The Acceptance of Party Unity in Sweden, 1985 to 2010
The Acceptance of Party Unity in Sweden, 1985 to 2010
Analysing six waves of parliamentary surveys in Sweden, this chapter discusses the variation in the extent to which MPs have a reason to vote against their party based on policy preferences alone, and how this varies over time. The chapter argues that while preference homogeneity within parties consistently across time explains a substantial share of unity in Sweden, the parliamentary parties are not ideologically homogeneous enough to explain the voting unity observed, confirming the findings of the previous chapter. Analysing the drivers of attitudes to party unity, and confirming the findings of the previous chapter, the chapter finds that the most credible explanation of the very high levels of unity in the Riksdag is that MPs voluntarily choose to vote the party line due to the long-term benefits of doing so. The chapter then analyses around 200 answers to an open-ended survey question, confirming the findings from the quantitative analysis.
Keywords: Sweden, electoral system change, unity through preferences, open-ended survey questions, over-time analysis
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .