Markus Baumann

Convictions and Signals in Parliamentary Speeches: Dáil Éireann Debates on Abortion in 2001 and 2013

Abstract While party unity in legislative voting is generally high in parliamentary democracies, debates provide MPs with the opportunity to express political views even if they deviate from the party line. Using the extensive parliamentary debates on the reform of the Irish abortion legislation in 2001 and 2013, we assess whether Teachtaí Dála (TD) send signals to their constituents. In doing so, we take into account literature on the individual preference formation of political actors as well as institutional accounts that stress vote-seeking resulting from the electoral system. We also argue that personal characteristics like gender and family status should affect the positions of TDs on the abortion issue. In addition, we argue that the preferences of the constituents should particularly be taken into account by those TDs who only narrowly won a seat in the Dáil. Our analysis, which is based on a content analysis of all speeches held during the abortion reform debates in the Dáil in 2001 and 2013, provides support for our expectations.

Keeping One’s Seat: The Competitiveness of MP Renomination in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems

Mixed-member electoral systems are supposed to simultaneously produce coherent parties and ensure the representation of local interests. Whether these goals are achieved depends on the ability of parties and districts to control members of parliament (MPs). We regard the competitiveness of MPs’ bids for renomination as a crucial indicator of the degree to which MPs are punished when deviating from the interests of their principals. The theoretical account we develop makes the competitiveness of MP renomination conditional on the characteristics of the electoral system, the candidate selection regime, an MP’s parliamentary behavior, government status, and district characteristics. Corroborating our expectations, the analysis of the candidate selection processes in the run-up to the 2013 German Bundestag election shows that an increasing degree of ideological deviation from the party line—as expressed in parliamentary speeches—results in a worse position on the party list for opposition MPs but does not affect the renomination of list candidates from the government camp or district candidates.

Die Kandidatenaufstellung zur Bundestagswahl: Analyse der Nominierungen von CDU und SPD in Baden-Württemberg zur Bundestagswahl 2009

Candidate selection and the regimes covering the processes that select parties’ parliamentary candidates from a larger pool of contenders have been considered the secret garden of politics, and quotes and anecdotes that demonstrate the value practitioners attribute to controlling these processes are abundant. Hence, candidate selection – often in its subspecies of MP re-nomination – has attracted significant scholarly attention. In his dissertation, Christian Steg follows this research trend by conducting a qualitative study of candidate selection procedures in the state of Baden-Württemberg before the 2009 Bundestag election. Steg’s main aim is to provide a systematic account of the long-term strategies that determine the relevant actors’ behaviour, that is, candidates, local party organisations and regional party elites. To provide this account, Steg further narrows down his case selection by focusing on 13 candidate selection procedures in 11 districts and the list nomination procedures of Baden-Württemberg’s CDU and SPD branches. Given the dissertation’s qualitative research design, reducing the cases under study certainly is necessary, but due to the regional character and the selection criteria (the author categorises the 79 district nominations by competitiveness and ‘prestige’ and then selects the 13 districts representing this two-by-two scheme), representativeness for candidate selection processes is excluded ab initio. For the selected cases, Steg provides detailed accounts of how political contestation unfolded. The depth of these accounts is owed to the extensive interviews (N = 37) conducted for the dissertation that are enriched with findings from the author’s participating observation. In separate chapters, Steg then deals with candidate selection in the nominal tier (chapter 3) and the list tier (chapter 4). Both chapters provide chronological accounts of the processes that lead to candidate proposals, the forming of alliances for/against these proposals and the final decision making. In the sections describing the differences and commonalities of the candidate selection procedures between the parties, the recurring finding is that, whereas for CDU candidates the nominal tier district candidacies are attractive and thus contested, for the SPD candidates it is the list nomination. Considering the party competition in the state of Baden-Württemberg (the CDU at that time generally attained most nominal tier mandates, thereby making list nominations irrelevant, while the opposite was true for the SPD), this finding is somewhat unsurprising and opens the question whether comparing two opposing parties with very different electoral fates in one single state is ideal. Yet the in-depth account uncovers a large number of interesting aspects. For instance, Steg repeatedly pinpoints the pivotal role of local party elites by showing how local party chairs (Kreisvorsitzende) are the central bottleneck to a candidacy. Similarly, the account of the list nomination procedure paints the picture of a system

Strength of weakness? Innerparteiliche Heterogenität, divergierende Koalitionspräferenzen und die Ergebnisse von Koalitionsverhandlungen in den deutschen Bundesländern

Der vorliegende Beitrag wendet das „strength of weakness“-Argument auf den Regierungsbildungsprozess in den deutschen Bundeslandern an. Dabei gehen wir der Frage nach, ob sich ideologisch-programmatisch widerspruchlich oder diffus auftretende Parteien in den Koalitionsverhandlungen inhaltlich besser durchsetzen konnen. Zudem wird uberpruft, ob sich Landesparteien, die eine der Parteifuhrung auf nationaler Ebene missliebige Regierungskoalition bilden (mussen), besonders gut in den Koalitionsverhandlungen durchsetzen, um die Koalitionsbildung gegenuber der Bundespartei besser legitimieren zu konnen. Um diese Erwartungen zu testen, kombiniert der hier verwendete Datensatz Informationen zu Aussagen von Parteireprasentanten uber inhaltliche Standpunkte und Koalitionsoptionen vor Wahlen mit Informationen zu den Eigenschaften und Ergebnissen der Koalitionsverhandlungen in den deutschen Bundeslandern im Zeitraum von 2006 bis 2015. Die Ergebnisse zeigen Evidenz fur das Argument, dass sich inhaltlich heterogene Parteien besser in den Koalitionsverhandlungen durchsetzen. Hingegen ergibt sich keine Bestatigung dafur, dass Landesparteien, die aus Sicht der Bundesparteien missliebige Koalitionen gebildet haben, ihre inhaltlichen Positionen in den Verhandlungen besser durchsetzen konnen.

Constituency Demands and Limited Supplies: Comparing Personal Issue Emphases in Co-sponsorship of Bills and Legislative Speech

Parliamentary party groups typically comprise MPs with diverse preferences and different personal issue emphases. At the same time, speaking in plenary debates is a scarce resource controlled and allocated by parliamentary party group leaders. This has led recent research to investigate how speakers for plenary debates are selected. This contribution connects with this literature by asking whether MPs’ personal issue emphases deviate from their parliamentary party groups’ issue emphases. In order to answer this question, I measure the issue emphases which individual MPs devote to a set of issues in an open access parliamentary instrument and compare them to the emphases MPs devote to these issues in speeches. The results for the 2005–2009 legislative period of the Norwegian Storting indicate that MPs differ in how closely aligned their issue emphases are in these two instruments and that these differences vary in a way consistent with theories on candidate selection and individualized MP behavior.