Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T14:18:03.042Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Going in circles? The influence of the electoral cycle on the party behaviour in parliament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2021

Jan Schwalbach Open the ORCID record for Jan Schwalbach [Opens in a new window]
Jan Schwalbach*
Affiliation:
Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
*
E-mail: schwalbach@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Most analyses dealing with the interaction of parties in parliament assume their interests to be fixed between elections. However, a rational perspective suggests that parties adapt their behaviour throughout the legislative term. I argue that this change is influenced by incentives and possibilities to shape legislation and the need to distinguish oneself from competitors. While for government parties it matters whether they have to share offices, for opposition parties the influence on policy-making is important. By examining the sentiment of all parliamentary speeches on bill proposals from six established democracies over more than twenty years, I analyse institutional and contextual effects. The results show that single-party governments tend to become more positive towards the end of the legislative cycle compared to coalition governments. On the other hand, opposition parties under minority governments, or with more institutionalised influence on government bills, show a more negative trend in comparison to their counterparts.

Keywords

electoral cyclelegislative politicssentiment analysisgovernment and oppositiontext as data
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 36 - 55
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andeweg, R.B. (2013), ‘Parties in parliament: the Blurring of opposition’, in Müller, Wolfgang C. and Naurud, Hanne Marthe (eds.), Party Governance and Party Democracy, New York: Springer, pp. 99–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Artés, J. and Bustos, A. (2008), ‘Electoral promises and minority governments: an empirical study’, European Journal of Political Research 47(3): 307–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, T.D. (2016), Gendering Legislative Behaviour: Institutional Constraints and Collaboration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baumann, M., Debus, M. and Gross, M. (2021), ‘Strategic issue emphasis in parties’ election campaign statements,’ Party Politics 27(3): 515–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benoit, K., Watanabe, K., Wang, H., Nulty, P., Obeng, A., Müller, S. and Matsuo, A. (2018), ‘quanteda: An R package for the quantitative analysis of textual data’, Journal of Open Source Software 3(30):774. https://quanteda.ioCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borghetto, E. and Belchior, A.M. (2020), ‘Party manifestos, opposition and media as determinants of the cabinet agenda’, Political Studies 68(1): 37–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bräuninger, T. and Debus, M. (2009), ‘Legislative agenda-setting in parliamentary democracies’, European Journal of Political Research 48(6): 804–839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crabtree, C., Golder, M., Gschwend, T. and Indriđason, I.H. (2020), ‘It is not only what you say it is also how you say it: the strategic use of campaign sentiment’, The Journal of Politics 82(3): 1044–1060.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, R.A. (1966), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
De Giorgi, E., Moury, C. and Ruivo, J. P. (2015), ‘Incumbents, opposition and international lenders: governing Portugal in times of crisis’, The Journal of Legislative Studies 21(1): 54–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döring, H. (2001), “Parliamentary agenda control and legislative outcomes in Western Europe’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 26(1): 145–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döring, H. and Manow, P. (2018), ‘Parliaments and governments database (ParlGov): information on parties, elections and cabinets in modern democracies’. Development version.Google Scholar
Fukumoto, K. and Matsuo, A. (2015), ‘The effects of election proximity on participatory shirking: the staggered-term chamber as a laboratory’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 40(4): 599–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, M., Laver, M. and Mair, P. (2006), Representative Government in Modern Europe. Institutions, Parties, and Government, New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Garritzmann, J.L. (2017), ‘How much power do oppositions have? Comparing the opportunity structures of parliamentary oppositions in 21 democracies’, The Journal of Legislative Studies 23(1): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goetz, K.H. (2014), ‘A question of time: responsive and responsible democratic politics’, West European Politics 37(2): 379–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, J., Mummolo, J. and Xu, Y. (2019), ‘How much should we trust estimates from multiplicative interaction models? Simple tools to improve empirical practice’, Political Analysis 27(2): 163–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzog, A. and Mikhaylov, S.J. (2017), ‘Database of parliamentary speeches in Ireland, 1919–2013,’ Harvard Dataverse, V2. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6MZN76 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hix, S. and Noury, A. (2016), ‘Government-opposition or left-right? The institutional determinants of voting in legislatures,’ Political Science Research and Methods 4(2): 249–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, A. (1994), ‘Reform of parliament. Report for the New Delhi conference of the association of Secretaries-General of Parliament,’ Constitutional and Parliamentary Information 167: 137–163.Google Scholar
Ilie, C. (2003), ‘Discourse and metadiscourse in parliamentary debates,’ Journal of Language and Politics 2(1): 71–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, W. and Wlezien, C. (2016), ‘The timeline of elections: a comparative perspective,’ American Journal of Political Science 60(1): 219–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klüver, H. and Spoon, J.J. (2020), ‘Helping or hurting? How governing as a junior coalition partner influences electoral outcomes,’ The Journal of Politics 82(4): 1231–1242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klüver, H. and Zubek, R. (2018), ‘Minority governments and legislative reliability: evidence from Denmark and Sweden,’ Party Politics 24(6): 719–730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koop, C., Reh, C. and Bressanelli, E. (2018), ‘When politics prevails: parties, elections and loyalty in the European parliament,’ European Journal of Political Research 57(3): 563–586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauderdale, B.E. and Herzog, A. (2016), ‘Measuring political positions from legislative speech,’ Political Analysis 24(3): 374–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Letzte Sitzung: Kern wirbt im Nationalrat für Miteinander (2017), Der Standard. Retrieved 12 September 12 2021 from https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000065854111/nationalratsfinale-mit-kanzlerrede-pensionen-und-ceta Google Scholar
Liu, B. (2015), Sentiment Analysis: Mining Opinions, Sentiments, and Emotions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, W., Benoit, K., Mikhaylov, S. and Laver, M. (2011), ‘Scaling policy preferences from coded political texts’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 36(1): 123–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maeda, K. (2015), ‘Determinants of opposition fragmentation: parliamentary rules and opposition strategies’, Party Politics 21(5): 763–774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, L.W. (2004), ‘The government agenda in parliamentary democracies,’ American Journal of Political Science 48(3): 445–461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, L.W. and Vanberg, G. (2005) ‘Coalition policymaking and legislative review’, American Political Science Review 99(1): 93–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, L.W. and Vanberg, G. (2008), ‘Coalition government and political communication’, Political Research Quarterly 61(3): 502–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, L.W. and Vanberg, G. (2011), Parliaments and Coalitions: The Role of Legislative Institutions in Multiparty Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, L.W. and Vanberg, G. (2014), ‘Parties and policymaking in multiparty governments: the legislative median, ministerial autonomy, and the coalition compromise’, American Journal of Political Science 58(4): 979–996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meguid, B.M. (2007), Party Competition Between Unequals. Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Müller, S. (2020) ‘Media coverage of campaign promises throughout the electoral cycle’, Political Communication 37(5): 696–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mújica, A. and Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2006), ‘Consensus and parliamentary opposition: the case of Spain’, Government and Opposition 41(1): 86–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, S. and Louwerse, T. (2020) ‘The electoral cycle effect in parliamentary democracies’, Political Science Research and Methods 8(4): 795–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otjes, S. and Louwerse, T. (2018), ‘Parliamentary questions as strategic party tools’, West European Politics 41(2): 496–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palau, A.M., Márquez, L.M. and Chaqués-Bonafont, Laura (2015), ‘Government–opposition dynamics in Spain under the pressure of economic collapse and the debt crisis’, The Journal of Legislative Studies 21(1): 75–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pardos-Prado, S. and Sagarzazu, I. (2019), ‘Economic responsiveness and the political conditioning of the electoral cycle’, The Journal of Politics 81(2): 441–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plescia, C. and Staniek, M. (2017), ‘In the eye of the beholder: voters’ perceptions of party policy shifts’, West European Politics 40(6): 1288–1309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proksch, S.O. and Slapin, J.B. (2015), The Politics of Parliamentary Debate: Parties, Rebels and Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proksch, S.O., Lowe, W., Wäckerle, J. and Soroka, S. (2019), ‘Multilingual sentiment analysis: a new approach to measuring conflict in legislative speeches’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 44(1): 97–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team (2019), R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. http://www.R-project.org Google Scholar
Rauh, C. (2018), ‘Validating a sentiment dictionary for German political language – a workbench note’, Journal of Information Technology & Politics 15(4): 319–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rauh, C. and Schwalbach, J. (2020), ‘The ParlSpeech V2 data set: full-text corpora of 6.3 million parliamentary speeches in the key legislative chambers of nine representative democracies’. doi: 10.7910/DVN/L4OAKN CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, M., Gover, D., Wollter, K. and Benton, M. (2017), ‘Actors, motivations and outcomes in the legislative process: policy influence at Westminster’, Government and Opposition 52(1): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagarzazu, I. and Klüver, H. (2017), ‘Coalition governments and party competition: political communication strategies of coalition parties’, Political Science Research and Methods 5(2): 333–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seeberg, H.B. (2016), ‘Opposition policy influence through agenda-setting: the environment in Denmark, 1993–2009’, Scandinavian Political Studies 39(2): 185–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seeberg, H.B. (forthcoming), ‘First avoidance, then engagement: political parties’ issue competition in the electoral cycle’, Party Politics 0(0): 1–10.Google Scholar
Slapin, J.B. and Proksch, S.O. (2008), ‘A scaling model for estimating time-series party positions from texts’, American Journal of Political Science 52(3): 705–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strøm, K. (1990), Minority Government and Majority Rule, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tsebelis, G. (2002), Veto Players. How Political Institutions Work, Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuttnauer, O. (2018), ‘If you can beat them, confront them: party-level analysis of opposition behavior in European national parliaments’, European Union Politics 19(2): 278–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Der Velden, M., Schumacher, G. and Vis, B. (2018), ‘Living in the past or living in the future? Analyzing parties’ platform change in between elections, The Netherlands 1997–2014’, Political Communication 35(3): 393–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volkens, A., Krause, W., Lehmann, P., Matthieß, T., Merz, N., Regel, S. and Weßels, B. (2019), ‘The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project. Version 2019b’. doi: 10.25522/manifesto.mpds.2019b CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wickham, H. (2013). stringr: Simple, Consistent Wrappers for Common String Operations. Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=stringr.Google Scholar
Young, L. and Soroka, S. (2012) ‘Affective news: the automated coding of sentiment in political texts’, Political Communication 29(2): 205–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Schwalbach supplementary material

Schwalbach supplementary material

Download Schwalbach supplementary material(File)
File 53.8 KB