Personal Characteristics of MPs and Legislative Behavior in Moral Policymaking

• Author: Jochen Müller,Marc Debus,Markus Baumann
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12072

MARKUS BAUMANN

MARC DEBUS

University of Mannheim

JOCHEN M€

ULLER

University of Essex

Personal Characteristics of MPs

and Legislative Behavior in Moral

Policymaking

Theoretical and empirical models of legislative decision making in parliamentary

democracies typically neglect the policy preferences of individual MPs and instead focus

on political parties and possible institutional constraints. We argue that MPs actually

make judgments and decisions on the basis of their preferences, which are shaped by

their personal characteristics. However, given the strength of parties in most parliamen-

tary systems, the impact of personal characteristics on legislative behavior is rarely visi-

ble. Therefore, we examine a moral issue. Looking at cosponsorship, parliamentary

speeches, and votes in the German Bundestag, we analyze the legislative procedure on

the regulation of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in Germany in 2011. We

show that the legislative behavior of MPs does not only reflect partisan conflict but is

also influenced by the preferences of the constituents and MPs’ own personal character-

istics such as: religious denomination, gender, and parental status.

Introduction

Patterns of legislative decision making are essentially structured by

party competition and the partisan composition of government and oppo-

sition—particularly in parliamentary democracies. Although individual

MPs negotiate policy content and cast their votes, the strength of parties

and their positions regarding a particular issue are the decisive factors in

the political decision-making process (see, e.g., Plott 1979; Ostrom

1986; Tsebelis 2002). However, equating parties’ positions with MPs’

preferences implies that the tensions that precede the visible coherence

of parties are neglected or disregarded (e.g., Ceron 2013; Giannetti and

Benoit 2009; Giannetti and Laver 2009). We argue that elucidating the

personal motivations behind MPs’ legislative behavior allows for a better

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 2, May 2015 179

DOI: 10.1111 /lsq.12072

V

C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

understanding of the origins of parties’ convictions and the outcome of

the legislative process. We examine the driving factors behind MPs’ leg-

islative behavior, such as: cosponsoring bills, giving speeches in parlia-

ment, and voting for a particular bill.

Taking into account MPs’ personal characteristics when looking at

parliaments is far from a new approach. In the case of American politics,

the extensive literature on representation and legislative behavior deter-

mined the signif‌icance of individual MPs’ characteristics: ethnicity, gen-

der, and religious denomination (see, e.g., Kingdon 1989). In this vein,

personal characteristics serve as an important concept in assessing

descriptive representation (see, e.g., W€

angnerud 2009). Recent research

has also taken into account personal characteristics in explaining var-

iance in the legislative behavior of members of Congress (e.g., Burden

2007; Rocca and Sanchez 2008; Washington 2008). However, in case of

West European parliaments, which are characterized by high party unity

(see, e.g., Carubba, Gabel, and Hug 2008; Hibbing and Marsh 1987;

Hug 2010; Sieberer 2006, 2010), personal characteristics play a far less

prominent role in research that examines legislators’ behavior (see, how-

ever, Saalfeld 2011).

Despite the institutional differences, the present study argues that

the line of reasoning that has become prominent in American politics

can be transferred to parliamentary systems with strong parties: perso-

nal characteristics of MPs have an impact on the positions and actions

of their (parliamentary) parties, although most observable legislative

behavior follows patterns that ref‌lect party aff‌iliation or even only the

partisan composition of government and opposition (e.g., Hix and

Noury 2013; Sieberer 2006). The impact of personal characteristics is

most clearly identif‌iable when MPs cannot—or are not forced to—take

cues from their party group. In this case, they have to—or are able to—

evaluate alternatives based on their own preferences. Such situations

are most likely to occur in decisions concerning moral policy where

conf‌licting values need to be balanced (e.g., Baumann, Debus, and

M€

uller 2015). Typically, they pit religious principles and morality

against increasing medical and biotechnological possibilities (for a

recent overview, see Heichel, Knill, and Schmitt 2013; Knill 2013;

Studlar, Cagossi, and Duval 2013). With technical and medical advan-

ces, such decisions have grown in signif‌icance. At the same time, posi-

tions along party lines have in many cases not (yet) crystallized. On the

basis of theories of political socialization and political psychology, we

argue that MPs’ personal characteristics provide explanations for their

decisions in such cases. We test our predictions studying the legislative

process to establish a regulatory framework for preimplantation genetic

180 Markus Baumann, Marc Debus, and Jochen M€

uller

diagnosis (PGD) in the German Bundestag in 2011. The debate thereon

has not only attracted interest from voters, the media, and various inter-

est groups but was also free from parliamentary party discipline. This

provides us with a case where MPs’ personal characteristics are most

likely to contribute to an explanation of their legislative behavior—add-

ing to incentives originating from the institutional structure, parties’ pol-

icy positions, or constituency preferences.

In the following sections, we provide an overview of the debate on

PGD followed by a brief review of literature which includes isolated fac-

tors that shape MPs’ legislative behavior. Building on this, we develop

several expectations regarding the impact of MPs’ personal characteris-

tics and the preferences of their constituents on their stance in the PGD

debate. The fourth section introduces our data and the methods we apply

to gather information. We evaluate our expectations in the f‌ifth section.

The f‌inal section concludes with a discussion of the implications of the

derived f‌indings for studying legislative behavior and decision making

in parliamentary systems.

Party Discipline and the Debate on PGD in Germany

MPs’ behavior in the context of moral policymaking deviates

clearly from the typical legislative process. Moral policies, or conscience

issues in general, are frequently linked to the absence of party discipline

and the presence of “free votes” in parliament.

1

The following subsec-

tion brief‌ly reviews the peculiarities of moral policymaking in a compar-

ative perspective. From there, we move on to the specif‌ic context and

legislative process of the German PGD regulation.

Free Votes and Moral Policymaking

Free votes have attracted scholarly attention for the case of the UK

House of Commons, where they stand in stark contrast to the otherwise

high level of party discipline. As Richards (1970) noted in his study,

MPs are then not restricted by party pressures to support a specif‌ic policy

and “[. . .] division lists offer a vivid insight into their attitudes” (Jones

1995, 179). Research on moral policymaking in the United Kingdom

also comes to the conclusion that in so-called free votes partisan and

constituency inf‌luences are not only at work (Baughman 2004), but per-

sonal characteristics also have a decisive impact on voting behavior of

MPs (Hibbing and Marsh 1987). However, it remains unclear to what

extent free votes and moral policies are nonpartisan (Cowley 2002). This

may relate to the motivation behind declaring particular votes being free

181Legislative Behavior