019). In PR settings, senior party officials control access to peer mentoring, financial- and material resources, experienced assistant staff, public-opinion data or know-how (Carey 2007).…”