Introduction

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12071
• Date: 01 May 2015
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Author: Peverill Squire

Introduction

Legislative scholars have long focused on political party as a

primary explanatory variable, particularly in regard to decision making in

parliamentary systems. Such a f‌ixation is appropriate because party

exerts a powerful inf‌luence on legislative behavior. But at times, the

importance of individual lawmakers and their personal preferences has

been obscured. In the f‌irst article of this issue of the Quarterly, Markus

Baumann, Marc Debus, and Jochen M€

uller seek to rebalance our

understanding of legislative behavior in parliamentary systems by

shifting the focus to the individual member. They examine the

motivations for various legislative actions undertaken by members of the

German Bundestag in 2011 on an issue with deep and complex moral

implications: regulations governing pre-implantation genetic diagnosis

conducted to identify and select embryos created in vitro. On this

particular issue, the parliamentary parties took no off‌icial positions,

leaving members free to pursue their own policy preferences. The

authors test the impact of strategic career behavior (taking actions based

on personal political calculations regarding renomination and reelection

prospects) and personal characteristics (notably sex, occupation, and

religion) on proposal cosponsorship, f‌loor speeches, and f‌loor voting.

They f‌ind that even in the absence of party discipline, there is a clustering

effect, with members from the same party adopting similar positions,

likely because they share ideologies. Constituency also plays a

role—members tend to take positions that are consistent with what their

voters back home prefer. But they also f‌ind that being a Catholic

inf‌luenced member behavior, as did being a woman with children. The

fact that personal characteristics appear to play a role suggests, as the

authors indicate, that legislative scholars may need to take them into

greater account in explaining decision making in parliamentary systems,

not necessarily in f‌loor behavior where party dominates, but in the ways

parties come to adopt initial policy positions.

Experimental studies have come into vogue among legislative

scholars over the last decade. Most experimental studies use

undergraduate students, or, less often, some other slice of the general

public as their subjects. Yet legislative scholars are usually interested in

trying to explain the behavior of legislators, a small elite group. The

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 2, May 2015 175

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12071

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C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa