Party development in the early decades of the Australian parliament: a new perspective

ABSTRACT

This study offers a new perspective on the development of political parties in the Australian House of Representatives. We analyse a data set of 3060 legislative votes to estimate how parties influenced the behaviour of 287 legislators who served in the first 12 parliaments (1901-31). We show that the socialisation of members and cohort replacement effects, as well as a decline in private member business and committee votes, explain why partisanship increased over time. Our results challenge two widely held beliefs about the organisation of political parties in the legislative arena and the Australian party system. First, the analysis demonstrates that the government’s ability to increase party discipline through control of the legislative agenda is limited when parliament is engaged in nation-building projects. Second, our study suggests that introducing restrictive parliamentary procedures played a role in consolidating Australia’s unique two-party system, which opposes Labor to the Liberal–National coalition.

本文从一个新的 角度考察了澳大利亚议会中政党的的情况。我们队3600次投票的资料做了分析，以评估党派如何影响头十二届议会（1901-31）中287位立法者的行为。议员的社会化和换届效应，个体议员活动以及委员会投票的减少，解释了何以党性会随着时间而增加。关于立法领域以及澳大利亚政党制度中政党的组织情形，我们的研究成果挑战了广为接受的观点。首先，跟据我们的分析，当议会涉及国家建构项目时，政府通过控制立法议题左右政党的能力很有限。其次，我们发现，引进限制性议会程序有助于加强澳大利亚工党对自由党—国家党联盟的独特的两党制。

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• parliament
• party system
• legislative voting
• party discipline

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following research assistants for their help in completing this project: Juliette Charpentier, Éléna Choquette, Martin Leduc and Florence Vallée-Dubois. The authors would also like to thank Campbell Sharman for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper and the participants of the Historical Parliamentarism: Early instances, evolution, and constitutional design workshop at the University of Oslo in May 2015 and the Centre for the study of the United States’ political development workshop at the University of Toronto in October 2015 for their helpful criticisms and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jean-François Godbout is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Montreal.

Monika Smaz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Montreal.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 435 2012 1444].