The Rejected, the Ejected, and the Dejected: Explaining ...

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778 Comparative Political Studies what happened toward the end of the second term of the Blair government and at the start of its third term. Appendix Descriptive Statistics Standard Variable Observations Mean Deviation Minimum Maximum Rebel against the government 414,652 0.142 0.118 0.000 1.000 (pooled) Rebel against the government 408 13.165 16.633 0.000 128.000 (count) Rebel on Iraq War 408 0.336 0.473 0.000 1.000 Rebel on foundation hospitals 408 0.147 0.355 0.000 1.000 Rebel on university top-up fees 408 0.176 0.382 0.000 1.000 Minister 408 0.226 0.419 0.000 1.000 Former minister 408 0.127 0.333 0.000 1.000 Not promoted 408 0.627 0.484 0.000 1.000 Left-right self-placement 131 3.214 1.159 0.000 7.000 Distance from party mean 131 0.896 0.737 0.210 3.790 Standing down in 2005 408 0.059 0.236 0.000 1.000 Years as MP 408 11.392 7.479 2.000 42.000 Majority size 408 0.275 0.150 0.003 0.690 Constituency median voter 408 11.350 0.864 9.110 12.824 % Muslim 408 3.607 5.980 0.050 48.810 % poor health 408 9.003 4.084 0.000 18.470 % students 408 6.857 4.883 0.000 27.570 Notes 1. For simplicity, we do not count abstention as a vote against the majority. There may be a strategic reason for abstaining, but the most common reason is that an MP is unable to attend, in which case he or she is “paired” with an absent MP from the opposition benches. 2. We include whipped as well as nonwhipped votes. It is not possible with the available data to differentiate between these two types of votes. Also, in practice most free votes are not truly “free” in that there is invariably a position of the cabinet in these votes. Indeed, the government sometimes calls a free vote for strategic reasons, recognizing that there is disagreement inside the party. Only a small proportion of votes are free votes, and the three individual votes we look at separately are all whipped votes. 3. In the Poisson model, for simplicity, the MP-level independent variables (e.g., whether an MP was a minister) are measured at the start of the 2001-2005 Parliament. 4. The MP directory on the House of Commons Web site is at http://www.parliament.uk/ directories/hciolists/alms.cfm and the Labour Party Web site is http://www.labour.org.uk/home Downloaded from http://cps.sagepub.com at SWETS WISE ONLINE CONTENT on July 6, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
Benedetto, Hix / Government Rebels in House of Commons 779 5. We also coded the trade union membership of the Labour MPs, to see whether membership of particular trade unions could be used as a proxy for being on the left of the parliamentary Labour Party. However, only membership of 2 of the 24 trade unions, the National Union of Mineworkers (with only eight MPs) and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (with only five MPs), were significant predictors of voting against the government. 6. This is a chi-square of .989 for the comparison of actual to expected proportions for these three categories. 7. See http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census/ for England and Wales and www.scrol.gov.uk for Scotland. Data from Northern Ireland were not included because the Labour Party does not contest elections in Northern Ireland. References Aydelotte, William O. (1954). The House of Commons in the 1840s. History, 39, 249-262. Aydelotte, William O. (1963). Voting patterns in the British House of Commons in the 1840s. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, 134-163. Bagehot, Walter. (2001). The English Constitution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1867.) Benoit, Kenneth, & Laver, Michael. (2006). Party policy in modern democracies. London: Routledge. Bille, Lars. (2001). Democratizing a democratic procedure: Myth or reality? Candidate selection in Western European parties, 1960-1990. Party Politics, 7, 363-380. Braumoeller, Bear F. (2004). Hypothesis testing and multiplicative interaction terms. International Organization, 58, 807-820. Carey, John, & Shugart, Matthew S. (1995). Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: A rank ordering of electoral formulas. Electoral Studies, 14, 417-439. Cowley, Philip. (2002). Revolts and rebellions. London: Politico’s. Cowley, Philip, & Norton, Philip. (1999). Rebels and rebellions: Conservative MPs in the 1992 Parliament. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1, 84-105. Cox, Gary W. (1987). The efficient secret: The Cabinet and the development of political parties in Victorian England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cox, Gary W., & McCubbins, Mathew D. (2005). Setting the agenda: Responsible party government in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Crowe, Edward. (1986). The web of authority: Party loyalty and social controls in the House of Commons. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 11, 161-185. Diermeier, Daniel, & Feddersen, Timothy J. (1998). Cohesion in legislatures and the vote of confidence procedure. American Political Science Review, 92, 611-621. Firth, David, & Spirling, Arthur. (2003). Divisions of the United Kingdom House of Commons, from 1992 to 2003 and beyond (Mimeograph). Oxford, UK: Nuffield College, Oxford University. Franklin, Mark, Baxter, Alison, & Jordan, Margaret. (1986). Who were the rebels? Dissent in the House of Commons, 1970-1974. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 11, 143-156. Gaines, Brian J., & Garrett, Geoffrey. (1993). The calculus of dissent: Party discipline in the British Labour Government. Political Behavior, 15, 113-135. Garner, Christopher, & Letki, Natalia. (2005). Party structure and backbench dissent in the Canadian and British Parliaments. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 38, 463-482. Downloaded from http://cps.sagepub.com at SWETS WISE ONLINE CONTENT on July 6, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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