The Most Unkindest Cuts: Government Cohesion and Economic Crisis
25 Pages Posted: 2 May 2013 Last revised: 20 Jul 2013
Date Written: June 18, 2013
Abstract
Economic crisis and the resulting need for austerity budgets has divided many governing parties in Europe, despite the strict party discipline exercised over the legislative votes to approve these harsh budgets. Our analysis attempts to measure divisions in governing coalitions by applying automated text analysis methods to scale the positions that MPs express in budget debates. Our test case is Ireland, a country that has experienced both periods of rapid economic growth as well as one deep financial and economic crisis. Our analysis includes all annual budget debates during the time period from 1983 to 2013. We demonstrate that government cohesion as expressed through legislative speeches has significantly decreased as the economic crisis deepened, the result of government backbenchers expressing speaking against the painful austerity budgets introduced by their own governments. While ministers are bounded by the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility and hence always vote for the finance ministers’ budget proposal, we find that party backbenchers’ position-taking is systematically related to the economic vulnerability of their constituencies and to the safety of their electoral margins.
Keywords: Financial crisis, budgetary debates, party discipline, intra-party conflict, text analysis
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