Do all voters appreciate rebels? Ideology moderates valence benefits from factional dissent

ABSTRACT

Various studies show that voters appreciate individual legislators who dissent against their party as it increases their valence appeal. Simultaneously, political psychology research shows that right voters consider loyalty substantially more important than left voters. However, whether ideology moderates voter reactions to legislator dissent is so far unexplored, similarly to the question of whether voters also appreciate factional dissent of a group of legislators. This article investigates these two questions employing a survey experiment with Spanish citizens. We find that voters indeed appreciate factional dissent and that ideology moderates how voters react to dissent. While left voters welcome all forms of factional dissent more than party loyalty, right voters value party loyalty more than some forms of factional dissent. The results suggest that legislators face different benefits of dissent depending on the ideological composition of their electorate, with important implications for legislator behaviour and party cohesion.

KEYWORDS:

• Legislator dissent
• Factions
• Party unity
• Elections
• Experiment

Acknowledgement

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the EPSA Annual Meeting 2019, at the ISPP Annual Meeting 2019, as well as at the Pre-Publication and Publication Seminar of the University of Zurich. We wish to thank the participants at these occasions for helpful comments. We are especially grateful for valuable input from Christian Bencid, Shaun Bowler, Jonathan Slapin, Oliver Strijbis and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, Chilean parties successfully discipline their legislators and achieve high levels of party cohesion (Campos-Parra & Navia, 2017; Carey, 2007). Simultaneously, they have established the ‘Hora de Incidentes’ giving particularly disagreeing legislator’s the opportunity to voice their dissent on behalf of the constituents, so that legislators can connect to their voters even if they are whipped to vote with the party (Alemàn et al., 2017). Consequently, Kam (2009) finds that legislators voted only in half of the cases against their party after they had spoken out in Westminster systems parties (Kam, 2009). In parliamentary democracies, levels of legislative party unity are therefore high because parties control their legislators in the legislative arena (Bailer, 2018; Proksch & Slapin, 2015; Sieberer, 2006).

2 Yet, even in countries with single-member districts such as the UK or Australia, legislators form factions like the mentioned European Research Group in the British Conservatives, Momentum in British Labour or the Labor Left in the Australian Labor Party (McAllister, 1991; Quinn, 2005; Rose 1964).

3 In December 2020, former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was expelled from the party, founded the think tank ‘Project for Peace and Justice’ and is supported by his Momentum faction and the trade union Unite that had cooperated with Momentum when Corbyn was leader.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johannes Besch

Johannes Besch is a PhD candidate at the University of Zurich (Department for Political Science). His research focuses on intra-party politics, party factionalism, and political behavior.

Alberto López-Ortega

Alberto López-Ortega is a PhD candidate at the University of Zurich (Department for Political Science). His research focuses on the personalization of politics, political psychology, and political campaigns.