Parliamentary Decisions
Electoral considerations, party pressure and strategic calculations¹

Simon Hug² and Tobias Schulz³ and Stefanie Bailer
CIS and IPZ, Universität Zürich

First version: September 2005, this version: Apr 20, 2008

2  Scientific Information

2.1  Summary

Despite the central role of the Swiss parliament and its members in political decision-making, we know only little about what determines the latter's decisions when voting on bills. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical work carried out in other contexts, this study wishes to answer the following questions:

• What is the respective role of personal political preferences, party pressure, and constituency preferences in explaining the voting decisions of members of parliaments (MPs)?

• To what degree do MPs in the Swiss lower house engage in strategic voting when considering bills with various options in complex voting agendas?

To answer these research questions we rely on a series of data sources that yield the necessary information to test our theoreticall derived hypotheses. First, to assess the voting behavior of MPs we rely on a uniquely suited dataset of all votes having occurred in the Swiss lower house. This dataset allows us to assess much more precisely the role party pressure and electoral concerns play in the MPs' behavior. Second, using an internet-based survey, we collect information on the MPs' political preferences to relate them systematically to voting decisions in parliament. We also assess the way in which MPs deal with complex agenda-structurres as they appear in parliament in general and the Swiss lower house in particular. The survey will also yield information on the risk-attitudes of the MPs. Finally, information from existing large surveys and statistical information on cantons and regions will yield information on the preferences of the electoral districts of particular MPs. Comnbined these three data sources will allow for an innovative investigation of the behavior of MPs in the Swiss lower house.

Publications

• Bütikofer, Sarah and Simon Hug (2010). The Swiss Upper House. ``Chambre de reflexion'' or Conservative Renegades? Journal of Legislative Studies 16(2) 176-194
• Carrubba, Clifford, Matthew Gabel and Simon Hug (2008). Legislative Voting Behavior, Seen and Unseen: Adjusting for selection effects in roll call vote analysis Legislative Studies Quarterly 33: 543-572.
• Hug, Simon. (2010 ). Selection Effects in Roll Call Votes. British Journal of Political Science 40(1) 225-235.
• Hug, Simon (2010). Strategic voting in a bicameral setting in Thomas König, George Tsebelis and Marc Debus, (eds.) Reform processes and policy change: Veto players and decision-making in modern democracies Berlin: Springer, pp. 231-246

Working Papers

• Bailer, Stefanie, Sarah Bütikofer, Simon Hug, and Tobias Schulz (2007). Preferences, party discipline and constituency pressure in Swiss parliamentary decisions Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR General Conference in Pisa (September 6-8, 2007)
• Bütikofer, Sarah and Simon Hug (2008). Strategic behavior in the Swiss parliament Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston (August 28-31, 2008)
• Hug, Simon (2010). Strategic voting in bicameralism Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago (April 22-25, 2010)
• Hug, Simon and Danielle Martin (2009). How electoral systems affect the MPs positions Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Midwest Political Science Association in Toronto (September 3-6, 2009)