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Recent academic studies and wider commentary on the behaviour of Liberal Democrat MPs have recognised their relatively high level of cohesiveness on whipped votes when compared to that of Labour and the Conservatives, and to the Liberal Democrats' own reputation; but while this trend continues, few studies have focused upon its causes. This article uses the MPs' voting records, personal papers, interviews and wider contextual data to chart the extent of that unity over time, and to explore its origins, including group composition, structure, patronage, relations with the extra-parliamentary party and other parties as well as national party image. It finds the key to this unity in a combination of medium and long-term features of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat group of MPs, rather than a short-term singular determinant.

Most theories of legislative behaviour explain the behaviour of MPs through electoral incentives. However, they fail to explain variation in parliamentary activity when individual electoral incentives are largely absent. This article studies MPs' activity in such a parliament: the Dutch Tweede Kamer. It examines four clusters of incentives that may drive parliamentarians to be active. Party and committee environments provide the best explanation for the level of activity of individual MPs. Reselection and promotion prospects explain MPs' behaviour, but only under more particular specifications. Re-election prospects were not found to affect activity levels.

This article examines the determinants of positional incongruence between pre‐election statements and post‐election behaviour in the Swiss parliament between 2003 and 2009. The question is examined at the individual MP level, which is appropriate for dispersion‐of‐powers systems like Switzerland. While the overall rate of political congruence reaches about 85%, a multilevel logit analysis detects the underlying factors which push or curb a candidate's propensity to change his or her mind once elected. The results show that positional changes are more likely when (1) MPs are freshmen, (2) individual voting behaviour is invisible to the public, (3) the electoral district magnitude is not small, (4) the vote is not about a party's core issue, (5) the MP belongs to a party which is located in the political centre, and (6) if the pre‐election statement dissents from the majority position of the legislative party group. Of these factors, the last one is paramount.

This article examines the determinants of positional incongruence between pre-election statements and post-election behaviour in the Swiss parliament between 2003 and 2009. The question is examined at the individual MP level, which is appropriate for dispersion-of-powers systems like Switzerland. While the overall rate of political congruence reaches about 85%, a multilevel logit analysis detects the underlying factors which push or curb a candidate's propensity to change his or her mind once elected. The results show that positional changes are more likely when (1) MPs are freshmen, (2) individual voting behaviour is invisible to the public, (3) the electoral district magnitude is not small, (4) the vote is not about a party's core issue, (5) the MP belongs to a party which is located in the political centre, and (6) if the pre-election statement dissents from the majority position of the legislative party group. Of these factors, the last one is paramount. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIn the literature on the determinants of party unity, one pathway has remained largely neglected: division of labour. Given their workload, members of parliament (MPs) are only thoroughly concerned with a subset of policies. We argue that this results in MPs casting fewer dissenting votes on matters within their area of specialization since they have had the opportunity to shape the party line there. Regression analyses using data for the German Bundestag support this hypothesis, including four important refinements: Not only the current but also past membership in the responsible committee reduces an MP's defection probability. Additionally, this pattern is more pronounced for policy spokespersons and for less consequential, i.e., non-legislative votes as well as for issues less salient to the MP's party. The results have implications for our understanding of MPs' legislative behaviour, the functioning of parliaments as institutions and for the relationship between parties, MPs and voters.