Cohesion of British Parliamentary Parties

In the perspective of those political scientists who would reform American parties so as to make them more “responsible,” British parties are familiar prototypes. Prominent among the admired qualities is the cohesion displayed in parliamentary voting by the members of each major British party. That this cohesion is greater than that of American legislative parties has been generally observed at least since the work of A. Lawrence Lowell. And it is common enough, though not universal, to regard British parliamentary solidarity as a virtue particularly because it permits a victorious party, after an election, to enact the program behind which a majority of voters have presumably been rallied. Correspondingly, the relatively low cohesion among Republican and among Democratic congressmen is taken as a defect of American politics. The purpose of this article, however, is not primarily to discuss value judgments concerning parliamentary cohesion. Rather it is to examine the nature of that cohesion and the ways in which it is maintained. But regardless of the disputed merits of British practice, it is still reasonable to ask after such an examination whether the cohesion of party members in the House of Commons is the product of devices which the United States could adopt, or whether it is the result of underlying factors alien to the American environment.