Cooperation and conflict in recorded and non-recorded votes in the German Bundestag, 2017-2021

Studies of legislative behavior often rely on recorded votes as data. However, many parliaments only record a subset of votes while others are taken via non-recorded procedures. Recorded votes are often requested by parliamentary party groups (PPGs) for strategic reasons, raising the danger of selection bias. This paper assesses the size and direction of this bias by analyzing all recorded and non-recorded votes in the German Bundestag during the last legislative period (2017-2021). Germany is a useful case because few votes (around 5 percent) are recorded on the specific request of PPGs. We study the voting behavior of PPGs in both types of votes focusing on conflict between government and opposition parties. Building on recent research using recorded votes, we test whether the level of conflict and its determinants differ systematically between recorded and non-recorded votes. As recorded votes are often requested to advertise party positions, we expect higher levels of conflict and a stronger effect of ideological distance on these votes. However, we also expect certain patterns to hold for both types of votes, e.g. the cooperative behavior of the Greens and the high level of conflict between the right-wing populist AfD and all other parties.