editor's introduction

Editor's IntroductionAuthor(s): Malcolm E. JewellSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2 (May, 1977), pp. 109-112Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/439559 .

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Editor's Introduction

The problem of national integration is common to all countries, but it is particularly important in those countries that are divided into major racial, religious, or other ethnic groups. One of the significant questions for students of legislative systems is whether and how legislative bodies can facilitate national integration. Malaysia, with its divisions among the Malay, Chinese, and Indian people, provides a particularly interesting case study of legislative contributions to integration. In the November, 1976 issue of the Quarterly Chu Chi-hung studied the effects of both race and party on the extent of participation by MPs in two activities-debates and the question period-on behalf of their constituents.

In this issue Lloyd Musolf and Fred Springer discuss the sources of division within Malaysian society and test some of the theories developed concerning "consociational democracy": the processes of "bargaining and compromise within a coalition of elite leadership representing the various communal groups." They examine the roles played and the functions per- formed by MPs, noting especially contrasts by party and by ethnic group. In particular the authors emphasize the ability of the Malaysian MPs to serve a linkage role between the government and the people, mediating the actions of the national government and assisting in the implementation of development strategies. This study, like the articles by Kumbhat and Marican and by Ong in the August, 1976 issue of the Quarterly, emphasizes the service role played by the Malaysian MP. This report is part of a larger study of the Malaysian legislature, which is of particular interest for comparative purposes because it is based on a survey of legislators that parallels the one developed by scholars at the University of Iowa for their study of legislatures in Korea, Kenya, and Turkey.

European scholars in recent years have collected data in a number of countries on the background characteristics of legislators, sometimes over long time periods, but most of these studies have not tried to show what impact such characteristics have on various aspects of legislative behavior. Gene Frankland's study, "Parliamentary Career Achievement in Britain and

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West Germany," is particularly useful because it tests the influence of several background variables on parliamentary careers-and finds that their effect is small. Electoral variables have some effect, and the age at which a member enters the House of Commons is important. The most significant variable affecting the parliamentary career is the length of service. In order to rise to a high parliamentary position, it is necessary to start young, to win re- election, and to accumulate seniority. But Frankland notes that a relatively small proportion of those who have long tenure actually hold top-level positions.

This study leaves a number of unanswered questions; one of its advantages is that it focuses attention on these topics. Which positions are stepping stones to the top and which are dead ends? How early in one's career must an MP start up the ladder in order to reach the top? What kinds of activities (such as participation in debate or the question period) are likely to lead to promotion? Although length of service is a major predictor of parliamentary success, promotion is not based strictly on seniority, and therefore we need to know how MPs take advantage of their seniority to get ahead. Frankland's study deserves attention also because its methodology is thoroughly comparative. He has found comparable measures of career achievement for Britain and West Germany, and measures the effects of variables for all of the MPs from both countries before providing a breakdown by country and by party.

Non-American readers of this Quarterly have discovered, if they did not already know it, that legislative scholars in the United States are fas- cinated with roll-call studies. Despite the relatively high proportion of studies devoted to this topic, there remain some unanswered questions. Only within the last several years have political scientists and historians paid much attention to roll-call voting prior to the New Deal period, for example. Only recently have there been efforts to examine long-term trends in the partisan character of voting. Barbara Deckard Sinclair provides data on party cohesion in the U. S. House for the period 1901 to 1956, and also analyzes some of the variables that appear to explain variations in party cohesion over time. The data show a decline in party cohesion over time, although much of that drop occurred after the first decade of the century. She finds that the factors associated with high cohesion are different for the two parties. Democratic cohesiveness is greater when the Democratic presidential vote increases, suggesting some kind of mandate theme in congressional voting. A higher presidential vote, however, also produces a higher congressional majority, which tends to weaken party cohesion. The Republican party is more co- hesive when it attains majority status, a rare occurrence in recent years. Republican cohesiveness also appears to be greatest when the pressures to

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deviate from the party's conservative orientation are least. Obviously, when one is trying to explain variations in cohesion over

a long period of time, many variables may come into play, including a number that are not included in this analysis. It is particularly difficult to evalu- ate the importance in shifts of majority status in Congress, because they have been so rare since 1932. It is also difficult to predict whether the presidential vote will continue to influence congressional party cohesion at a time when presidential and congressional voting are becoming more independent. In other words, the disadvantage of examining long-term trends is that they may tell us little about current trends.

While many students of Congress have concentrated on roll-call voting, in recent years there has been a growing interest in the strategic behavior of legislators-coalition formation, vote trading, and various forms of bargaining. Unfortunately, those two streams of legislative studies have seldom merged, and roll-call studies have generally ignored the strategic aspects of voting. (Barbara Hinckley's article in the February, 1977 issue of this Quarterly on the effects of coalition behavior in the U. S. House is one exception.) In an effort to remedy this shortcoming, Donald McCrone shows how roll-call analysis can be used to identify different voting strategies. One such strategy leads supporters of a bill to oppose an amendment strengthening it, in the fear that this would make it harder to pass the bill. Another situ- ation is one in which strong proponents and opponents vote together on an amendment to a bill, one group out of preference and one for strategic reasons. McCrone tests this approach by using civil rights bills in the U. S. House of Representatives, and finds that it works.

One of the weaknesses of most roll-call techniques is that the choice of technique may determine the findings. A search for cluster blocs produces such blocs; unidimensional scaling demonstrates that there is a single dimen- sion underlying some roll-calls-at the cost of excluding many others from consideration. There may be many reasons why some roll-calls do not fit such a scale, including various forms of vote-trading and cue-taking, but the use of McCrone's technique will make it possible to identify roll-calls that do not scale because of particular voting strategies, and could enable us to estimate how often such strategies are used.

The comparative study of legislatures requires a broad perspective and familiarity in some depth with more than a single legislative body. Experts on some problem in one national legislature are too often unfamiliar with similar topics in another. The final article in this issue is a review article by John Lees, who has surveyed recent studies of legislative oversight in the U. S. Congress, the British Parliament, and several European countries. Lees' theme is the necessity of making cross-national studies of oversight,

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and more particularly searching for factors determining the success of oversight that are applicable to more than one country. This does not mean that patterns of oversight will be similar in presidential-congressional and in parliamentary systems but that it is important to understand how they are similar and how they differ. Lees also emphasizes the importance of research on the consequences of oversight for policy implementation. There is some reason to believe that legislators in many countries are beginning to believe that they can have more influence over the implementation of policy than over its initial formation. This oversight takes many forms, from efforts to secure benefits for a single district to participation in national investigations of administrative scandal or inefficiency. Most of those who have examined the quesiton of oversight have concluded that its success depends heavily on the motivations of individual legislators-leading to the obvious con- clusion that we need to know more about these motivations.

Lees' review article is the second that we have run in successive issues. It is not only an excellent example of comparative legislative analysis. It is also a model that we hope will be followed by other contributors. Thoughtful and provocative review articles can make a significant contri- bution to scholarly communication and to the development of the literature of comparative legislative studies. We invite such contributions from our readers.

-Malcolm E. Jewell

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