Eduskuntaryhmien äänestyskoheesio vuosien 1991-2006 valtiopäivillä

Authors

• Antti Pajala

Abstract

Before this article plenary voting cohesion in the Finnish parliament (Eduskunta) has been stud­ied thrice. The first set of studies covered the 1930–1950s, two studies were carried out in the mid-1990s and a methodological paper was published in 2005. Here we provide a fresh analysis of the subject over the last four parliamentary terms during the years 1991–2006. We used a re­cent Finnish dataset and analysed patterns of voting cohesion among Eduskunta’s political party groups. Unlike in almost all other similar studies, we divided the plenary votes into separate cat­egories by distinguishing the votes related to the state’s annual budget from all other plenary votes. The division was based on an earlier report speculating that voting cohesion between the categories might differ. Our results confirm that the average level of voting cohesion differs sys­tematically between the two vote categories: votes related to the budget had a lower level of co­hesion because potentially the MPs are allowed more voting flexibility compared to other votes. We also found that the status of a group as a member of the cabinet raised the level of voting co­hesion regarding budget votes. Our third finding was that the level of group cohesion has risen compared to the 1950s, and the level of voting cohesion is higher than what has been reported in the past. Finally, we found that pre-election cohesion levels fell prior to major changes in cabinet composition after the election