Parliamentary Affairs (2018) 0, 1–19 doi:10.

1093/pa/gsx076

Two Faces of Party Unity: Roll-Call Behavior

and Vote Explanations in the German
Bundestag
Thomas Zittel* and Dominic Nyhuis
Department of Social Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, PEG/PF 40, 60629 Frankfurt,
Germany

* Correspondence: zittel@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

This article points to vote explanations in the German Bundestag as means to

broaden our empirical conception of parliamentary party unity. Vote explana-
tions provide opportunities to take positions on floor votes, independent of vote
choices. They thus allow to tap into the level of preference unity compared to the
level of behavioural unity. Our analysis shows that German legislators frequently
use vote explanations to take individual positions that sometimes involve outright
criticism on their parties’ stances. Furthermore, it shows that related motivations
differ from those that govern behaviour in floor votes. Specifically, electoral
incentives to seek personal votes matter more for vote explanations while voting
behaviour on the floor is to greater degrees affected by office seeking concerns.
The article draws from newly collected data on the 17th Bundestag that includes
274 roll-call votes and also the results of a manual coding of all 1005 unique vote
explanations that were tabled in this term.

Keywords: Parliaments, Party Unity, Roll Calls, Vote Explanations, Germany

1. Introduction: the puzzle of party unity

The extent to which political parties are able to function as unitary actors in legis-
lative contexts is crucial for the democratic process and the nature of public poli-
cies. Party government not only affects the input structure of democracy by
facilitating the responsiveness of governments towards national coalitions of

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 2 Parliamentary Affairs

voters (Powell, 2004), it also affects the output side of politics by constraining the
extent of particularistic policy making (Shepsle and Weingast, 1981).
Roll-call analysis has been the core currency in empirical research on parlia-
mentary party unity (Carey, 2009). Conceptually, this follows Reuven Hazan’s
(2003, p. 3) definition of party unity as ‘the observable degree to which members
of a party group act in unison’. It furthermore suggests that party unity needs to
be understood in terms of collective action on the floor. Viewed from this per-
spective, party unity is exceptionally high in European democracies since the
share of legislators deviating from the party line is low at most points in time and
in most countries (Sieberer, 2006).
In light of the findings of roll-call analysis, how can we make sense of situational
outbursts of open intra-party conflict and isolated floor revolts? In this article, we
argue that roll-call analysis only taps into part of the phenomenon that we com-
monly circumscribe by the concept of party unity. To develop a differentiated under-
standing on the issue, our analysis confronts traditional roll-call analysis with an
alternative conception that stresses legislators’ policy preferences, and the frequency
of deviating voiced preferences. We consider both levels of analysis independent
from each other and assume that party members might differ with regard to their
positions and preferences but nevertheless might choose to go along on the floor.
Our argument advances from earlier accounts on the issue that envision party
unity to result from multiple sources such as the cohesiveness of party members
in terms of ideology and policy beliefs (Thomassen, 1994; Thomassen and
Andeweg, 2004). We further explore the argument in three distinct steps. We first
elaborate on the two faces of party unity that we eluded to and on their contex-
tual prerequisites. Secondly, we introduce our data and the empirical model we
work with before we report our results in a third step.

2. Two faces of party unity

This article advances from the claim that it is far from easy to identify the level of
parliamentary party unity. It argues that parliamentary parties might show dis-
unity not only in collective choices such as floor votes but also in the distribution
of policy preferences among the legislators they are represented by. We consider
both phenomena to be partly independent from each other in empirical terms;
legislators might deviate from their party in some of their preferences but never-
theless might choose to go along on the floor. We also consider both phenomena
independent from each other with regard to underlying motivations and strategic
considerations. Disunity in preferences particularly should result from electoral
incentives to seek personal votes, since legislators that solely deviate in their pref-
erences are least at risk to disrupt parties’ capacity to act. Consequently, as we
depict in Figure 1, we consider preference distributions an important aspect of

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 3

Figure 1. Two faces of party unity.

party unity and propose to systematically distinguish between two faces of party
unity: unity in floor votes and unity in preferences.
We believe that the distinction between unity in preferences and unity in floor
votes is important for two main reasons. First, disunity in preferences is a latent
threat to party unity in floor votes. It requires party leadership to implement
sanction mechanisms or procedural solutions (Andeweg and Thomassen, 2011)
that in the end might nevertheless fail and end in revolt (Willumsen and Ohberg,
2017). Thus, understanding the level of preference unity helps to better under-
stand the contingencies of party government at the behavioural level of analysis.
Second, as we already stressed above, voiced preferences, compared to floor votes,
might result from different motivations and strategic considerations. The distinction
taken in Figure 1 thus facilitates a better and more comprehensive understanding
on the distinct and multiple sources of political behaviour in legislative contexts.
Measuring the preferences of legislators and thus the second face of party unity
is not an easy task. Earlier efforts in this regard suggested focussing on legislative
speech to estimate legislators’ policy positions as means to measure intra-party
heterogeneity (Kam, 2009; Proksch and Slapin, 2012; Bäck and Debus, 2016).
However, since floor access must be viewed as a scarce resource and since floor
debates thus are highly orchestrated events controlled by party leaderships, this
approach is prone to result in biased manifestations of intra-party preference dis-
tributions. Alternatively, we propose focussing on individual participation rights
in legislatures that are less regulated by formal and informal rules of parliament.
Specifically, in this aricle, we take advantage of vote explanations in the
Bundestag. These activities are defined by the rules of the Bundestag as an individ-
ual right to elaborate on a recorded or unrecorded vote choice, immediately after
the vote has been taken, in written or oral form. There are few available analyses
on this instrument that however suggest, that it provides de facto opportunities

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 4 Parliamentary Affairs

to express policy preferences independent of floor votes in most unconstrained

ways (Becher and Sieberer, 2008; Sieberer, 2015). We built upon these first efforts
to utilise vote explanations as a data source to tap into legislators’ preferences.
As depicted in Figure 1, we envision vote explanations, similar to any other
behaviour on the floor such as speeches, as voiced preferences that do not necessa-
rily reflect true preferences. Voiced preferences indicate strategic behaviour that is
motivated by office and vote-seeking goals and structured by institutional incen-
tives (Katz, 1986; Hazan, 2003). However, in contrast to floor votes or floor
speeches, vote explanations impose few opportunity costs on parties and also are
without any direct effects on collective policy choices and the capabilities of par-
ties to act. Consequentially, they allow to observe legislators’ position taking
when least constrained by party. For this reason, they provide a most meaningful
access point to the scope of deviating preferences in parliamentary parties.
To further explore the two faces of party unity and their distinct natures, in
the following, we turn to their prerequisites and politics. For this purpose, we
advance from widely shared models on party unity that mostly result from the
roll-call literature, and that we integrate in a baseline model. This baseline model
then provides the backdrop of the subsequent empirical analysis that aims to under-
stand the level and sources of preference unity as compared to unity in roll calls.
In our baseline model of party unity, we perceive unity as the outcome of
legislators’ strategic choices that are driven by vote and office seeking goals and
that are structured by electoral and party organisational contexts (e.g. Ozbodun,
1970; Sieberer, 2006; Depauw and Martin, 2009; Willumsen and Ohberg, 2017).
We test this model in light of our differentiated concept of party unity to tap into
factors and strategic considerations that are distinct to one or the other face of
party unity. We are particularly interested in the role of electoral incentives to
cultivate personal votes, once legislators’ behaviour is less constrained by party
organisational contexts. In the following, we briefly introduce and discuss the
four key variables that enter our baseline model since they are most prominent
features in prior debates on party unity. While the first two variables concern the
electoral context, the third and fourth variable stresses party related factors each.
The first electoral factor that is widely considered to affect legislators’ strategic
considerations concerns their mode of election. Legislators are commonly expected
to be more likely to toe the party line if they have been elected on the basis of a
closed list party vote and thus if re-election solely requires support from national
voter coalitions for the party as a whole (e.g. Norris, 2000, p. 12). Candidate-
centred systems in turn allow a geographic subset of voters to cast a candidate vote.
This introduces a second principal that individual legislators are accountable to, in
addition to party (e.g. Carey, 2007; Gherghina and Chiru, 2014). Under these con-
ditions, challenges to party unity might result from tensions and conflict between
the two principals with regard to their policy preferences. However, even in the

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 5

absence of conflicting preferences among principals, under candidate-centred rules,

legislators have to reallocate scare resources to signal attention to both principals to
secure re-election. This leads to the following testable hypothesis:
H1: Nominally elected legislators are more likely to disrupt party unity
The second electoral factor that is widely considered to matter for party unity
stresses the role of electoral marginality under candidate-centred rules. Morris
Fiorina (1974), among others, argues that the need to mobilise voters generally
pushes candidates apart and focuses them on re-election constituencies that vary
by party. The effect of marginality on this has been a contested issue (Gulati,
2004). We argue that wide margins enhance the status of individual legislators
vis-à-vis their parties since it increases their security in re-selection contests.
Incumbents that won their district with wide margins enjoy solid support from
their geographic constituents and thus are hard to deselect by their second princi-
pals which is party, even in case of conflict (Gallagher and Marsh, 1988).
However, it is important to understand that this does not necessarily result in
greater responsiveness of legislators to the district median that is commonly at the
centre of the debate on the effects of marginality (Macrae, 1952; Ansolabehere et al.
2001; Griffin, 2006; Ensley, 2012). Here, we do not wish to hypothesise on the pol-
icy congruence of legislators and their constituents but rather on the relationship
between legislators and their party. We argue that wide margins provide legislators
with a level of electoral security that constraints the role of party in their renomina-
tion. This theoretical consideration leads to the following testable hypothesis:
H2: Non-marginal legislators are more likely to disrupt party unity
Our third factor stresses the role of party organisational contexts. In parliamen-
tary systems, parties are able to ‘bribe’ legislators by offering mega-seats and by
thus tapping into their office seeking motivations (Carey, 2007, p. 93; Depauw and
Martin, 2009; Martin, 2014). Mega-seats involve special offices in parliamentary
and governmental contexts such as committee chairs or policy speakerships. They
provide compensation for yielding to party ideal points and for not maximising
ones’ own policy-seeking concerns. Compensation mechanisms can be extra
resources and status. However, mega-seats also provide special access to policy and
intra-party decision-making. In this function they allow legislators to minimise
gaps between the positions of their party and their own positions on specific policy
issues they care most about (Andeweg and Thomassen, 2011). Legislators facing
electoral incentives to deviate might be less inclined to do so if this activity comes
with the risk to either lose a mega-seat or to be deprived of future opportunities to
gain one. These theoretical considerations lead to the following testable hypothesis:
H3: Backbenchers are more likely to disrupt party unity

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 6 Parliamentary Affairs

The fourth and final variable stresses a second party-related factor that is to
some part closely related to the role of mega-seats that we discussed in the pre-
vious paragraph. This factor concerns the role of government status. Government
status provides special collective access to policy. Furthermore, in parliamentary
systems, government status provides special office-seeking opportunities, espe-
cially with regard to the possibility of ministerial appointments. In parliamentary
systems, under the conditions of a vote of no-confidence, government status is
closely related to the unity of the parties in government and to the determination
of their members not to risk the advantages that come with majority status and
bring down the government (Huber, 1996; Diermeier and Feddersen, 1998). This
leads to the following hypothesis:
H4: Legislators that are members of opposition parties are more likely to
disrupt party unity
Figure 2 summarises our hypotheses that we wish to test in a next step. With
this, on the one hand, we aim to contribute to the literature on party unity by
applying shared theoretical considerations to a more differentiated empirical phe-
nomenon. On the other, we aim to further investigate the role of incentives to
seek personal votes against the effects of party-related factors in differentiated
ways. Furthermore, we test our considerations on the basis of an empirical case
that so far did not take centre stage in the literature on party unity and also on
the basis of a novel set of data. Our aim is to unveil the different strategic consid-
erations that we expect to underlie the two faces of party unity depicted above.

3. Case selection, data and empirical model

In the following analysis, we use the German case to test our theoretical consider-
ations. We select this case for two specific reasons. First, because of available data.
By providing the opportunity to table vote explanations, the rules of the
Bundestag allow legislators to voice policy positions on any floor vote in uncon-
strained ways, independent of their vote choice. Second, because of interesting
variance at the electoral system level. Germany’s mixed-member system provides
variance with regard to electoral rules that allow a quasi-experimental test on the
effects of ballot and margin. In the first part of this section, we introduce our

Figure 2. A baseline model of party unity.

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 7

dependent variables that we construct to measure voiced preferences on the basis

of vote explanations. We combine this with a brief remark on the statistical model
that we estimate in our analysis. The second part of this section is devoted to
elaborate on the independent variables that we use to test the explanatory factors
outlined in the previous section.

1.1 Vote explanations in the Bundestag

According to §31, Abs. 1 in the rules of procedure of the Bundestag, individual
legislators are able to provide vote explanations after each floor vote either in oral
or written form. Oral explanations ought not to exceed 5 min and both forms of
explanations are inserted into the official minutes. This instrument allows explor-
ing the level of unity in policy preferences, independent from roll calls. This is
true for three reasons. First, vote explanations can be issued on recorded and
non-recorded votes. They thus provide access to vote choices that cannot be
traced otherwise and they are not subject to the possible selection biases that we
usually run into in roll-call analyses (Hug, 2010). Second, in practice, vote
explanations contain two types of statements that both tap into the level of intra-
party preference heterogeneity independent from roll-call voting (Becher and
Sieberer, 2008; Sieberer, 2015). In the first type of statement, legislators express
concern with the position of their party without deviating from it in vote
choices on the floor. This reveals intra-party preference heterogeneity that
cannot be observed otherwise. In the second type of statement, legislators table
vote explanations to explain a deviant vote. While such deviating behaviour
could also be observed by considering the voting records, the active public
statement on a deviant vote stresses a special level of intra-party preference
heterogeneity compared to situations in which legislators deviate but keep
quiet on their preferences.
A third reason for the usefulness of vote explanations as a means to tap into
the distribution of preferences in parliamentary parties results from the lack of
party constraints on their use. The few available analyses on this instrument stress
that vote explanations not only provide formalised opportunities for self-
expression but also can be considered a de facto avenue in this regard (Becher
and Sieberer, 2008; Sieberer, 2010; Sieberer, 2015).
To test our theoretical expectations on the two faces of party unity, we con-
struct three dependent variables. Table 1 summarises our dependent variables
along with other core variables in our analysis. First, to capture the first tradi-
tional face of party unity, we select the absolute number of deviating votes in roll
calls per individual legislator, where a deviation is defined as a vote choice that
differs from the relative party majority. In addition, we count individual absten-
tions as deviations if the party majority votes ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, as an abstention is still

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 8 Parliamentary Affairs

Table 1 Core variables in our analysis

Variable Description and codes

Dependent variables
Deviation Absolute number of deviations from party group in roll-call votes
(relative majorities). Abstentions are counted as a deviating vote if
the majority agrees/disagrees and vice versa
Critical explanation Absolute number of explanations expressing deviation from or con-
cern with party group’s majority position (relative majorities)
Individual explanation Absolute number of explanations tabled individually
Independent variables
Nominal mandate 0 ¼ list; 1 ¼ nominal
Wide margin Distance (in per cent) between nominal vote share of district winner
and share of first loser. Coded as ‘wide’ (¼1) if > 10 per cent
Parliamentary office Legislators that held offices in their party groups (chair, vice-chair,
policy speakers) or committee chairs (including vice-chairs)
Government office Legislators that were ministers or junior ministers
Opposition Members of parties in opposition (SPD, Greens, Left)
Controls
Seniority (log) Number of legislative terms served by legislator; logarithm
Large party 1 ¼ large parties, 0 ¼ small parties (Greens, FDP, and Left in West
German districts)

an indication to the party leadership that the legislators is in disagreement with

the party line. Likewise, a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ vote is considered a deviation if the party
majority abstains.
Second, to capture the second face of party unity, we focus on the absolute
number of vote explanations that indicate either disagreement or concerns with the
party in floor votes per individual legislator. To identify explanations that fall into
this category, four trained coders read all vote explanations and mapped those
explanations containing either concerns with the party position or justifications
for deviant vote choices as ‘critical explanations’. In these cases, we are primarily
interested in voiced preferences that are critical about party preferences and thus
indicate preference heterogeneity. We therefore treat individual explanations and
those that were tabled by a group of partisans equally.
In constructing our third dependent variable, we take advantage of the fact
that vote explanations can but need not be tabled individually.1 This variable
focuses on the absolute number of explanations tabled by individual legislators.

1
Legislators tabled a total of 1005 unique vote explanations in the 17th German Bundestag. As vote
explanations can be signed by more than one legislator, this results in 2489 individual signatures. As
we discard several cases (see below), our analysis is based on 2301 signatures.

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 9

These explanations need not necessarily be critical about a party position in a

floor vote. However, we consider the fact that individual legislators feel a need to
highlight their position vis-à-vis a large majority of their silent colleagues to be of
special significance that might tap into nuanced forms of preference heterogene-
ity. For example, even affirmative explanations can serve the purpose to elaborate
on specific reasons for a vote that might differ from the rationale that is stressed
by one’s party group.
All three dependent variables that we just outlined have count properties and
are subject to pronounced over-dispersion. Taking this into account, we fit nega-
tive binomial regression models (Hilbe, 2011) that we turn to in the next section
of the article. To conclude this section, we however next turn to the independent
variables in our analysis.

1.2 The independent variables in our analysis

The German case provides opportunities to test for the effects of candidate-
centred electoral institutions in a quasi-experimental setting. Germany’s mixed-
member system provides voters with a candidate vote to elect 299 legislators in
single member districts on the basis of a plurality vote. In addition, German vot-
ers cast a party vote that elects approximately the second half of the Bundestag in
multi-member districts on the basis of a proportional formula. Students of
German electoral politics have argued in the past that this should result in behav-
ioural strategies that systematically differ on the basis of legislators’ mode of elec-
tion. From this perspective, nominally elected legislators are assumed to be less
likely to toe the party line compared to their colleagues that have been elected on
the basis of a party list (Lancaster and Patterson, 1990; Klingemann and Wessels,
2001; Stratmann and Baur, 2002).
The German case furthermore provides a unique opportunity to test for the
effects of marginality by including both district winners and losers. Almost all
German legislators run as dual candidates on both tiers of election (86.3 per cent
in our data set). A large portion of them are district losers that won their man-
dates on the basis of the party vote (51.8 per cent in our data set). Our data set
consists of only 15 legislators (2.3 per cent) that did not run in a district. This sce-
nario has led some students of mixed-member systems to argue that both types
of legislators pay attention to the district they ran in and thus face competing
principals, independent of the mode of election (Lundberg, 2006; Pekkanen et al.,
2006; Manow, 2015; Zittel and Gschwend, 2008). With regard to our theoretical
argument outlined above, we rather stress the argument made in the case specific
literature on the relative high levels of electoral security of district winners
(Manow, 2015, Chapter 8). We extend this argument by assuming that especially
non-marginal district winners enjoy special support in their geographic district

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 10 Parliamentary Affairs

and thus special electoral security vis-à-vis their parties. To tap into the effects of
marginality, we calculate a dummy variable that distinguishes between non-
marginal district-winners that won their bid for a nominal vote with more than
10 per cent on the one hand and marginal district-winners that won with smaller
margins and district losers on the other. The 10 per cent margin is a conventional
benchmark that is widely used in the literature (See Zittel and Gschwend, 2008).
In addition to electoral factors, the German parliamentary system allows to
test for the effects of mega-seats and also opposition status. Our approach on
measuring mega-seats focuses on two types of mega-seats, namely parliamentary
office and governmental office. The former includes the inner (caucus leaders ¼
Fraktionsvorstand) and the wider cycles of the parliamentary parties’ leadership
(chairs of sections ¼ Arbeitsgruppensprecher, policy spokespersons ¼
Fachpolitische Sprecher and members of the administration of the Bundestag ¼
Präsidium and Ältestenrat)2 and also the chairs and vice-chairs of standing com-
mittees. The latter includes ministers and junior ministers.
Our data stem from the 17th German Bundestag, which was in session between
2009 and 2013 (n ¼ 652). The government coalition was formed by CDU/CSU
and FDP. We omit early exits and late arrivals to control for the length of tenure
and thus not to bias our independent count variables (n ¼ 61). We also omit the
few legislators that did not run in a district since we cannot test for the effects of
marginality in these cases (n ¼ 15). This leaves us with 579 cases, that include 264
members of the opposition (45.6 per cent), 245 legislators (42.3 per cent) that
held parliamentary offices, 288 nominally elected legislators (49.7 per cent) and
152 legislators (26.3 per cent) that were elected by wide margins in their nominal
races in the 2009 elections.

4. Party unity in the 17th Bundestag

4.1 Party unity in roll-call votes

A descriptive analysis on the 274 roll-call votes in our data set3 demonstrates that
a sizable number of legislators deviated at least once. In our sample, a minority of
174 legislators (30.1 per cent) never deviated from the party line, whereas 405

2
In the 17th Bundestag, the parliamentary party groups differ in their structures in two regards. First,
in the larger groups (CDU/CSU and SPD), chairs of sections are equal to policy spokespersons. The
smaller groups (FDP, GRÜNE, LINKE) distinguish between a smaller number of section chairs and a
larger number of policy spokespersons. Second, the larger groups also include representatives of social
groups (Beauftragte in the SPD) into the wider circle of the party leadership.
3
In all, 275 roll-call votes were recorded in the 17th Bundestag. We excluded 1 vote from our analysis
as it offered multiple ‘Yes’ options, making inferences on the party majority less straightforward.

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 11

(69.9 per cent) did so at least once. The mean legislator deviated in four roll calls,
with extremes ranging from 0 to 57. The standard deviation is 6.8, which indi-
cates a large amount of variation between legislators. Figure 3 (left box) demon-
strates that part of this variation results from differences between parties since,
for example, members of the Green Party are much more likely to deviate (mean
of 9.7) compared to members of the CDU (mean of 1.8). Among all parties, with
3.4 deviant votes, the Left party is closest to the mean.
The right box in Figure 3 shows that independent of inter-party differences,
we also witness intra-party differences in the frequency of deviant roll-call votes
per legislator. This is particularly true for the Greens, the SPD and the FDP. In
these parties, some legislators are more likely to deviate than others. For example,
the median Green legislator deviated in seven roll calls, while legislators at the
25th percentile cast only two deviant votes compared to 14 deviant votes of legis-
lators at the 75th percentile. For the SPD, the respective numbers are three, one
and seven. In a second descriptive step, we now turn to the use of vote
explanations.

4.2 Party unity in vote explanations

Vote explanations are a visible phenomenon in the German Bundestag. A large
majority of 497 legislators (85 per cent) signed at least one explanation during
the 17th term while only a small fraction of 84 legislators (15 per cent) signed not
a single explanation. The mean is four with a standard deviation of 3.9. Since we
are particularly interested in critical vote explanations and those that are cast
individually, Figure 4 plots inter- and intra-party patterns for both types of vote
explanations.

Figure 3. Inter- and intra-party differences in deviations in roll-call votes.

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 12 Parliamentary Affairs

Figure 4. Inter- and intra-party differences in the number of critical (upper panels) and individ-
ual (lower panels) vote explanation.

Almost half of the legislators in our data set (49.2 per cent, n ¼ 283) signed at
least one vote explanation that was critical towards the party line in a floor vote.
The mean legislator signed 1.7 explanations that indicate criticism, the standard
deviation is 2.8. The aggregate distribution shows a large amount of variance that
ranges between 0 and 23 critical explanations. As Figure 4 (upper panel) indicates,
party can explain part of this variance. Members of the Green Party (mean of 4.7)
and the FDP (mean of 2.7) were particularly prone to table critical vote explana-
tions compared to members of the Left party (mean of .4) and the CSU (mean of
.5). However, the right box in the upper panel of Figure 4 demonstrates a fair
amount of intra-party variance within most parties, safe the CSU. For example, in
the case of the Greens, the median legislator tabled four critical explanation while
the legislator at the 75th percentile tabled seven critical explanations compared to
one critical explanation for the legislator at the 25th percentile. We turn to possi-
ble explanations for these patterns in our individual level analysis.
Figure 4 (lower panel) demonstrates that the legislators in our sample also
made use of their individual right to table vote explanations. A majority of 302
legislators (52.2 per cent) issued at least one individual explanation. The mean
number is 1.3 with a standard deviation of 2.1, extremes range from 0 to 15. The
mean values reported in the left box (lower panel) of Figure 4 again indicate

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 13

visible differences between party groups. The mean member of the Left party
tabled 2.4 individual explanations compared to the mean SPD legislator that
tabled only 0.7 individual explanations. However, the right box in the lower panel
of Figure 4 also demonstrates significant intra-party differences across all parties
that we aim to explain in the next step of our analysis that turns to estimating a
multivariate regression model.

4.3 The sources of party unity in the 17th Bundestag

The descriptive analysis reported in the previous section demonstrates far from
perfect party unity with regard to both of its faces that we focus on. We were able
to detect some level of disunity in roll-call voting but also some level of disunity
in voiced preferences measured on the basis of vote explanations. We now
explore the extent to which deviations in roll calls and vote explanations are
driven by different motivations and thus indicate different faces of party unity.
The results of our negative binominal regression analysis reported in Table 2
shows general support for all four hypotheses stated in the theoretical part of this
article, but also highlight some systematic and interesting differences between the
three models. In the following, we elaborate on these similarities and differences.
Table 2 demonstrates full support for the mega-seat argument that we speci-
fied in Hypothesis 3. All three models suggest that parliamentary and governmen-
tal offices provide incentives to not disrupt party unity in any way. Legislators
that occupy mega-seats are less likely to deviate in roll calls, to criticise party stan-
ces in vote explanations and to go alone in tabling vote explanations; five out of
the six coefficients are statistically significant at the 0.01 level. These effects pro-
vide support for the argument that holders of mega-seats either are better able to
influence party positions and minimise preference gaps or are hesitant to contra-
dict their party for the fear of losing their privileges.
The expected effects for the opposition variable (H4) are corroborated for
Model 1. Members of parties in government are less likely to disrupt party unity
in floor votes since they do not wish losing their special access to mega-seats and
also policy. However, this effect then goes away in Models 2 and 3. Both coeffi-
cients point into the right direction but they no longer reach statistical signifi-
cance. This partly corroborates our argument on the distinct nature of our
second face of party unity, and that it is less constraint by party and office seeking
motivations due to its less disruptive consequences. On the basis of a reading of
the texts of the explanations, we can conclude, that this also results from the ten-
sions of coalition government. Particularly, the FDP as the smaller partner in the
coalition government had to accept policy compromises that differed from the
party’s ideal positions. This motivated some of its members to use vote explana-
tions to explicitly stake out their ideal positions but to nevertheless stress their

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 14 Parliamentary Affairs

Table 2 Negative binomial model results

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Vote deviations Critical explanations Individual explanations

Independent variables
Nominal mandate 0.082 0.438a 0.129
(0.179) (0.216) (0.205)
Wide margin 0.045 0.229 0.389a
(0.169) (0.206) (0.183)
Parliamentary office 0.733b .623b 0.239
(0.137) (0.162) (0.149)
Government office 2.125b 2.160b 1.584b
(0.338) (0.403) (.360)
Opposition 1.111b 0.230 0.073
(0.131) (0.148) (0.142)
Controls
Large party 0.723b 1.160b 0.817b
(0.179) (0.210) (.189)
Seniority (log) 0.335b 0.129 0.043
(0.096) (0.114) (0.106)
(Intercept) 1.238b 1.421b 0.764b
(0.156) (0.177) (0.169)
n 579 579 579
Log likelihood 1319 935 878

Note: Standard errors in parentheses.

The models present the results for negative binomial regression models.
a
indicates significance at p < 0.05;
b
indicates significance at p < 0.01 (two-tailed tests).

readiness to support coalition compromises on the floor to sustain the govern-

ment majority.
Table 2 demonstrates that the hypothesised effects of electoral incentives
receive selective support for Model 3. With regard to marginality (H2), all coeffi-
cients are signed in the right direction. While the coefficient in Model 2 narrowly
fails to reach statistical significance, it does so at the 0.05 level in Model 3. This
corroborates our theoretical expectation, that non-marginal district winners are
particularly likely to table individual vote explanations. Model 3 also tentatively
corroborates the theoretically expected effect of legislators’ mode of election
(H1). It shows that nominally elected legislators are more likely to table individual
vote explanations. The finding however fails to reach statistical significance.
These selective findings emphasise that, in European party democracies, electoral
incentives to cultivate a personal vote might not be pervasive enough to disrupt
the first face of party unity, but might result in legislators’ proclivity to develop
and voice individual stances and thus provide stimuli to cause troubles with
regard to its second face.

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 15

Figure 5. Conditional marginal effects with 95 per cent CIs for roll-call votes (left box) and indi-
vidual explanations (right box).

In a last step of our analysis, we turn to effect sizes. The previous analysis sug-
gests that two specific components of our baseline model are able to explain both
faces of party unity. This is supported by Figure 5 that plots conditional marginal
effects for roll calls (left box) and individual explanations (right box). The left
box shows for example that an otherwise average legislator with a mega-seat in
government is likely to cast slightly more than six deviant votes less compared to
an otherwise average legislator with no mega-seat in government. The right box
furthermore shows that an otherwise average legislator with a mega-seat in gov-
ernment is likely to table two individual explanations less compared to an other-
wise average legislator with no mega-seat in government. While the predicted
number of events at first glance is not large, it is important to recall that legisla-
tors in average only cast four deviant votes and tabled 1.3 individual vote explan-
ations, such that predicted effects in the range of 1–4 events are substantively
relevant.
Figure 5 also shows substantial effect sizes for electoral incentives in Model 3.
The right box of Figure 5 shows that an otherwise average legislator that was
nominally elected by a wide margin is likely to table 0.5 individual explanations
more compared to an otherwise average legislator that has been elected on the
basis of a party list or via a nominal vote by a narrow margin. Again, at first
glance, these effects do not appear to be large. But, as before, it needs to be noted
that, on average, legislators tabled only 1.3 individual vote explanations, render-
ing predicted values of 0.5 additional individual explanations noteworthy.

5. Conclusion
This article depicts party unity as a multi-faceted concept that encompasses at
least two distinct dimensions, namely unity in floor votes measured on the basis
of roll-call behaviour and unity in voiced policy preferences measured on the

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 16 Parliamentary Affairs

basis of vote explanations. On the basis of this conceptual differentiation, we

empirically demonstrate that even in a parliamentary democracy with strong par-
ties such as Germany party unity is far from perfect. We further show that the dif-
ferent dimensions of party unity partly result from different motivations and
politics. Specifically, our analysis yields three key findings.
Firstly, the role of mega-seats can be replicated in our analysis across both
faces of party unity. Legislators that hold mega-seats in government or in parlia-
mentary settings are less likely to deviate from their parties in roll calls and to
table individual vote explanations or sign vote explanations that are critical of
their parties. These findings stress the effects of office-seeking motivations that
constraint legislators in their proclivity to disrupt party unity on the floor and to
explicitly stake out their preferences in legislative contexts.
Secondly, members of government parties are more likely to toe the party line
compared to members of opposition parties only with regard to the first face of
party unity, namely roll-call votes. With regard to our second face of party unity,
the difference between government and opposition is without behavioural implica-
tion, members of government parties are as likely to table critical or individual vote
explanations and to thus increase the level of preference disunity as members of
opposition parties. The content of the texts of the explanations we analysed suggests
that this partly might result from the tensions of coalition government and the
resulting proclivity of members of opposition parties to criticise policy compromises
in coalition agreements that they nevertheless are willing to support in floor votes.
Thirdly, electoral incentives to cultivate personal votes are able to explain chal-
lenges to preference unity, especially with regard to vote explanations that are
tabled individually. We find a theoretically expected effect for marginality in this
regard that is statistically significant. Those legislators that won their districts by
wide margins are more likely to table individual vote explanations.
Our findings have three implications for comparative research that we wish to
spell out in the remainder. Firstly, they demonstrate that mega-seats are powerful
instruments employed by parties to constraint legislators and to secure party
unity in all its aspects. We see no reason to not believe in the general applicability
of this finding. After all, legislators are motivated by office-seeking concerns and
parliamentary democracies offer a larger number of highly attractive prices in this
regard that are well suited to please their concerns. Secondly, our findings show
that electoral systems matter for the extent to which legislators are inclined to
take individual stances, thus increase disunity in voiced preferences, and thus
raise challenges to the first (traditional) face of party unity. Clearly, the Germany
proportional mixed-member system only provides moderate incentives in this
regard. We would assume greater effects in systems either with greater levels of
intra-party competition and/or with nominal votes that are pooled to determine
the overall vote shares of parties. Third and lastly, comparative research on our

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 Two Faces of Party Unity in the German Bundestag 17

argument requires finding data sources that are functionally equivalent to vote
explanations, since to our knowledge, this instrument is foreign to most legisla-
tures, safe the Bundestag and the Portuguese Assembleia da República. Our prom-
ising preliminary findings in combination with contemporary needs to better
understand party government in times of challenges and crisis however should
merit further efforts in this regard.

Acknowledgement
We are grateful for valuable comments to Caroline Close, Sergiu Gherghina,
Shane Martin, and to the participants of the ECPR Joint Sessions Workshop 2017
on party unity directed by Caroline Close and Sergiu Gherghina. We are indebted
to Janina Barth, Lena Ehret, Matthias Henneke, Andreas Herzog, Fabienne
Rauschenplatt, Lennart Schuermann and Marie Wittenius for invaluable help in
preparing the data for the project. We thank Henning Bergmann, Stefanie Bailer,
Tamaki Ohmura, Thomas Saalfeld and Ulrich Sieberer for providing data on
roll-call behavior in the Bundestag (Bergmann et al., 2016).

Funding
The research to this article is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG) through ZI 608/7-1 and HE 5813/2-1.

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