Intra-Party Preference Heterogeneity and Faction Membership in the 15th German Bundestag: A Computational Text Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches

Bernauer, Julian; Bräuninger, Thomas

doi:10.1080/09644000903055823

Cited by 58 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…We also take into account that German parties consist of several suborganizations, which could have specific policy positions that deviate from the party line (Bernauer and Bräuninger ). It is very complicated to identify the—only partially formally organized—intraparty groups and their membership among MPs (Debus and Bräuninger ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal Characteristics of MPs and Legislative Behavior in Moral Policymaking

Baumann

Debus

Müller

2015

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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Theoretical and empirical models of legislative decision making in parliamentary democracies typically neglect the policy preferences of individual MPs and instead focus on political parties and possible institutional constraints. We argue that MPs actually make judgments and decisions on the basis of their preferences, which are shaped by their personal characteristics. However, given the strength of parties in most parliamentary systems, the impact of personal characteristics on legislative behavior is rarely visible. Therefore, we examine a moral issue. Looking at cosponsorship, parliamentary speeches, and votes in the German Bundestag, we analyze the legislative procedure on the regulation of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in Germany in 2011. We show that the legislative behavior of MPs does not only reflect partisan conflict but is also influenced by the preferences of the constituents and MPs' own personal characteristics such as: religious denomination, gender, and parental status.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal Characteristics of MPs and Legislative Behavior in Moral Policymaking

Baumann

Debus

Müller

2015

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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“…The effect of individual MPs’ preferences in parliamentary systems, on the other hand, has been of comparatively little interest to party politics researchers. Although scholars suspect that intraparty variation shapes parties’ behaviour (e.g., Bernauer & Brӓuninger ; Ceron , ; Debus & Brӓuninger ; Greene & Haber ; Greene & Jensen ; Schumacher et al ), existing studies have yet to generate strong theoretical or empirical expectations about parliamentarians’ role on this front. To the contrary, most work treats parties as unitary actors and ascribes policy shifts to electoral motivations (e.g., Adams et al ; Adams & Somer‐Topcu ; Ezrow ; Ezrow et al ; Hellwig ; Laver & Shepsle ; Tavits ; Williams et al ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diverse parties, diverse agendas? Female politicians and the parliamentary party's role in platform formation

Greene

O’Brien

2016

European Journal of Political Research

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Parties’ parliamentary delegations contain a multitude of interests. While scholars suspect that this variation affects party behaviour, most work on parties’ policy statements treats parties as unitary actors. This reflects the absence of strong expectations concerning when (and how) the parliamentary caucus matters for platform construction, as well as the difficulties inherent in testing such claims. Drawing on the literature on women's descriptive representation, this article argues that the makeup of the parliamentary party likely has important consequences for issue entrepreneurship, the scope of issues represented on the manifesto and even the left‐right position of election platforms. With the most comprehensive party‐level study of women's representation ever conducted, three diversity hypotheses are tested using data on the gender makeup of parties’ parliamentary delegations and the content of their manifestos for 110 parties in 20 democracies between 1952 and 2011. The analyses show that as the percentage of women in the parliamentary party increases, parties address a greater diversity of issues in their election campaigns. Women's presence is also associated with more left‐leaning manifestos, even when controlling for parties’ prior ideological positions. Together, these findings illustrate a previously overlooked consequence of descriptive representation and provide a framework for understanding when and why the parliamentary party influences manifesto formation. They show that diversity – or lack thereof – has important consequences for parties’ policy statements, and thus the overall quality of representation.

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“…11 See, for example, Hug and Schulz 2007;O'Brien and Shomer 2013. 12 Carrubba, Gabel, and Hug 2008;Ceron 2013;Clinton and Lapinski 2008;Huber 1996;Hug and Schulz 2007. 13 Bernauer and Bräuninger 2009;Slapin 2012. 14 Ceron 2013;Cox andMcCubbins 1993, 2005;Döring 2003;Huber 1996.…”

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confidence: 99%

Leadership Competition and Disagreement at Party National Congresses

Greene¹,

Haber²

2014

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Theories often explain intraparty competition based on electoral conditions and intraparty rules. This article further opens this black box by considering intraparty statements of preferences. In particular, it predicts that intraparty preference heterogeneity increases after electoral losses, but that candidates deviating from the party's median receive fewer intraparty votes. Party members grant candidates greater leeway to accommodate competing policy demands when in government. The study tests the hypotheses using a new database of party congress speeches from Germany and France, and uses automated text classification to estimate speakers' relative preferences. The results demonstrate that speeches at party meetings provide valuable insights into actors' preferences and intraparty politics. The article finds evidence of a complex relationship between the governing context, the economy and intraparty disagreement.Theories of party politics often make strong assumptions about the relationship between parties' behavior and the preferences of intraparty actors. For example, scholars frequently assume that parties act as if they are unitary actors, and that the party leader represents the median preferences of the party's membership. Despite substantial theoretical development and a number of detailed case studies, few cross-national analyses of intraparty politics consider the role of intraparty preferences. 1This absence is striking. Intraparty politics and party preferences hold implications for a large range of political processes such as election campaigns, legislative politics and coalition governance. 2Building on these studies, we develop a theory of intraparty preferences and party leader selection by considering experiences in government and intraparty electoral rules. Broadly, we theorize that a party's electoral context influences its internal preference diversity. We then argue that candidates' statements of preferences influence their intraparty electoral success. Candidates who express preferences closer to the party's ideological center attract more votes than more extreme candidates.To empirically test hypotheses from our theory, we create a new dataset of intraparty actor preferences from their statements at party national congresses. By focusing on speeches at intraparty meetings, we begin to break open the black box of intraparty politics. Despite evidence that parties act as if they are internally divided in parliament, few studies seek to directly, quantitatively analyze actors' preferences outside this arena.3 Historically, intraparty actors' preferences have proven complicated to measure. Limited data has created a major hurdle in testing theories of intraparty politics. Like recent research studying political

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Intra-Party Preference Heterogeneity and Faction Membership in the 15th German Bundestag: A Computational Text Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches

Cited by 58 publications

References 10 publications

Personal Characteristics of MPs and Legislative Behavior in Moral Policymaking

Personal Characteristics of MPs and Legislative Behavior in Moral Policymaking

Diverse parties, diverse agendas? Female politicians and the parliamentary party's role in platform formation

Leadership Competition and Disagreement at Party National Congresses

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