If you can beat them, confront them: Party-level analysis of opposition behavior in European national parliaments

Abstract

This article explains the variation in opposition behavior by investigating parliamentary voting of opposition parties across 16 European national parliaments. It finds that features of an opposition party that increase its likelihood of winning office in future elections—its size and experience in government—increase the party’s tendency toward confrontation with the government, as do features that increase the party’s need to differentiate itself from the government. At the systemic level, features that increase the attractiveness of cooperation—such as an open structure of competition and considerable influence of the opposition on parliamentary decision-making—decrease tendencies toward confrontation. Together, party-specific and systemic features explain two-thirds of the observed variation in the behavior of opposition parties, even without controlling for vote-specific factors.

Government–opposition relations in a fragmented, personalized, and multidimensional setting: The case of Israel

“…Finally, it must be pointed out that model 2 presents no evidence that party features that determine opposition parties’ ability to challenge the government influence their behavior. In analyzing a cross section of 16 European countries, Tuttnauer (2018) shows larger parties and ones with more government experience to be more confrontational and attributes this tendency to their enhanced ability to challenge the government. In the Israeli case investigated in the present study, however, these features did not produce a significant effect.…”

“…Following Tuttnauer (2018), several party features were incorporated into the analysis, all of them tapping a party’s ability to challenge the government. Seat share is the number of seats held by a party, divided by the total seats in parliament.…”

When does politics stop at the water’s edge? A QCA of parliamentary consensus on military deployment decisions

“…Prior research has demonstrated that minority governments will search for support among opposition parties, will be more hesitant to put controversial decisions to a vote, and are less likely to resort to the use of force than majority governments (Prins and Sprecher, 1999;Oktay, 2018;Wagner, 2018). Moving away from the minority-majority dichotomy, Mújica and Sánchez-Cuenca (2006) found that the levels of parliamentary consensus varied according to the size of the government relative to the size of the opposition, while the analysis of Tuttnauer (2018) showed that surplus coalitions take more controversial decisions. Beasley and Kaarbo (2014: 735), in turn, concluded that the overall level of parliamentary support has more impact on the foreign policy of parliamentary democracies than the difference between majority and minority governments, while Palmer et al (2004: 13) showed a significant positive effect of the percentage of seats held by the government on the dispute involvement of parliamentary democracies.…”

Roll-Call Votes in the German Bundestag: A New Dataset, 1949–2013

“…Second, aggregated voting behavior on the party level allows us to study government−opposition dynamics and the competitive strategies opposition parties choose vis-à-vis the government (e.g. Andeweg 2013;Hohendorf et al 2018;Tuttnauer 2018). Third, the data allows a longitudinal analysis of party unity in the Bundestag and can thus contribute to the large body of literature that seeks to explain high levels of voting unity in legislatures as well as determinants of its variation (e.g.…”

“…We can also compare the topics on the roll-call agenda (Figure 4) with the broader policy agenda (for example, as measured in the German Policy Agendas Project, Breunig 2014) to study how political parties shape the legislative agenda. Secondly, aggregated voting behavior at the party level allows us to study government−opposition dynamics and the competitive strategies opposition parties choose vis-à-vis the government (for example, Andeweg 2013; Hohendorf, Saalfeld and Sieberer 2018; Tuttnauer 2018). Thirdly, the data allow a longitudinal analysis of party unity in the Bundestag and can thus contribute to the large body of literature that seeks to explain high levels of voting unity in legislatures as well as determinants of its variation (for example, Carey 2007; Coman 2015; Kam 2009; Saalfeld 1995b; Sieberer 2006; for a first analysis of our data with regard to party unity, see Bergmann et al 2016).…”