Explaining party cohesion and discipline in democratic legislatures: purposiveness and contexts

Legislative party discipline and cohesion are important phenomena in the study of political systems. Unless assumptions are made that parties are cohesive and act as unified collectivities with reasonably well-defined goals, it is really difficult, if not impossible, to consider their electoral and legislative roles usefully. But levels of legislative party cohesiveness are also important because they provide us with crucial information about how legislatures/ parliaments function and how they interact with executives/governments. Without cohesive (or disciplined) parties,1 government survival in parliamentary systems is threatened because executive and legislative powers are fused while in separated systems presidents' bases of legislative support become less stable. How do we explain varying levels of legislative party cohesion? The first part of this article draws on the purposive literature to explore the benefits and costs to legislators in democratic legislatures of joining and acting collectively and individualistically within political parties. This leads on to a discussion of various conceptual and empirical problems encountered in analysing intra-party cohesion and discipline in democratic legislatures on plenary votes. Finally, the article reviews the extant empirical evidence on how a multiplicity of systemic, party-levels and situational factors supposedly impact cohesion/discipline levels. The article ends with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of building comparative models of cohesion/discipline.

The resilience of democratic institutions in Britain, Australia and the United States under conditions of total war

To what extent are democratic institutions resilient when nation states mobilise for war? Normative and empirical political theorists have long argued that wars strengthen the executive and threaten constitutional politics. In modern democracies, national assemblies are supposed to hold the executive to account by demanding explanations for events and policies; and by scrutinising, reviewing and, if necessary, revising legislative proposals intended to be binding on the host society or policies that have been implemented already. This article examines the extent to which the British and Australian parliaments and the United States Congress held their wartime executives to account during World War II. The research finds that under conditions approaching those of total war, these democratic institutions not only continued to exist, but also proved to be resilient in representing public concerns and holding their executives to account, however imperfectly and notwithstanding delegating huge powers. In consequence, executives—more so British and Australian ministers than President Roosevelt—were required to be placatory as institutional and political tensions within national assemblies and between assemblies and executives continued, and assemblies often asserted themselves. In short, even under the most onerous wartime conditions, democratic politics mattered and democratic institutions were resilient.

Parties in democratic national assemblies: comparative assessment of parliaments note

This paper argues that the analysis of democratic national assemblies is not only impossible without discussing political parties, but also incomprehensible without recognizing parties as the most significant organizations within them. Parties have structured political groupings and demands on government even before assemblies were democratically elected. And although parties may be in decline as institutions mediating between society and government in the current era, they remain significant as organizing forces within government. The paper first explains the origins of party organizations within parliaments by exploring why individual members and the assemblies taken as a whole need parties: what are their costs and benefits? It then describes the manner in which party organizations operate in different national assembly chambers. The third section analyses types and sources of party influence, including the role played by party leaders in manipulating legislative agendas, structuring Members’ policy choices and shaping policy outcomes. The final section reviews how politi- cal scientists have sought to explain intra-party cohesion and discipline across different national assemblies.

The Potential of Participedia as a Crowdsourcing Tool for Comparative Analysis of Democratic Innovations

For two reasons, our capacity for systematic comparison of innovative participatory democratic processes remains limited. First, the category of participatory democratic innovations remains relatively vague when compared to more traditional democratic institutions and practices. Second, until recently there existed no large-sample databases that captured relevant variables in the practice of democratic innovation. The lone exception to these patterns is the Participedia database, located online. Participedia is well placed to respond to the two obstacles to systematic comparative research on democratic innovation. First, its crowdsourced data collection strategy means that many of the cases on the platform are not well known and have not been the subject of sustained academic analysis. Second, the data captured in the articles provides the basis for systematic comparative analysis of democratic innovations both within type (e.g., participatory budgeting, mini-publics) and across types. The platform allows for systematic content analysis of text descriptions and/or statistical analysis of the datasets generated from the structured data fields. This article describes the data about innovative participatory democratic processes available from Participedia, and furnishes examples of the kinds of quantitative and qualitative insights about those processes that Participedia enables.

Tackling the terrorists: the experience of internment without trial in Northern Ireland

In August 1971, the devolved Stormont administration in Northern Ireland introduced internment without trial of those suspected of involvement in IRA terrorism. Ever since, the policy has been regarded as an abject failure. This article will reassess many of the key questions about internment: why did the Northern Ireland government introduce it when it did? Why did the Westminster government agree to a measure without parallel in British peacetime history? Why did it fail, when it had worked before? Was internment always doomed, or only because it was badly implemented? What was the alternative? How does the liberal democratic state defend itself against violent subversion without itself resorting to brutality and violence? This article is based on archival research in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and on interviews with former internees, politicians and civil servants, and former members of the security forces. It suggests that internment was a relatively humane and honest policy and might, in different circumstances, have spared Northern Ireland thirty years of murder and mayhem.

Serum estradiol: oocyte ratio as a predictor of reproductive outcome: an analysis of data from >9000 IVF cycles in the Republic of Ireland

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the serum estradiol (E2) per oocyte ratio (EOR) as a function of selected embryology events and reproductive outcomes with IVF. Methods This retrospective analysis included all IVF cycles where oocyte collection and fresh transfer occurred between January 2001 and November 2012 at a single institution. Patients were divided by three age groups (<35, 35–39, and ≥40 years) and further stratified into nine groups based on EOR (measured in pmol/L/oocyte). Terminal serum E2 (pmol/mL) was recorded on day of hCG trigger administration, and fertilization rate, cleavage rate, number of good quality embryos, and reproductive outcomes were recorded for each IVF cycle. Results During the study interval, 9109 oocyte retrievals were performed for 5499 IVF patients (mean = 1.7 cycles/patient). A total of 63.4 % of transfers were performed on day 3 (n = 4926), while 36.6 % were carried out on day 5 (n = 2843). Clinical pregnancy rates were highest in patients with EOR of 250–750 and declined as this ratio increased, independent of patient age. While the odds ratio (OR) for clinical pregnancy where EOR = 250–750 vs. EOR > 1500 was 3.4 (p < 0.001; 95 % CI 2.67–4.34), no statistically significant correlation was seen in fertilization, cleavage rates or number of good quality embryos as a function of EOR. Conclusions Predicting reproductive outcomes with IVF has great utility both for patients and providers. The former have the opportunity to build realistic expectations, and the latter are better able to counsel according to measured clinical parameters. A better understanding of follicular dynamics and ovarian response to gonadotropin stimulation could optimize IVF treatments going forward.