Ideology, Grandstanding, and Strategic Party Disloyalty in the British Parliament

Abstract

Strong party discipline is a core feature of Westminster parliamentary systems. Parties typically compel Members of Parliament (MPs) to support the party position regardless of MPs' individual preferences. Rebellion, however, does occur. Using an original dataset of MP votes and speeches in the British House of Commons from 1992 to 2015, coupled with new estimations of MPs' ideological positions within their party, we find evidence that MPs use rebellion to strategically differentiate themselves from their party. The strategy that MPs employ is contingent upon an interaction of ideological extremity with party control of government. Extremists are loyal when their party is in the opposition, but these same extremists become more likely to rebel when their party controls government. Additionally, they emphasize their rebellion through speeches. Existing models of rebellion and party discipline do not account for government agenda control and do not explain these patterns.

Careerists Versus Coal-Miners: Welfare Reforms and the Substantive Representation of Social Groups in the British Labour Party

“…As a result, rebellious behaviour in the Labour party is now more likely to occur amongst centrist MPs than left-wingers (Slapin et al 2018). …”

The Sound of Rebellion: Voting Dissent and Legislative Speech in the UK House of Commons

“…They also lend support to the notion that MPs use simpler language when they try to connect to constituents through their debate participation (Spirling ) and provide insight into how MPs use dissent and parliamentary speech to connect with voters (Kirkland and Slapin ; Slapin et al. ). As such, these findings contribute to our understanding of how MPs within parties use parliamentary behavior—rhetoric in particular—to distinguish themselves from fellow partisans, with potential implications for democratic representation.…”

“…Indeed, recent literature has demonstrated that the individual MPs most likely to vote against their party are ideologically extreme members of the governing party (Slapin et al. ).…”

“…Slapin et al. () and Kirkland and Slapin () put forward a different theoretical argument, suggesting that ideologically driven MPs use rebellion as a mechanism to signal their ideological stance to a particular set of voters. They suggest that ideologically driven backbench MPs belonging to the governing party use rebellion on divisions to “grandstand”—that is, to take positions that they know are unlikely to ever result in policy but that resonate with particular ideological constituencies within their party.…”

“…Literature on rebellion in the House of Commons suggests that MPs, especially those in the governing party, use rebellion to connect with voters, garner name recognition, and differentiate themselves from the rest of their party (Benedetto and Hix ; Campbell et al ; Kam ; Kirkland and Slapin ; Slapin et al. ), but it has not examined the language they use in speeches when rebelling. When voting against their party, MPs likely look to use debate to communicate a particular position or sentiment to voters, a task that may require different language than expressions of support for the party position.…”