Party Discipline with Legislative Initiative

In: British journal of political science, Band 36, Heft 1, S. 113-132

Abstract

This article analyses the role of parties in political systems with legislative initiative. The model explicitly takes into account the multi-district nature of elections so that voters recognize that they are not voting for a policy but for members of a policy-making body. In this setting, parties can attain their ideological goals without resorting to extreme discipline of their members in the legislature. With respect to the electorate, although voters are endowed with perfect information about their candidates' ideological stance, this model explains how the legislature will display correlation across ideology & party, a feature often attributed to imperfect information.