Legislative Party Switching and Populist Party Leadership: Comparative Analysis

• In Event: The Effect of Citizens and Local Politics on Legislatures

Abstract

Party switching by MPs during a parliamentary term is still mainly analyzed with reference to parliaments in the US or Western European countries. However, there is a lack of databases and in-depth case studies on legislatures in Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present the results of research on party switching in the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland during the last three parliamentary terms (n=2659 MPs).
The empirical aim of the paper is to demonstrate whether parliamentary groups led by populist leaders are more likely to be affected by party switching than groups without populist leadership. Using the data collected the Czech, Lithuanian and Polish parliaments the author is going to prove that MPs are more likely to leave the parliamentary groups with populist leadership than the other groups. In addition, there are also strict evidences that the vast majority of the MPs affiliated to groups with populist leadership which found themselves in opposition to the government left their party during the parliamentary term and, in addition, most of those groups were dissolved before the end of the full parliamentary term.
The results of the research to be presented prove that institutionalized groups with non-populist leadership are far more stable (only one in five MPs left this type of parliamentary groups during the term of office). This is also confirmed by an analysis of the balance of seats between the beginning and end of the term. It demonstrates that it is highly likely that most of the parliamentary groups with populist leadership will not survive the full term, and the others will face a loss in the number of deputies.
The paper’s basic conclusion is that populist leaders in Central and Eastern Europe are unable to maintain the integrity of their parliamentary groups. The almost 75% probability of an exodus of deputies from such groups even contradicts the concept of the political representation, although, clearly, it is an expression of a free mandate. Even if one considers that the moves of parliamentarians between groups during the term of office need not be evaluated negatively (as a violation of the electoral contract), they at least testify to the lack of skillful and effective management of the team. This is probably rooted in the non-transparent process of selecting candidates for electoral lists, which results in the fact that populist leaders often rely on recommendations and are unaware of whom they are 'taking on board.' Maintaining the loyalty of such MPs becomes nearly impossible in this case - as they tend to pursue individual political strategies, rather than to work for the groups whose affiliations they used in the election campaign.

Author

• Przemyslaw Zukiewicz, University of Wroclaw