William B. Heller

Party Switching in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1996–2001

Almost one-fourth of the members of the lower house in Italy, the Chamber of Deputies, switched parties at least once between 1996 and 2001. Why would a legislator abandon one party and enter another during a legislative term? Starting from the basic assumption that politicians are ambitious, we examine electoral and partisan motivations for members of parliament (MPs) who switch parties. We conclude that party switching most likely is motivated by party labels that provide little information about policy goals and that pit copartisans against each other in the effort to serve constituent needs. Switching is especially frequent when ambitious politicians operate under heightened uncertainty.

Regional Parties and National Politics in Europe: Spain's Estado De Las Autonomías, 1993 to 2000

Parties participate in national politics that do not pretend to national presence. The author asks whether such parties affect policy outcomes and concludes that they do, albeit in unexpected ways. Basically, nonnational parties influence policy making under certain conditions by trading policy for authority. They help national parties get the policies they want in return for transfers of policy-making authority to regional governments. This willingness to support national policies with minimal amendment makes regional parties attractive partners for national parties in government. The author examines this argument in light of detailed evidence from Spains minority Socialist and Popular Party governments in the 1990s, along with discussions of the role of regionalism in Belgian politics and of the relationship between the Scottish Nationalist Party and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.

Political parties and legislative party switching

Preface List of Tables and Figures PART I:THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTY SWITCHING Introduction: Legislative Party Switching, Parties, and Party Systems W.B.Heller & C.Mershon Integrating Theoretical and Empirical Models of Party Switching W.B.Heller & C.Mershon PART II: PARTY SWITCHING AND REPRESENTATION Switching Equilibria N.Schofield Party Switching and the Procedural Party Agenda in the US House of Representatives T.P.Nokken Party Switching in Brazil: Causes, Effects, and Representation S.Desposato PART THREE: PARTY SWITCHING, PARTY COMPETITION, AND POLICY MAKING Party Group Switching in the European Parliament G.McElroy & K.Benoit Legislator Preferences, Party Desires: Party Switching and the Foundations of Policy Making in Legislatures W.B.Heller & C.Mershon Timing Matters: Incentives for Party Switching and Stages of Parliamentary Cycles C.Mershon & O.Shvetsova PART FOUR: PARTY SWITCHING AND THE DYNAMICS OF PARTY SYSTEMS Competition for Power: Party Switching and Party System Change in Japan J.Kato & K.Yamamoto Party Switching, Party Systems, and Political Representation M.Kreuzer & V.Pettai Conclusions W.B.Heller & C.Mershon Notes References Contributors Index

Politics, Institutions, and Outcomes: Electricity Regulation in Argentina and Chile

Risk, whether market or political, is an important determinant of private investment decisions. One important risk, subject to control by the government, is the risk associated with the hold-up problem: governments can force utilities to shoulder burdensome taxes, to use input factors ineffectively, or to charge unprofitable rates for their service. To attract private investment governments must be able to make commitments to policies that are nonexpropriative (either to contracts that guarantee very high rates of return or to favorable regulatory policies). These commitments, of course, must be credible. Judgments about the credibility of commitments to regulatoty policies are based upon two political factors: regulatory predictability and regime stability. Regulatory predictability implies that the regulatory process, in which prices and levels of service are set, is not arbitrary. If the condition of regulatory predictability holds, then investors can forecast their returns over time and hence can calculate the value of their investment. If there is regime stability, then there is minimal risk of wholesale changes in the way the government regulates the industry—the most extreme type of change being the denial of property rights, or expropriation. We argue that three characteristics of the regulatory process are, in turn, important determinants of regulatory predictability: agenda control, reversionary regulatory policy, and veto gates. Moreover, regime stability is also, in part, a function of these three characteristics. We examine our theory of political risk and regulatoty commitment by comparing the cases of Argentine and Chilean electricity investment and regulation.

Bicameralism and the Logic of Party Organization

This article takes a novel approach to the question of how bicameralism matters by asking not how it shapes policy outcomes, but rather how it shapes political parties. Bicameralism uniquely challenges political parties because party leaders have few tools for disciplining copartisans in separate legislative chambers. As long as party members do not share identical policy preferences, or strategic contexts across chambers differ, copartisan cohorts in each chamber are likely to favor distinct policy positions. To the extent that parties value clear, consistent party labels, it is in their best interests to find ways to keep intraparty disagreements out of the public eye. We argue that parties in bicameral systems do this by centralizing candidate selection, so that members in both chambers are accountable to the same master. We test our argument using data from 66 political parties in 11 advanced parliamentary democracies.

Introduction: Legislative Party Switching, Parties, and Party Systems

That political parties are fundamental to the functioning of modern democracies is well known. Politicians build their careers within parties, parties convey information to voters about candidate preferences, and parties provide labels that identify candidates to voters. When voters choose candidates for office, they delegate decision making on public policy to parties and to party-identified representatives. Repeated elections give voters the opportunity to hold parties responsible and accountable for policy decisions and outcomes. Parties thus are indispensable elements of democratic delegation and representation (Cox 1997; Filippov, Ordeshook, and Shvetsova 2004; Powell 2000; Schattschneider 1942; Stokes 1999).

Integrating Theoretical and Empirical Models of Party Switching

Party switching is a relatively common yet little studied phenomenon. Observers have remarked on the presence of switching in various circumstances and settings, but with a very few exceptions (Aldrich and Bianco 1992; Desposato 2006; Heller and Mershon 2005; 2008; Laver and Benoit 2003) scholars have not seen party switching as theoretically interesting. They have instead treated party switching as an idiosyncratic phenomenon, entirely dependent on context, and essentially sui generis in each occurrence. The contributions to this volume represent an attempt to address what we see as a gap between extant empirical accounts of switching and the substantial leverage that a theoretically driven approach to switching can provide. Taken together, the chapters examine the contexts, causes, and consequences of party switching. Although most of the chapters focus on one or a few country cases, and each chapter examines only a piece of a larger set of strategic interactions in which switching occurs, each does so in explicitly theoretical terms.

Legislator Preferences, Party Desires: The Impact of Party Switching on Legislative Party Positions

Democratic politics and political parties go hand in hand. Politicians win elections and hold office as members of parties (Epstein 1967). For their part, political parties organize legislatures and manage the passage of policy (Aldrich 1995; Cox and McCubbins 1993; 2005). Legislators’ political identities are tightly linked to their party affiliations, even where parties are seen as relatively weak vis-a-vis individual politicians. In this light, party switches, particularly when executed by sitting legislators, are curious and perhaps even bizarre. As the first chapter in this book emphasized, there is on one hand the motivational question: why would a legislator decide to change his or her party affiliation during a legislative term? As we also highlighted at the outset, there is on the other hand the practical question of policy consequences: what difference does party switching make? We take up the latter issue here by asking how party switching by sitting legislators affects the preferences of legislative parties.

Institutional checks and corruption: The effect of formal agenda access on governance

Legislative checks give whoever wields them influence over policy making. It is argued in this article that this influence implies the ability not only to affect legislative content, but also to direct public resources toward private ends. Rational politicians should use access to checks to make themselves better off – for example, by biasing policy toward private interests or creating opportunities to draw directly from the public till. Disincentives exist only to the extent that those able to observe or block corruption do not themselves benefit from it. Political opponents thus can use checks to stymie each other, but legislative checks controlled by political allies create conditions for collusion and corruption. Testing this claim against data from a sample of 84 countries, the results presented in this article show strong support for the hypothesised relationship between institutional checks and corruption.