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Party-based competition is often cast the antithesis of particularistic politics (Rose-Ackerman 1999, Sartori 2005, Schaffer 2007), a perspective that coincides with the historical observation that nineteenth century British politicians turned away from bribery and began to compete on policies as the British electorate grew larger and more party-oriented (Cox 1987). I use data on bribe prices and campaign expenditures at 338 electoral contests in Victorian Britain and Ireland to show that the extension of the franchise had only a limited impact on local campaign spending whilst the increasingly partisan orientation of the Victorian electorate actually boosted electioneering expenditures and electoral corruption. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant legislative parties - parties that control the policy-making process in the legislature - have long been a focus of scholarly inquiry. Previous work has focused on the electoral logic by which an organization evolves into a dominant legislative party. We argue that while an elections-centric approach may explain some cases, it does not address the numerous cases in which parties build a dominant position in the legislature over the course of several elections through a combination of strategic behavior between and during electoral contests. Using a computational method for estimating uncovered sets using legislator preference data, we show how dominant legislative parties can emerge from legislative proceedings. We illustrate our theory with data from Israel, Russia, and Ukraine. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prime Ministers use counter-cyclical reshuffles of ministers and bureaucrats to undercut a variety of agency losses. This argument is tested against data on the Canadian cabinet and civil service from 1950-2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cabinet reshuffles have received little attention in the literature on parliamentary governance. Reshuffles regularly attract considerable coverage in the media, yet the extent of academic attention has been limited to complaints that reshuffles undermine the competence of the cabinet because the limit the ministers ability to specialize. These complaints have moreover rarely been subjected to theoretical or empirical scrutiny. In this paper we study the timing of cabinet reshuffles in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Ireland, and Japan. We build on our previous formal work on cabinet reshuffles, which demonstrates that cabinet reshuffles can benefit both the prime minister and his party. While our previous work emphasized the role of cabinet reshuffles as a management tool to limit ministerial drift (i.e., the minister’s choice of a policy that deviates from the prime minister’s ideal policy or the party platform), we now turn our attention to the intra-party competition, and in particular, the vulnerability of the prime minister to challenges to his leadership. Our formal work indicated that the greater the incentive and/or opportunity for ministerial drift, the greater the incentive to use reshuffles was. In line with this reasoning we argue that the incentive to reshuffle is greater when the rules governing leadership selection render the prime minister vulnerable to challenges from within the ranks of his own party and when the prime ministers’ ability to manage the cabinet is weak. Our initial results support our hypotheses. We find that intra-party politics appear to have an impact on the frequency on reshuffles both directly, through institutional factors, such as those discussed above, as well as indirectly, through public opinion polls where the prime minister’s popularity has a greater impact on the likelihood of a reshuffle than his party’s popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the timing of cabinet shuffles in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from 1960-2000. Our argument, motivated by Michel’s Iron Law of Oligarchy, is that if the party’s rules governing leadership selection (and dismissal) can be easily manipulated by a small number of people, and if in addition the rules governing the prime minister’s control over the cabinet limit his ability to freeze out his intra-party rivals, prime ministers are forced to use frequent reshuffles to protect their positions. Our results largely bear out our hypotheses, though random events, especially those closely related to intra-party politics, also have an impact on the timing of reshuffles. Concomitantly, the duration modeling techniques that we employ to study the timing of reshuffles reveal that the baseline hazard rates of first shuffles rise over time while those of subsequent shuffles are relatively flat. This result suggests that initial reshuffles are governed by a systematic process while subsequent shuffles are likely due to random events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from some basic assumptions about parliamentary behaviour and Westminster parliamentary institutions, I build a simple game theoretic model of intra-party politics in which the party leadership's control over MPs' career prospects is the key element. In this game, the MP may either dissent or toe the party line, the former course of action insulating the MP from the electoral effects of unpopular party policy, the latter option securing the MP a better shot at promotion. The party leadership responds by promoting or marginalizing the MP. The direct implication of this game is that MPs dissent when the promise of career advancement is not sufficient to offset the electoral costs of unpopular party policies. The game also predicts that leaders’ and MPs’ expectations will generate parliamentary careers marked either by vicious circles of dissent and marginalization or virtuous circles of loyalty and promotion. The paper goes on to test these predictions against data from the career patterns and voting behaviour of British MPs elected between 1970 and 1983. Statistical tests lend solid support to the model, showing, in particular, a clear reciprocal relationship between dissent and marginalization on the one hand, and loyalty and promotion, on the other. This reciprocal relationship between career expectations and dissent does not, however, operate in isolation from the broader parliamentary environment. The statistical evidence shows that the relationship between career expectations and dissent is influenced by factors such as factional and electoral politics, formal parliamentary rules, and an informal process of socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central tenet of the literatures on democracy and democratic transitions is that political parties will provoke coordination among voters and legislators who share common goals and link the two levels of decision making. Despite this core belief, studies of party and party system development in post-Communist states have focused on explaining party emergence or party system volatility without asking whether or not parties are relevant. We use our uncovered set estimation technique to develop new insights into how political parties become relevant for electoral and legislative decision-making. Building on key theories in the parties literature, we show that parties’ persistence in the electorate is linked to its capacity to influence legislative decision-making, even when a party is quite small or excluded from cabinet formation because of extreme views. Even under conditions of uncertainty and party system volatility, voters appear to have the capacity to assess party relevance and to reward parties that influence policy. The results provide new insights into the mechanisms that drive party institutionalization and system stability and provide a better theory linking party development and successful democratic consolidation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary data on the prices of bribes and overall campaign costs show that the decline in electoral corruption in Victorian Britain was independent of franchise expansion; earlier changes in the rules on election petitions were the critical factors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I show how British and New Zealand MPs use dissent from the party line, to complement their consistuency service efforts. Dissent boosts the MP's profile, attracts non-partisan voters, and offers efficiency advantages over constituency service. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]