Dyadic Representation in a Westminster System

36 Pages Posted: 14 Aug 2014

See all articles by Chris Hanretty

Chris Hanretty

University of East Anglia

Benjamin E. Lauderdale

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE)

Nick Vivyan

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Government

Date Written: July 31, 2012

Abstract

In Westminster systems characterised by cohesive national parties, is there any room for meaningful dyadic representation, whereby the ideological outlook and legislative behaviour of individual Members of Parliament reflects the political preferences of their constituents? Research on this question has until now been impeded by difficulties in measuring constituency-level opinion and individual MP preferences. In this paper, we focus on Britain and use multilevel regression and post-stratification to generate constituency level measures of opinion on economic issues, the European Union and same sex marriage. We find that constituency opinion on these issues is associated with MP preference variation within parties, as measured based on un-whipped legislative behaviour. Our findings thus suggest that there is a basic constituency-MP representation bond which operates in Britain in addition to the representation bond formed between voters and parties.

Keywords: dyadic representation, Westminster, same-sex marriage, Euroscepticism, representation, legislative behaviour

Suggested Citation

Hanretty, Chris and Lauderdale, Benjamin E. and Vivyan, Nick, Dyadic Representation in a Westminster System (July 31, 2012). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2120590 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2120590

Chris Hanretty (Contact Author)

University of East Anglia ( email )

Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom

Benjamin E. Lauderdale

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

Nick Vivyan

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Government ( email )

Northampton NN7 1NE
United Kingdom

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