Parliamentary Norms – Tool of the Party Group Leaders

Parliamentary norms facilitate the smooth functioning of party groups and can be crucial for the adoption of laws and the survival of governments in legislative votes. Such norms concern crucial rules indicating not to vote against the party line without giving notice and rather behavioural rules such as not to disclose internal party group discussions to the public. Previous studies on legislative norms have stated that established legislative norms exist; but there is little knowledge which factors contribute to their development and whether they influenced by individuals, institutions or the party group leadership. Whereas individual factors such as the individual length of parliamentarians in office or the institutional position of a party group have been investigated as contributing factors to party group norms, I add an additional, so far overlooked factor: party group leaders and the disciplinary efforts they employ. Party group leaders have a strong interest in developing legislative norms since they facilitate ensuring voting unity. It is in their interest to consciously establish rules to foster the coordinated behaviour of their party group members. Thus, leader characteristics expected to influence norms are the experience of a leader as well as his ideological position which influences his ability to assure unity. Party group characteristics influencing the development of behavioural rules might be the heterogeneity of party groups, its ideology or its government/opposition status. In this study I demonstrate that parliamentary norms can be strongly influenced by party group leaders who wish to professionalize their parties and make them more powerful. Using data from a self-conducted mail and online survey of parliamentarians from five parliaments (United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, European Parliament), I analyse with a multi-level analysis whether legislative norms are due to individual, institutional or party group characteristics.