The Politics of Procedural Choice: Regulating Legislative Debate in the UK House of Commons, 1811–2015

Abstract

The historical development of rules of debate in the UK House of Commons raises an important puzzle: why do members of parliament (MPs) impose limits on their own rights? Despite a growing interest in British Political Development and the institutional changes of nineteenth-century UK politics, the academic literature has remained largely silent on this topic. Three competing explanations have emerged in studies of the US Congress, focusing on efficiency, partisan forces and non-partisan (or: ideology-based) accounts. This article falls broadly into the third category, offering a consensus-oriented explanation of the historical development of parliamentary rules. Working from a new dataset on the reform of standing orders in the House of Commons over a 205-year period (1811–2015), as well as records of over six million speeches, the author argues that MPs commit more quickly to passing restrictive rules in the face of obstruction when legislator preferences are proximate within both the opposition and government, and when polarization between both sides of the aisle is low. The research represents, to the author's knowledge, the first systematic and directional test of a range of competing theories of UK parliamentary reform, shedding light on the process of parliamentary reform over a prolonged period of Commons history, and advancing several new measures of polarization in the UK House of Commons.

‘Going institutional’ to overcome obstruction: Explaining the suppression of minority rights in Western European parliaments, 1945−2010

“…Single‐country studies are mostly descriptive; if offering inductive explanations, they predominantly stress the functional need for reform and consensual decisions by all actors in parliament rather than the competitive motives highlighted by research on Congress (e.g., Thaysen ; Norton ; Capano & Giuliani ; Leston‐Bandeira & Freire ; Murphy ; Flinders ; but see Goet et al. ; Goet , for competition‐based arguments similar to ours).…”

“…We have derived these hypotheses informally starting from the assumption of parties as unitary actors (Laver & Schofield 1990). Interestingly, similar expectations follow from a formal model that explains the adoption of anti-dilatory rules (i.e., a reduction of minorities' rights to speak in the chamber) based on the cost-benefit calculations of individual members of parliament (Goet 2017(Goet , 2019. In Goet's theory, an over-extraction of parliamentary time due to greater demands by a more diverse group of MPs fosters the creation of strong parties (see also Cox 1987Cox , 2006.…”

Parliamentary Debates in Canada (1901–2015)

“…As we saw earlier, the modernization of the rules of the Canadian House of Commons closely follows the practices first introduced in the British Parliament. As in Canada, the modifications of these rules were primarily aimed at reducing the influence of ordinary MPs in the legislative process by adopting “procedures to end debates,” “time limits on speeches,” and by enhancing the role of speakers by giving them “the power to adjourn legislative debates and discipline members” (Goet, 2021: 788). And we expect that as in the US Congress (Cox and McCubbins, 2005; Aldrich and Rohde, 2000), the enforcement of these new rules will be primarily delegated to party leaders, especially majority leaders, so that they can more easily control the agenda.…”

“…The last hypothesis follows from the previous ones and suggests that an increase in procedural content will be linked to an increase in party polarization. This expectation is based on the historical analysis of the development of parliamentary rules done by Godbout (2020) in the Canadian Parliament and by Goet (2021) in the British case. Both studies confirm that restrictive procedures are more likely to be adopted when obstruction and polarization are high in Parliament.…”

Procedural Change in the UK House of Commons, 1811–2015

“… The first version of this data set was developed by Goet (). It was subsequently subjected to important reconstruction in light of the research presented in this joint article, in particular through the introduction of root and current numbers. …”