Rule them all! : Party leaders, intra-partisan coordination and representation

Abstract

This dissertation explores how party leaders strategically manage intra-party coordination and how, in doing so, they impact the quality of political representation. Drawing on a theoretical framework that views parties as arenas where leaders and Members of Parliament (MPs) exchange resources, I argue that discipline does not simply arise from ideological agreement or a vertical chain of command. Instead, it is the outcome of a continuous negotiation in which both actors’ preferences and their political capital play a central role. MPs leverage their individual capital to gain concessions from leaders who, in turn, strategically distribute party-controlled resources (such as committee positions, speaking opportunities, or campaign support). By conceptualizing these interactions as a modified Tullock contest, the dissertation formalizes how disparities in political capital shape the balance between maintaining party cohesion and accommodating heterogeneous constituencies, thereby affecting whose voices are amplified or silenced in politics.

Conceptually, this dissertation highlights the normative trade-off between cohesion and representation faced by parties. Understanding how this trade-off is resolved requires considering three key variables: the strength of a party's leader, the intra-partisan distribution of preferences, and the intra-partisan distribution of political capital. Depending on these, parties choose solutions located between hyper-cohesion (hollowed-out representation) and hyper-representation (fragmented parties), which suggests that the best quality of representation is reached when party leaders enjoy moderate strength. The salience of this trade-off and the horizon of possible solutions are profoundly impacted by institutional settings (electoral systems and parliamentary rules), which affect both the heterogeneity of preferences supposedly represented by a party and the nature and quantity of a leader's leverage over their MPs. Beyond the institutional aspect, unknown distributive forces also affect how political capital is created and distributed across political actors, which further shapes the trade-off solutions available to parties. Empirical analyses comparing German and British representatives crucially confirm the key role played by political capital. Not only does this dissertation nuance our understanding of the spatial logic of intra-partisan coordination, it also highlights the central role played by political capital. This latter concept has been neglected in contemporary literature, and the present dissertation calls for reinstating its place in the study of parliaments, parties, and more generally democratic representation.