Bonding in Pursuit of Policy Goals: How MPs Choose Political Parties in the Legislative State of Nature

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12231
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• Author: Michael Herrmann,Ulrich Sieberer
• Date: 01 August 2019

455

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 44, 3, August 2019

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12231

ULRICH SIEBERER

University of Bamberg

MICHAEL H ERR MAN N

University of Konstanz

Bonding in Pursuit of Policy Goals:

How MPs Choose Political Parties in

the Legislative State of Nature

How do MPs in nascent legislatures choose a political party? We argue

that MPs self-select into groups of like-minded colleagues to achieve favored

policy outputs. MPs identify colleagues with similar preferences based on ob-

served behavior and informative signals such as socioeconomic status, cultural

background, and previous political experience. We test this explanation in the

first democratically elected German parliament, the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848,

that developed a differentiated party system in the absence of electoral and career

incentives. Our statistical analysis shows that MPs were significantly more likely

to join parties that were similar to them with regard to ideology, age, regional

provenance, confession, noble status, and previous parliamentary experience.

Qualitative evidence suggests that major changes in the party system were driven

by disputes over policy. Our findings are particularly important for countries with

more turbulent paths towards parliamentarization than those witnessed by arche-

typical cases like Britain or the United States.

Political partie s were born in 19th-century legislatu res

(Duverger 1972; Katz and Mair 1995; Krouwel 2006; Scarrow

2006). Today, they play a dominant role in elec toral competi-

tion and the interna l workings of parliament in v irtual ly all de-

mocracies. A si zeable body of resea rch has relied on re -election,

career, and policy goals to explain why rational MPs give up in-

dividual free dom by joining partie s (e.g., Aldrich 1995; Cox and

McCubbins 1993; for a survey, see Saalfeld and Strøm 2014).

By contrast, we know little about the relate d question of

how MPs in early legislature s decided which party to join. Th is

question is only addressed in the lite rature on party sw itching

(e.g., Desposato 2006; Heller and Mershon 2009; Mershon and

Shvetsova 2013; for a review, see Mershon 2014). However, the

© 2019 Washington University in St. L ouis

456 Ulrich Sieberer and Michael Herrmann

strategic situation of par ty switchers i n established demo cracies

differs marked ly from the initial sorti ng process of MPs duri ng

party formation so that f indings from th is literature are not nec-

essar ily applicable.

This arti cle develops and tests a theor y of party choice in

nascent, 19th-ce ntury legislatu res based on MPs’ pol icy objec-

tives. Building on Cox’s (2006) concept of a “legislative stat e

of nature,” we argue that individual legislators join groups of

like-mind ed colleagues to increas e their chance s of implement-

ing common substantive goals i n parliament and thus sor t into

parties bas ed on their polic y preferences. MPs in fer the policy

positions of fellow legislators from obser vable parliamentar y be-

havior and from character istics that signal policy preferences,

such as cultura l background, socioeconomic statu s, and previous

political exper ience. Our core hypothesis holds that MPs join the

party whose membe rship is the most sim ilar to them on thes e

accou nts.

We study party formation in the f irst democratically electe d

pan-Germ an parliament, the “Frank furt Asse mbly” (FA) dur-

ing the revolution of 1848/49, in order to test this clai m empiri-

ca l ly.1 Withi n a few months, members of the asse mbly developed

an elaborate system of parlia mentary par ties. This rapid devel-

opment is surpri sing because MPs were elected base d on their

standing as loca l dignitaries without establishe d political parties,

and most of them were politica l newcomers without predict able

political care er prospects. Using quantitative and qualitative

methods, we demonstrate that the decisions of MPs to asso ci-

ate with speci fic part ies can indee d be explained by the de sire

to bond with like-m inded colleag ues in pursu it of policy goals.

Our quantitative analysis of pa rty choice fi nds strong support

for the relevance of ideological proxi mity and other informative

cues such as sim ilarity w ith regard to age, regional provenance,

religious confess ion, noble status, and prev ious parliamentary ex-

perienc e. Further more, qualitative evidence on major party spl its

and mergers identif ies policy goals a s decisive factor for broader

changes in the par ty system.

The article contributes to the general l iterature on part y

formation in various ways. First, it provides one of the f irst em-

pirical studies of how MPs in nascent parliaments choose be -

tween alternative parties. Sec ond, by analyzing a case outside the

Anglo-Saxon world, we broaden the scop e of research on par ty

formation in 19th-centur y Europe where many cases do not share

457Bonding in Pursuit of Policy Goals

the rather linea r and uninterrupted proc ess of party development

(Scarrow 2006; Ziblatt 2017, Chap. 2). Third, we show that elec-

toral incentives and c areer advancement that figure prom inently

in previous rese arch on why MPs join parties a re not necessar y

for initial party formation—policy inc entives alone can be suf-

ficient to explai n the sorting proce ss.

How Do MPs Decide to Join a Party and

Which Party Do They Choos e?

Existing res earch mostly addresses the question of why MPs

create politica l parties at all. According to this literature, the

emergence of par ties in a hypothetical “legislative st ate of nature”

(Cox 2006) can be explained a s a strategy of rational MPs; how-

ever, studies differ with r egard to the goals that MPs are assumed

to pursue. One strand arg ues that policy-s eeking MPs join par-

ties to overcome social c hoice problems (Aldrich 1995; Schwartz

2018) and common pool di lemmas in the u se of plenary ti me that

threaten to produce legislative gridlo ck (Cox 2006). In this view,

parties are st able coalitions of MPs formed w ithin parliament

that increas e the chances that MPs obta in favored policy deci-

sions. A second type of argument, often u sed alongside policy

seeking, tre ats parties as vehicles for individual c areer ambitions

because they c ontrol access to leadership positions with in parlia-

ment and the executive branch (Carroll, Cox, and Pachón 20 06;

Cox 1987; Cox and McCubbins 2005; Sieberer 2013). A third type

of explanation conceptualizes pa rties as inst rumental for MPs’

(re)election goals. In this view, parti es are decision heuristics for

voters that enable MPs to establish long-sta nding links w ith the

electorate (Aldrich 1995; Cox and McCubbins 1993). Many impli-

cations of these arguments find empirical suppor t in the process

of party emergenc e and development in (mostly) Anglo-Saxon de-

mocracies (Aldr ich 1995; Bowler 2000; Carroll, Cox, and Pachón

2006; Cox 1987; Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005; Godbout and

Høyland 2015).

We know much less about the question of how MPs in

nascent parlia ments sort into part ies, that is, which party an

individual MP choos es. The question of par ty choice has only

been studie d with regard to part y switching in modern parlia-

ments (Desposato 20 06; Desposato and Schei ner 2008; Heller

and Mershon 2009, 2008; Laver and Benoit 2003; Mershon and

Shvetsova 2013; Thames 2007). Accordi ng to these studie s,