Tracing the selection bias in roll call votes: party group cohesion in the European Parliament

Content Provider	Scilit
Author	Yordanova, Nikoleta Mühlböck, Monika
Copyright Year	2014
Description	Legislative politics scholars rely heavily on roll call vote (RCV) data. However, it has been claimed that strategic motives behind RCV requests lead to overestimating party group cohesion and, thus, biased findings on legislative behaviour. To explore this claim, we distinguish between two types of bias, a ‘behavioural bias’ and a ‘selection bias’. A recent rule change in the European Parliament, making RCVs mandatory on all final legislative votes, presents the unique opportunity to evaluate the latter. We compare party group cohesion in requested and mandatory RCVs by examining final legislative votes before and after the rule adoption using amendment RCVs (which still need to be requested) as a benchmark. The analysis shows that group cohesion is higher whenever RCVs are not just requested onsomebut mandatory onallvotes. Hence, there is indeed a ‘selection bias’ in RCV data. Yet, somewhat contrary to former claims, relying on requested RCVs leads to underestimation of the cohesion party groups would have had were all votes automatically roll called. We argue that this is mainly because requests occur on more contentious votes.
Related Links	http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ca53/b2b848c5a6f1a176a14d2e2b0be3f4dcece8.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/828AFED1DF624AB4307F3C464DE4A89B/S175577391400023Xa.pdf/div-class-title-tracing-the-selection-bias-in-roll-call-votes-party-group-cohesion-in-the-european-parliament-div.pdf
Ending Page	399
Page Count	27
Starting Page	373
ISSN	17557739
e-ISSN	17557747
DOI	10.1017/s175577391400023x
Journal	European Political Science Review
Issue Number	3
Volume Number	7
Language	English
Publisher	Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Publisher Date	2014-11-28
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	European Political Science Review International Relations Roll Call Votes Party Groups European Parliament
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Sociology and Political Science Political Science and International Relations