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“Bringing Cohesion In”

Christoph Oberst Department of Political Science and Communication Studies

University of Greifswald Baderstr. 6/7

17489 Greifswald Germany

Tel. +49 3834 863154 Email christoph.oberst@uni-greifswald.de

Paper prepared for presentation at the 5th ECPR Graduate Student Conference, University of Innsbruck, Austria, 3-5 July 2014.

Abstract: Intra-party cohesion is a crucial analytical tool of veto player theory, which has long been neglected in empirical analyses explaining policy change. This paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of party cohesion in political decision-making processes by asking “does ideological party cohesion matter”? In order to answer this question I will apply a newly invented index of ideological party cohesion (Jahn/Oberst 2012) for an analysis of partisan effects on labour market reforms. I will replicate the empirical study by Becher (2009) that examines the impact of veto players on labour ministers for labour market reforms, and add cohesion to the models by interaction with the ideological positions of the agenda setter. Thus, I am able to analyse the effects of a party´s cohesion on a party´s position. The interpretation of marginal effects of cohesion over position clearly indicates that cohesion has a relevant effect. Wordcount: 8771 without references

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Introduction

According to Tsebelis (Tsebelis 2002) the configurations of veto players of a political system

“affect the set of outcomes that can replace the status quo (the winset)”. These

configurations depend on the number of veto players, their ideological preferences, the

ideological distance of their preferences and their cohesion. Concerning cohesion Tsebelis

concludes that “the lower the party cohesion, the lower is policy stability” (Tsebelis 2002,

84). In other words, it is expected that high tensions within a party are more likely not

leading to policy change, or in a nutshell that policy outcomes are affected by tensions

within a party.1 A possible explanation of this function gives Hanna Bäck by stating “that

parties suffering from low intra-party cohesion are likely to lose bargaining power […] and as

a result, heterogeneous parties should be less likely to shape policy outcomes” (Bäck 2012,

73).

Intra-party cohesion is a crucial analytical tool of veto player theory, but it has long been

neglected in empirical analyses explaining policy change. This paper seeks to contribute to a

better understanding of the importance of party cohesion in political decision-making

processes and a more adequate empirical application of cohesion by asking “does

ideological party cohesion matter”? I will answer this question by applying a newly invented

index of ideological party cohesion (IPC) (Jahn and Oberst 2012) for an analysis of political

institutions and partisan effects on labour market reforms. The task is to combine existing

indices of partisan and veto player theory with the new measure of IPC.

I will fulfil this task in a three-step manner. First I replicate the empirical study by

Becher (2009) that examines the impact of veto players on labour ministers for labour

market reforms. Secondly I extend the replication dataset to extend the scope of time, and

therefore cases, in the paper. I will do this mainly by taking the chance to update the data of

the papers´ dependent variable with data from the Comparative Welfare Entitlements

Dataset (CWED2) project (Scruggs, Jahn, and Kuitto 2013). Additionally, I will change the

ideological dimension that Becher uses (“myrl3”), which is a parsimonious indicator with

market economic, effective governance and welfare issues based on the data of the

Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP), into a deductive Leftright index with country and

time-specific aspects. As a third step, I add cohesion to the models by interaction with the

1 Actually Tsebelis differentiates that “in decisions by majority rule policy stability increases with cohesion; in

decisions by qualified majority policy stability decreases with cohesion” (Tsebelis 2002, 62). I will come back to this later.

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ideological positions of the agenda setting minister to be able to analyse the effects of a

party´s cohesion on a party´s position. The rationale behind the extended replication is to

test whether not only position and the range of the respective veto players of a labour

minister (and its interaction) affects the outcomes of labour market reforms, but also the

cohesion of the ministers´ party. The general result of this study is that cohesion matters.

The direction and function though is not so clear and needs further elaboration.

Theory There is a huge amount of literature in quantitative research that proves that the partisan

hypothesis still has a considerable effect within policy making (Allan and Scruggs 2004;

Avdagic 2013; Jensen 2012; Knill, Debus, and Heichel 2010; Neumayer 2003; Schmidt 1996;

Schmidt 2002, just to name a view). Studies of late and since additionally prove the relevant

impact of veto players either directly or via interaction with the partisan hypothesis. The

study of Michael Becher (2009) is one of those studies.

The aim of the Becher study is to reexamine “how veto players matter for labour market

reforms in [20] advanced industrial democracies” (Becher 2009, 53) from 1972-2000 with a

particular focus on ministerial power. Labour market reforms, as the study’s dependent

variable, are measured with the CWED data on unemployment insurance entitlements (NRR;

(Scruggs 2004)) by Lyle Scruggs and employment protection legislation with data from Allard

(EPL; (Allard 2005)). Becher’s findings are that the impact of ministerial partisanship is

conditional on the ideological distance between veto players and that the capability of a

minister to change the status quo towards the own preference declines, as the ideological

distance between veto players increases (Becher 2009, 53). He shows that rightward2 shifts

of the minister “lead to substantial cutbacks only if ideological distance is relatively small”

(Becher 2009, 49). He tests for different models of agenda setting power within the cabinet

and concludes, that the mixed finding concerning the dependent variable “is consistent with

the idea that the autonomy of cabinet ministers within their jurisdiction is greater for

policies that are not money intensive” (Becher 2009, 54).

2 His policy dimension is called “myrl3” which originally stems from the Parties – Governments – Legislatures

(PGL) File Collection of Cusack and Engelhardt (2002). The dimension grasps f. ex. aspects of Free Entrepreneurship, Economic Orthodoxy, Governmental and Administrative Efficiency, Welfare Expansion, Market Regulation or Economic Planning. For a recent debate on the saliency and comparability of the Leftright dimension see Benoit and Däubler 2014; Budge and Meyer 2013; Dinas and Gemenis 2010; Franzmann 2013; Franzmann and Kaiser 2006; Jahn 2011; Jahn 2014.

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The task of the following is to bring in the long neglected ideological cohesion of parties into

partisan and veto player models by a model that respects the combination of these three

parts with respective indices. In the empirical part of this paper I will do this by replicating

and extending the above described study of Michael Becher. But first we have to define the

matter of the research focus, ideological party cohesion, and then explain the way of how

cohesion can have an impact on policies.

What is ideological party cohesion and why should it matter?

Definitions to describe “the internal life of parties” (Katz 2002) are manifold and often

subsumed under the term “factionalism” (Boucek 2009). In this direction one of the oldest

definitions has been provided by Raphael Zariski (1960, 33), where he defines “a faction as

any intra-party combination, clique or grouping whose members share a sense of common

identity and common purpose and are organized to act collectively - as a distinct bloc within

the party - to achieve their goals”, which can be “patronage […], the fulfilment of local,

regional, or group interests, influence on party strategy, influence on party and

governmental policy, and the promotion of a discrete set of values to which members of the

faction subscribe” (Zariski 1960, 33). Additional to this factional based definition Sartori

(1976) took ideology as a driving force into account and distinguishes between factions that

are ideologically oriented and factions that are office-seeking. Ergun Özbudun (1970) took a

different approach and spoke conceptually of behavioural versus non behavioural

approaches culminating in disciplinal versus ideological driven cohesion of a party. This could

also be described as a “top-down” versus “bottom-up” approach as Bowler, Farrell and Katz

(1999) put it. For my study here I will rely on this latter approach and concentrate on the

bottom-up ideological driven cohesion of a party.

Ideological cohesion within this approach can be seen as resulting “from the

interaction of individual cost-benefit calculations of the various intra-party actors with party

and government rules, and with the feature of the party system” (Strøm and Müller 2009,

34-35). In detail the cost-benefit calculations of the intra-party actors are determined by

policy and career related preferences, institutional party and state rules, as well as by party

system conditions (Strøm and Müller 2009, 34-40). The more similar the results of the cost-

benefit calculations of the actors are, the higher the cohesion will be.

This model can be extended with the assumptions of Barry Burden (2007, 43), as

cited by Baumann et al. (Baumann, Debus, and Müller 2013, 187), who sees the personal

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characteristics as the driving force for the preferences of each parliamentary delegate.

Burden analyses, that there are internal factors and personal characteristics like values,

experiences and self-interest, and external factors like the party line, constituency

preferences and lobbying that all influence the parliamentary activity either directly or

filtered through preferences. A visualization of the combination of these two models can be

seen in the following figure 1.

Figure 1 Determinants of Party Cohesion extended Model based on Müller (2000) and Burden (2007)

I will take this approach and assume that these resulting levels of party cohesion are visible

on the party level and regularly manifest into the election programmes to which each party

agrees upon at the party congress. Therefore ideological party cohesion is measureable as a

result of cost and benefit calculations mainly driven by preferences.

After having defined ideological party cohesion, I will turn to the effects cohesion can have

for policy making to focus on the subject “cohesion matters”.

Now why should ideological party cohesion matter for policy making? The answer is

threefold and sets the policy making party in the focus of the analysis: first cohesion is an

analytical part of the configurations of veto players of a political system that “affect the set

of outcomes that can replace the status quo (the winset)” (Tsebelis 2002), and second it

increases the agenda setting power and third the bargaining power of the respective policy

making party as well.

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The Effects of Cohesion within Veto Player Theory

Let´s start with the effects cohesion can have from the perspective of veto player theory. A

veto player, according to the seminal work of George Tsebelis (2002), is defined by its

potency to veto against “a (labour market) reform” and could be either individual (a

president) or collective (a second chamber) and institutional or partisan. Parties can be

defined as collective actors and when taking part in a coalition they are a relevant veto

player. Tsebelis gives us three assumptions, the first is that the more veto players are

involved, the higher policy stability or the more unlikely of a (labour market) reform is. The

second assumption is that the wider the ideological distance of the preferences of the veto

players is, the higher policy stability will be too. The third assumption is that the cohesion of

the collective veto player influences the outcome as well. He concludes that “the lower the

party cohesion, the lower is policy stability” (Tsebelis 2002) and even states that “[i]t is

because parties are not cohesive that policymaking becomes possible” (Tsebelis 2002).

His analytical tools core and winset are widely accepted, but less research has been done

with the analytical concept yolk, which can be a tool to determinate cohesion in a collective

veto player. The yolk can be best described as a measure how exact the ideal position of a

collective veto player can be concentrated (Baltz 2009). To create the yolk we first have to

identify whether the decision game is a simple majority or a qualified majority game. Let us

assume first, for sake of clarity here, a simple majority game.3 To identify the yolk now, we

first have to draw median lines between the players with a simple majority on each side,

now the yolk itself “is the smallest circle intersecting all medians” (Tsebelis 2002, 45). The

centre of that circle is called (Y) and its distance to the Status Quo (SQ) is called (d), while (Y)

has a measurable radius (r). With this information we can draw a wincircle around (Y) with

the radius of (d + 2r). This wincircle always contains the SQ, so that outside of this circle no

compromise will be settled (Tsebelis 2002, 47). Tsebelis states, that we can use this wincircle

around Y as the circle for “a fictitious individual veto player” that “can replace the collective

veto player” (Tsebelis 2002, 47). Thus we are able to widen the indifferences curves of the

decision makers by the radii of their yolks, which then leads to the assumption that the more

3 Let allow us a small preview of the operationalization of this paper that will later lead to the answer to the

question whether a minister is influenced by the cohesion of his or her party, because we should assume accordingly a labour minister of party A that wants to reform the labour market, but has to bargain that with his coalitional “veto” partners in cabinet of party B and party C and also with his own party A. Will the decision then be made by simple or qualified majority, or are there other mechanisms that influence the legislative process which are determined by party cohesion, like agenda setting or bargaining power? We should keep this question here in mind.

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concentrated the yolk is, the higher policy stability will be! The following figure gives a good

impression for that function, only with the extended circles there´ll be a chance to agree on

a point within the plane named WABC.

Figure 2 Difference between individual and collective decision makers (Tsebelis 1995, 300)

The above leads Tsebelis to two conjectures. The first is that “Policy stability increases as the

m-cohesion of a collective veto player increases (as the radius of the yolk decreases)” and

the second that “an increase in size of […] a collective veto player […] increases its m-

cohesion (decreases the size of its yolk), and consequently increases policy stability (Tsebelis

2002, 48). In oversimplified words, we can summarize for simple majority decisions that the

more cohesive a collective veto player is, the less likely a reform will be.

As we kept in mind, the above holds true for simple majorities, turning to qualified

majorities the result of the model summarized in conjectures is quite diverse.

Tsebelis starts again with the three step approach, where majority lines between the actors

have to be drawn first. The difference to the median lines, as for simple majorities, is that

now only relevant dividers count, called q-dividers, which are relevant when they leave the

SQ on the not mayoral side of the divider. Then quite similarly a q-yolk and q-wincircle are to

be created. The conjecture then is quite the other direction. Tsebelis shows that in cases of

qualified majority “policy stability decreases as the q-cohesion of a collective veto player

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increases” (Tsebelis 2002, 54) and secondly, but less astonishing, he proves with his model,

that the higher the threshold for the majority in a collective veto player is, policy stability

increases (or remains at least the same) (Tsebelis 2002, 54). Again in oversimplified words,

we can summarize that with qualified majority the more cohesive a collective veto player is,

the more likely reforms will be made.

It is a hard task to empirically test the above described effects cohesion can have within veto

player theory, due to the fact, that Tsebelis comes to two adversary conjectures. We simply

do not know whether decisions in ministerial or cabinet decision making, which involves for

example coordination among coalition partners, are arrived at with simple or qualified

majority. I will overcome this problem by taking advantage of the concepts of Agenda

Setting Power and Bargaining Power.

The Effects of Cohesion via Agenda Setting and Bargaining Power

There are several studies stating that the concepts of Agenda Setting and Bargaining Power

either have strong implications for or are implicated by the cohesion of parties (Bäck 2009;

Bäck 2012; Blumenau 2012; Cox and McCubbins 2005; Debus and Bräuninger 2009;

Giannetti and Laver 2009; Laver and Shepsle 1996; Meyer 2012; Mitchell 1999; Pedersen

2010). These studies will be introduced here shortly to link ideological party cohesion to

policy making via Agenda Setting Power and Bargaining Power. I will start with Agenda

Setting Power, the “bedrock of party government” (Cox and McCubbins 2005, 204).

Agenda Setting Power

Agenda Setting Power as described in the seminal work of Cox and McCubbins (2005) is the

power to push or to slow down the legislation of bills. Whereas tools of the former are

subsumed under the term positive agenda power, tools of the later are called negative

agenda power. From Cox and McCubbins (2005) we do know that party cohesion, in terms of

homogeneity of preferences, increases positive agenda power, through favouring the

distribution of positive instead of negative power. The mechanism for this is, that becoming

more homogenous in preferences, trust between the members of the group with proposal

and veto powers will be increased (Cox and McCubbins 2005, 204). Ways to accomplish this,

however, are “changes in the rules, or […] changes in the fiduciary standard expected of

officeholders, or both” (Cox and McCubbins 2005, 208), which could be for example, a

removal of committee chairmen by the party.

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One step further, based on the chain of delegation by Strøm (2000; 2003; Strøm and Müller

2009), Thomas Meyer (2012, 485) examines in his study “the consequences of intra-party

dissent for coalition governments”. He asks how “intra-party dissent affect[s] a minister’s

agenda setting-power” (Meyer 2012, 485). He builds simulation models on the assumption

of the chain of delegation where: “Voters delegate to the members of parliament who, in

turn, delegate power to the cabinet. Within the cabinet, jurisdictions are delegated to

individual ministers, and these ministers delegate many crucial tasks to their civil servants”

(Meyer 2012, 485). Meyer combines this with the assumption of Laver and Shepsle (1994;

1996) that “ministers are agenda setters within their jurisdiction” (Becher 2009, 37). He

further individualizes the decision making process and his simulations suggest:

“that parties may benefit from deviant behavior within their own ranks: whereas the

party in charge of a respective portfolio suffers from an increase in the number of

veto players, the coalition partner can move the policy output closer to its ideal

position than it would be the case in the unitary actor model.” (Meyer 2012, 501)

He concludes that “dissent-shirking and (potential) sabotage lead to a decrease of the

minister´s agenda setting power” (Meyer 2012, 501), which fosters the party that is not

holding the ministerial post.

The resulting functional direction of the effects ideological party cohesion has on Agenda

Setting Power is therefore: the more homogenous parties are, the more positive agenda

power they have.

Bargaining Power

Concerning the effect cohesion has on Bargaining Power the results of several studies can be

summarized as: homogenous parties do have more Bargaining Power. Bargaining Power can

be simply defined as having a better bargaining position over a second actor in a bargaining

situation due to different aspects of which information is one of the most important. For

example, if party B knows that party A is incoherent on a policy move, the bargaining

position of the leader of party A is weakened, since he or she could be replaced by the

dissent faction within party A.

In her study Helene Pedersen examines the impact of intra-party politics on the coalition

behaviour of political parties (Pedersen 2010). She tests the impact of the formal internal

power distribution within Danish political parties on their ability to participate in winning

legislative accommodations by setting up a model with external and internal bargaining

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resources. Her results favour the hypothesis of Strøm (1990) “that parties with decentralized

decision procedures are less effective in coalition negotiations”, which is contrary to Maor’s

(1998) proposition that “decentralized parties are stronger in coalition negotiations”

(Pedersen 2010, 750), and “suggest that parties with strong national party organs are more

inclined to stick to policy ideals, making them less attractive and flexible in inter-party

negotiations.” (Pedersen 2010, 750).

Drawing on the works of Laver and Schofield (1990), Luebbert (1986) and Mitchell (1999)

Hanna Bäck (2008, 74; 2009) points into the same direction and suggests “that intra-party

tensions can have systematic effects on bargaining […] more specifically, tensions should

negatively affect parties’ ability to enter government”. Mitchell (1999, 281) states that it is

unlikely that dissent backbenchers of a party seek to break down the own coalition after it is

once set up, but they can “rebel on particular policy items, punishing the party´s ministers for

drifting too far away from party policies and reminding their leaders that they cannot always

be taken for granted.” It is clear, that the more diverse the preferences of all actors within

the party are, the higher are the chances for such a rebellion against drifting away from the

actors’ preferences. Mitchell concludes that “coalition maintenance primarily involves

continuous bargaining in which delicate trade-off has to be struck between negotiations

among and within parties” (Mitchell 1999, 283). Concerning the effect of cohesion on policy

outcomes itself, Bäck states that (2012, 73):

“Intra-party cohesion may also affect policy outcomes due to that parties suffering

from low intra-party cohesion are likely to lose bargaining power. This in turn may

lead to that their impact on legislative output and the implementation stage

decreases, and as a result, heterogeneous parties should be less likely to shape policy

outcomes.”

In a similar vein Debus and Bräuninger (2009) see effects of cohesion in the negotiations of

portfolio allocations during coalition bargaining. They show “that the appointment of

individual ministers who belong to party factions is used to increase bargaining leverage

inside the coalition government” (Debus and Bräuninger 2009, 141). Here the conjecture can

be made that a minister is then dependent or accountable to “its faction”. Cohesion thus

certainly plays a role for her or him too.

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A Model of Constraints of Ministerial Policy Preferences

I will take the approaches described above and use them to link the assumptions that

Tsebelis made for cohesion and the assumptions by the above cited scholars for agenda

setting and bargaining power to model answers to the question whether policy outcomes

are affected by tensions within a party – or in simple words: whether cohesion matters. But

instead of modelling intra-party dissent with forms of not joining (shirking) and sabotage, as

for example Meyer did, I will take ideological party cohesion as the driving force and

subsume the above cited mechanisms of Agenda Setting Power and Bargaining Power as

ministerial bargaining power to set up the following hypothesis:

H1: A minister backed by a homogenous party is more likely able to set the agenda in her or

his preferred direction due to ministerial bargaining power (see also Bäck 2012, 37).

Therefore cohesion constraints the “room for manoeuvre available to the agenda setter”

(Bäck 2012; Becher 2009; Tsebelis 2002) and so I assume that policy output is not only

constrained by the policy preference of the ministry, but also by the ideological party

cohesion of the minister’s party. A visualization of this, extended with a veto player function

as an additional constraining factor, which is the veto player preference constellation of the

ministry (f.ex. coalitional partners, presidents, second chambers), can be seen in the

following figure.

Figure 3 Constraints of Ministerial Policy Preferences

In the above model the directional mechanism for policy outputs is the ministerial policy

preference. This is in line with partisan theory and draws also on assumptions from Laver

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and Shepsle’s Ministerial Discretion Model (Laver and Shepsle 1990; 1994; 1996; 1999;

1999). In their model a coalition is a kind of agreement about the allocation of ministerial

portfolios and coalitional behaviour is then constrained by the credibility of the ministers in

cabinet, their parties’ preferences and their autonomous like policymaking. Tsebelis

summarizes the model as that “[M]inisterial discretion results from the minister’s ability to

shape the agenda of collective cabinet decisions rather than to determine cabinet decision

once the agenda had been set” (Laver and Shepsle 1996, 33 cited in Tsebelis 2002, 107).

However, indeed Laver and Shepsle see their approach as easily expendable to “take

account of intraparty politics” precisely because they are not dealing with “political parties,

themselves, but important party politicians – cabinet ministers” (Laver and Shepsle 1996,

247). These cabinet ministers seek to establish credible policy positions requested by their

parties (Laver and Shepsle 1996, 248). The authors show that “in certain circumstances at

least, intraparty politics can have a profound impact on the making and breaking of

governments” through three mechanisms (Laver and Shepsle 1996, 250), of which the first is

having “more than one credible policy position available” (Laver and Shepsle 1996, 250), the

second is the impact of changes of factional leadership and the third the impact of party

splitting (Laver and Shepsle 1996, 251–60). Concerning the first mechanism the authors state

“that a party can gain useful strategic options from having senior politicians with diverse

policy positions” (Laver and Shepsle 1996, 259) by enabling the party leadership to switch

between ideal points and so move policies.

Although being aware of the recently renewed criticism of the model by Tsebelis (2002,

108), who disagrees and denies that ministers do have enough agenda setting power to

control the agenda4, I nevertheless stick to the model of Laver and Shepsle and take three

theoretical assumptions from it: First, a minister is able to decide on policies, second, he is

dependent from the support of his party, third, although being strategically an advantage for

the party leadership to have a “diversity of ideal points among its senior politicians” (Laver

and Shepsle 1996, 256), being ideological cohesive equips a party’s minister with power to

dictate policy in his jurisdiction and this accumulates the minister’s credibility.

In the next chapter I will empirically analyse the assumptions made above to answer the

question whether ideological party cohesion matters, or not.

4 Tsebelis simultaneously points to the importance and respective impact of the role of prime ministers, the

negotiated government program and government meetings that all diminish the power of the portfolio minister (Tsebelis 2002, 108; Tsebelis and Ha 2013).

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Empiric Part

Operationalization

Thus far, most studies with party cohesion in focus were interested in explaining coalition

building or portfolio allocation and only some with other outcomes of interparty

negotiations. Additionally, most of these studies deal with roll-call data as a proxy for party

cohesion or use data such as the Rice Index or the Agreement Index (Hix, Noury, and Roland

2005; Powell 2000; Rice 1925). That kind of data is clearly linked to a disciplinal concept of

cohesion as defined above. Due the ability of the US congressional roll-call data, these

studies are often narrowed to this very special area, which again is rather based on a

disciplinal than a preferential mode of cohesion up to now. An inspiring attempt with the

focus to explain government formation as determined also by ideological party cohesion has

been conducted by Paul Warwick (2000; Warwick 2006). Warwick conducted a policy

horizons approach where limits of compromise result in lower and upper bounds for each

party on each policy dimension, which can serve as a proxy for ideological party cohesion.

Although he also tests his approach empirically with data received from expert judgments

and the Comparative Manifestos Project, I will take a different track and use the newly

invented index of Jahn and Oberst (2012) for several reasons.

Jahn and Oberst were the first to develop an index of ideological party cohesion (IPC) that

compares “party cohesion over time and across various political parties” (2012, 222).

Therefore this index is suitable for time-series-cross-section models. The authors define

parties as collective actors with the implication that every actor within the party has its own

set of positions and preferences. In their study they limit themselves to a single policy

dimension, although they state that “intraparty conflict often occurs when two or more

ideological dimensions diverge“ (Jahn and Oberst 2012, 223). The index could be criticized

on the occurrence of low cohesion values stating a cohesive party with fewer tensions, but

hiding the fact that the analysed policy dimension is simply not important for the parties’

actors. The index therefore accounts for saliency via the analytical tool “importance” and so

controls for the saliency of the conflict for each party (and therefore the party system too).

Additionally, the index can be combined to two- or more-dimensional indices via this tool.

On the other hand, the authors used a deductive country- and time-specific Leftright

dimension (LR) conducted by Jahn (2011) based on data of the CMP Project (Budge et al.

2001; Klingemann et al. 2006; Volkens et al. 2013). This LR dimension should be heavily

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relevant for most of the parties.5 By focusing on ideological party cohesion as manifested in

party programmes conducted for elections I pin myself to a non-behavioural or ideological

driven definition of cohesion where the unit of research is a party at one point in time.

The index itself is conducted on the weighted average deviation of the Leftright statements a

party makes in an election manifesto. Additionally the degrees of radicalism of the

statements are taken into account, which have been derived from stimulus scores of the

multi-dimensional scaling analysis conducted for the LR index. Because the data has many

outliers we used the mean absolute deviation (ad). We weight the ad with the frequency a

statement has been made. This rawdata is finally multiplied with the importance (saliency

score) of the dimension for the specific party. The formula for the weighted ad is:

In the equation, adw is the weighted average deviation. The term wi is the weight for the ith

observation, which is the frequency of use of a specific statement. The stimulus score in the

ith statement is xi, while b calculates the weighted arithmetic mean of all stimulus scores.

(Jahn and Oberst 2012, 231).

The index I use for veto player data has been conducted by Jahn (2010) and is also based on

the time- and country specific Leftright index of Jahn (2011). It takes beneath positional data

of coalition partners also positional data of second chambers and presidents into account

and departs partially from the index Tsebelis conducted (see Tsebelis and Chang 2004). Like

within Tsebelis index the ideological range between the veto players that are farthest away

counts. Veto players that fall between the poles of the range will be absorbed. The index

differs from Tsebelis´ index in questions of bicameral and presidential strength, and it uses

time variant positional data of the parties, which is not the least merit of this index. The

higher the values of this index the more diverse the ideology of the veto players of the index

is.

5 For an interesting debate about the assets and drawbacks of this Leftright index see Benoit and Däubler 2014;

Budge and Meyer 2013; Dinas and Gemenis 2010; Franzmann 2013; Franzmann and Kaiser 2006; Jahn 2011; Jahn 2014.

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Replication and extension of the Becher 2009 study What follows is a replication of a part of the study of Michael Becher (2009) and its step by

step extension. I will use his transparent and reluctant replication files, but focus exclusively

on his models with net unemployment insurance entitlements as dependent variable.

Afterwards I interchange his political dimension and extend the cases of Becher’s models

with additional data to broaden the scope of time. Finally I will “bring cohesion into” the

models. In the empiric report here I will focus on the results of the regressions and the

marginal effects exclusively. Descriptive data for the variables is to be found in the appendix.

I will not report on the control variables, as long as they are in line with the results of the

original study.

As a starting point I replicated Becher´s findings for the original time frame of the

years 1972 until 2000 with his original dataset and came to exactly the same results (see

regression model 1).

As a second step I changed the policy dimension from “myrl3” to the Leftright

dimension conducted by Jahn (2011) for the partisanship of the labour minister and the

adjusted veto player index (“jahn2” in orig.) also conducted by Jahn (2010) for the veto

player data. I got the same, slightly better in terms of R² results for the original time frame

(see regression model 2). Worth mentioning is that the veto player distance variable gained

significance. At the controllers, the insignificant controller budget deficit changed its sign

and the lagged controller percentage of population over 64 lost significance. Besides that,

every sign and level of significance showed in the same direction. Therefore, I assume using

the LR Dimension of Jahn is suitable and adds slightly explanatory power.

As a third step (see regression model 3), I extended all variables6 to the time frame of

19707 until 2011. Doing this, the model lost half of its explanatory power. However, since the

impact of the partisan data is much more in my research focus, than explaining the reforms

of unemployment insurance rates, I will rely on the models nevertheless. The outcome of

the partisan variables and most part of the controllers is in the same direction and levels of

significance.

6 This extension is possible by thankfully drawing on the datasets of Armingeon, Knöpfel, Weisstanner, Engler,

Potolidis, and Gerber 2013 and for the dependent variable on data from the CWED2 project of Scruggs, Jahn, and Kuitto 2013. 7 Becher (2009, 38) sets the 1973 oil crisis as starting point for his study, the robustness of the models when

extending the time frame to the year of 1971 is to be checked accordingly. There is some missing data producing gaps, most variables start 1971.

16

Subsequently, I set up the same model but bring cohesion in via twopartite

interaction with the positional variable without (see regression model 4) and with veto

players as a main effect (see regression model 5). Again all signs show the expected direction

and the interaction term is significant.

Finally, I set up a model (see regression model 6) that includes positional, veto player

and cohesional aspects as a tripartite interaction. To interpret tripartite interactions is not an

easy task and although the tripartite interaction term is not significant, I stick to the advice

of Mitchell (2012, 163), that in the presence of a three-way interaction, interpretations of

lower interactions are not fruitful and marginal effects should be considered to interpret the

impact of the interaction. The following tables show the regression estimates and a short

explanation of the time and dimensional frame used for each regression.

# Model Time period Cases Ideol. dimension

Dep. Var.

1 Becher 2009 original data

1973 - 2000 391 Myrl3 Orig.

2 Becher 2009 original data; same cases; LR dimension

1973 - 2000 382 LR Orig.

3 Extended data; extended cases; LR dimension

1971 - 2011 570 LR Ext.

4 Extended data; extended cases; LR dimension; Cohesion included

1971 - 2011 570 LR Ext.

5 Extended data; extended cases; LR dimension; Cohesion and Veto Players included

1971 - 2011 570 LR Ext.

6 Extended data; extended cases; LR dimension; Cohesion and Veto Players included as 3 term interaction

1971 - 2011 570 LR Ext.

17

Table 2: Panel regression estimates

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Labourminister Position -0.030* (0.005)

-0.258* (0.034)

-0.089* (0.016)

-0.142* (0.034)

-0.140* (0.035)

-0.133* (0.058)

Vetoplayer Distance -0.002 (0.005)

-0.061* (0.025)

-0.026 (0.014)

-0.040* (0.014)

0.022 (0.030)

Labourminister Cohesion

0.018* (0.009)

0.027* (0.010)

0.055* (0.013)

Position # Vetoplayer 0.027* (0.006)

1.338* (0.163)

0.630* (0.096)

0.560 (0.441)

Position # Cohesion

0.279* (0.082)

0.267* (0.085)

0.065 (0.139)

Vetoplayer # Cohesion

-0.200* (0.081)

Position # Vetoplayer # Cohesion

0.285 (0.908)

Lagged dependent variable -0.569* (0.026)

-0.525* (0.024)

-0.120* (0.015)

-0.124* (0.015)

-0.123* (0.015)

-0.121* (0.015)

L.Corporatism 0.069* (0.012)

0.053* (0.009)

0.010* (0.005)

0.020* (0.005)

0.018* (0.005)

0.008 (0.005)

L.Unemployment rate -0.010* (0.001)

-0.008* (0.001)

-0.002* (0.001)

-0.002* (0.001)

-0.002* (0.001)

-0.002* (0.001)

D.Unemployment rate -0.005* (0.002)

-0.005* (0.002)

-0.003* (0.001)

-0.002 (0.001)

-0.002 (0.001)

-0.003* (0.001)

L.Trade openness (%GDP) -0.001* (0.000)

-0.001* (0.000)

-0.000 (0.000)

-0.000 (0.000)

-0.000 (0.000)

-0.000* (0.000)

D.Trade openness (%GDP) -0.001 (0.001)

-0.001 (0.001)

-0.001* (0.000)

-0.001* (0.000)

-0.001* (0.000)

-0.001* (0.000)

L.Log of GDP per capita -0.115* (0.041)

-0.102* (0.040)

0.004 (0.007)

0.001 (0.008)

0.003 (0.008)

0.006 (0.007)

L.GDP growth 0.002* (0.001)

0.002* (0.001)

-0.003* (0.001)

-0.002* (0.001)

-0.002* (0.001)

-0.002* (0.001)

L.Population over 64 (%) 0.008* (0.003)

0.004 (0.003)

0.001 (0.001)

0.002 (0.001)

0.002 (0.001)

0.002 (0.001)

D.Population over 64 (%) -0.010 (0.019)

-0.018 (0.014)

-0.010 (0.007)

-0.010 (0.007)

-0.010 (0.007)

-0.010 (0.007)

L.De-industrialization 0.016* (0.002)

0.013* (0.002)

0.001* (0.000)

0.002* (0.000)

0.002* (0.000)

0.002* (0.000)

D.De-industrialization 0.013* (0.002)

0.011* (0.002)

0.001 (0.001)

0.001 (0.001)

0.001 (0.001)

0.001 (0.001)

L.Budget deficit (%GDP) -0.001 (0.001)

0.001 (0.001)

-0.000 (0.000)

-0.001 (0.000)

-0.001 (0.000)

-0.000 (0.000)

Countries 17 17 17 17 17 17 r2 0.420 0.436 0.226 0.210 0.214 0.236 adjusted_r2 0.317 0.333 0.116 0.097 0.100 0.120 Observations 391 382 570 570 570 570 Panel-corrected standard errors in parentheses; * p<0.05, all models with random and fixed effects, not reported here; L= one year lag; D= first difference; Excluding CAN and GBR because of assuming not to have veto players does not alter the results of the marginal effects.

18

The marginal effects of cohesion What follows are the interpretation of the influence of the marginal effects of the respective

interacted partisan variables for four of the six models above.

Figure 4 Marginal effects for model 1, 2, 3 and 5

Model 1 Model 2

Model 3 Model 5

The interpretation of the marginal effects for the first model, the original model of Becher, is

that veto players have a relevant effect. The effect is significant and negative for veto players

until (.75), which can be interpreted as until that range of veto player, a significant effect

shows that the more veto player, the less the capability of the labour minister to implement

the policy preferred (Becher 2009, 49). At the end of the scale the effect becomes significant

again but turns to the positive side of the scale. Becher (2009, 51) interprets this rather rare

event as a possible outcome of logrolling among parties.

In the second model the direction of the effect is the same, although the turning

effect starts at lower levels of veto player influence and is more distinct. In my interpretation

-.0

4-.

02

0

.02

.04

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .5 1 1.5 2vrange_myrl3

Observations: 391

Becher original Model

-.4

-.2

0.2

.4

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .1 .2 .3 .4a_jahn2100

Observations: 382

Becher Model within LR Dimension

-.1

0.1

.2

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .1 .2 .3 .4a_jahn2100

Observations: 570

Oberst Model, LR Dimension, extended time frame, POS#VPL

-.2

-.1

0.1

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7COHESION

Observations: 570

Oberst Model, LR Dim., extended time frame, POS#COH; VPL

19

the capability of the minister to implement his preferred policy is so small due to high levels

of veto player influence, that the minister even has to go against his preferred partisan line.

Nevertheless we can result from this two models that veto players do have an impact on

policy outcomes.

Extending the time frame as in the third model weakens the relevancy of this effect

and the room to manoeuver in the preferred direction is even narrower. Additionally, the

turning effect starts already with lower levels of veto player.

Bringing cohesion in as in the fourth (not reported here) and fifth model leads to the

assumption that also cohesion has a relevant and significant effect on policy making. The less

tensions within the minister’s party, the more capable of implementing the preferred policy

the minister is. This result is significant until a level of cohesion of (.45). The result shows

that, when the minister is backed by an internal unified party, the minister can act in line of

the partisan hypothesis. With increasing levels of cohesion this effect becomes insignificant,

but also positive, which implies a similar trend as for veto player effects.

The interpretation of the average marginal effect of the tripartite interaction

underlines the above assumed interpretations. The result of the model with the tripartite

interaction of position, cohesion and veto players is very interesting. First, as can be seen

from the average marginal effects of position as a function of cohesion and veto players

(figure 5), it can be said, that cohesion and veto players do have relevant impact on the

positional impact of the labour ministries. The positional impact is negative and significant,

when there are almost none and less veto players (dotted and diamonded line) and this

impact shrinks by increasing levels of cohesion, stating that the more incoherent the party of

the labour minister is and the more veto players act, the less partisan impact on NRR will

there be. By that we can interpret that a left labour minister can raise NRR better when s/he

has no internal dispute and less veto players, whereas a right minister can reduce NRR better

within the same constellation of low internal dispute and veto player. This effect is

significant for the constellation of zero veto players through all levels of cohesion and also

for small veto players (.1) until a high level of cohesion (.45).

20

Figure 5 Average Marginal Effect of the three-way Interaction

This result is generally in line with partisan hypothesis. But with higher levels of veto players

and more internal dispute the partisan effect is turned around, stating a positive effect of

ministerial position on the NRR rate, which can be interpreted as follows: when many veto

players are to be played and internal division is high, the partisan effect is then that left

ministers reduce and right ministers expand NRR. This effect is significant for a (.35) level of

cohesion with high veto players (.3) and also significant for a (.25) level of cohesion with very

high veto player (.4) constellations. The following graph shows the above levels of veto

players in detail with confidence intervals on a 95% level to be able to analyse the

significance of the different veto player levels.

-.2

-.1

0.1

.2

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .2 .4 .6Cohesion

L.a_jahn2100=0 L.a_jahn2100=.1

L.a_jahn2100=.2 L.a_jahn2100=.3

L.a_jahn2100=.4

Vetoplayer: From .0 to .4; no confid. interv. shown

Observations: 570

Avrg Marg Effects of Position as a function of Cohesion and VPLPOS#COH#VPL

21

Figure 6 Average marginal effects of position as a function of cohesion and veto players by different levels of veto player

The Graphs show in ascending order the average marginal effects of position as a function of cohesion and veto players by different levels of veto players. A negative effect is in line with the partisan hypothesis, zero cohesion is associated with less ideological tensions within a party and zero veto players are associated with less adverse veto players.

-.2

5-.

2-.

15

-.1

-.0

5

0

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .2 .4 .6Cohesion

Vetoplayer: .0

Observations: 570

Avrg Marg Effects of Position as a function of Cohesion and VPLPOS#COH#VPL

-.1

5-.

1-.

05

0

.05

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .2 .4 .6Cohesion

Vetoplayer: .1

Observations: 570

Avrg Marg Effects of Position as a function of Cohesion and VPLPOS#COH#VPL

-.1

5-.

1-.

05

0

.05

.1

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .2 .4 .6Cohesion

Vetoplayer: .2

Observations: 570

Avrg Marg Effects of Position as a function of Cohesion and VPLPOS#COH#VPL

-.2

-.1

0.1

.2

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .2 .4 .6Cohesion

Vetoplayer: .3

Observations: 570

Avrg Marg Effects of Position as a function of Cohesion and VPLPOS#COH#VPL

-.2

0.2

.4

Eff

ects

on

Fitte

d V

alu

es

0 .2 .4 .6Cohesion

Vetoplayer: .4

Observations: 570

Avrg Marg Effects of Position as a function of Cohesion and VPLPOS#COH#VPL

22

Discussion By replicating and extending the study of Becher (2009) with cases I could show that his

findings that veto players constrain the room to manoeuvre still hold true within a different

political dimension. The dimension I have analysed here is a deductive Leftright index with

additional time- and country specific aspects conducted by Jahn (2011). In a next step I

“brought ideological party cohesion in” via a newly invented index by Jahn and Oberst

(2012). I interacted this index in different models with position and in a three-way

interaction with position and veto player aspects. Doing this I not only confirmed the result

of Becher, that it is „premature to dismiss the importance of veto players” (Becher 2009, 34),

I have also shown that a minister backed by an ideological homogenous party is more likely

able to set the agenda in her or his preferred direction. Therefore cohesion matters for

policy outputs. Since this is a relevant effect, cohesion should no longer be neglected in

policy research too.

The analysis brought also to light that the higher internal dispute of the ministerial party and

the broader the ideological range of veto players is, the capability of a minister to implement

policies in the preferred direction shrinks. Additionally with high levels of internal dispute

and veto players ministerial effects are even associated with outputs against the line of

partisan hypothesis.

Further research has to be done whether this could be linked to concepts like “blame

avoidance” or is just a result of partisan logrolling, like Becher (2009, 51) puts it. The model

above should also be tested in other policy areas. By proving the applicability of the new

index of ideological party cohesion the door has been opened for until now neglected

research concerning cohesion.

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Appendix Countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,

Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain.

Table 1A Correlation of Positional Data Becher model vs Oberst model

Labour minister Position Oberst LR

Labour minister Position Becher myrl 3

Veto Players Range Oberst LR

Labour minister Position Becher myrl 3

0.5922 1 -0.1491

Veto Players Range Becher myrl 3

-0.0140 -0.0452 0.5990

Veto Players Range Oberst LR

-0.0745 -0.1491 1

27

Table 2A Descriptives all cases

Variable N Mean min max

Becher D. Dep Var 456 0 -0.760 0.760 Oberst D. Dep Var 634 0 -0.140 0.260

Becher LM Position 451 -0.150 -1 1 LM Position LR 694 0.0100 -0.230 0.320

Becher Veto player 463 0.420 0 1.810 Vetoplayer LR 697 0.0700 0 0.390

Becher POS*VPL 451 -0.0600 -1.560 1.690

LM Cohesion LR 694 0.290 0 0.640

Becher Lagged dep var 473 0.600 0 0.940 Oberst Lagged dep var 646 0.600 0.0700 0.930

Becher siaroff 493 3.410 1.630 4.750 a siaroff 714 3.410 1.630 4.750

Becher Unempl 510 6.350 0 17.15 a unemp 697 6.030 0 17.15

Becher openk 493 57.01 11.45 186.0 a openk 697 57.56 11.32 172.4

Becher lgdp lag 510 9.780 8.920 10.21 a lgdp lag 702 9.640 7.160 11.46

Becher gdpgr 510 2.730 -7.300 11.70 a realgdpgr 697 2.580 -8.350 11.31

Becher elderly 505 13.49 7.340 17.99 a elderly 686 13.85 7.070 22.75

Becher deind 510 64.12 43.28 77.12 a deind 695 63.35 40.07 97.94

Becher deficit 486 0.0100 -11.76 12.99 a deficit 659 0.250 -28.51 16.10

Table 3A Descriptives by Countries

BECHER BECHER OBERST OBERST OBERST Labourminister

(labour m3) Vetoplayer

(vrange myrl3) Labourminister

(LMposC1) Vetoplayer

(a jahn2100) Cohesion

(LMcohC1) N mean sd mean sd N mean sd mean sd mean sd

Australia 27 -0.060 0.63 0.82 0.48 42 0.01 0.07 0.06 0.06 0.24 0.05 Austria 26 -0.38 0.34 0.46 0.45 42 -0.03 0.05 0.05 0.06 0.25 0.05 Belgium 24 0.14 0.65 0.68 0.43 42 -0.01 0.07 0.08 0.05 0.27 0.06 Canada 29 -0.23 0.35 0 0 38 0.02 0.05 0.05 0.07 0.32 0.11 Denmark 27 -0.18 0.62 0.50 0.44 42 0.05 0.11 0.07 0.07 0.37 0.12 Finland 26 -0.74 0.28 0.68 0.23 42 -0.04 0.10 0.19 0.11 0.27 0.15 France 24 -0.36 0.47 0.38 0.31 37 0.01 0.10 0.08 0.08 0.34 0.09 Germany 27 -0.27 0.49 0.71 0.50 42 -0.01 0.07 0.12 0.06 0.27 0.07 Ireland 26 -0.20 0.36 0.25 0.37 42 -0.01 0.06 0.03 0.03 0.22 0.10 Italy 23 0.31 0.35 0.61 0.29 41 0.03 0.04 0.06 0.05 0.24 0.07 Japan 29 0.11 0.72 0.14 0.21 42 0.05 0.09 0.02 0.03 0.27 0.08 Netherlands 27 0.040 0.34 0.39 0.21 42 -0.02 0.06 0.08 0.06 0.30 0.08 New Zealand 28 -0.25 0.26 0.040 0.13 42 0.03 0.05 0.02 0.06 0.30 0.06 Norway 23 -0.41 0.40 0.17 0.39 38 -0.04 0.07 0.04 0.04 0.25 0.05 Sweden 27 -0.37 0.37 0.28 0.50 36 0.03 0.05 0.04 0.07 0.28 0.07 Switzerland 28 0.060 0.39 1.09 0.31 42 0.10 0.07 0.24 0.09 0.38 0.11 Great Britain 30 0.24 0.52 0 0 42 0.06 0.08 0 0 0.36 0.09

Total 451 -0.15 0.53 0.42 0.46 694 0.01 0.08 0.07 0.09 0.29 0.10