Principals and the Accountability of Politicians

In a thrilling political science text, John M. Carey explains how an increased number of competing principals results in decreased party unity.  In layman's terms, this means politicians within a party will have a greater tendency to vote against the party line  as the number of principals or actors influencing those politicians increase.  Such principals could include voters, special interest groups, other politicians, etc.  Why is this important?  Do we care how united a party is when voting?  Is it good or bad (if either) for a party to vote with consistent unity?

Party unity matters because it increases collective accountability.  Individual accountability is the accountability a politician owes her constituents.  Collective accountability essentially is the accountability a party owes the electorate.  It is much easier to hold a party collectively accountable than it is to hold each politician in that party accountable.  The task of gathering information about each politician's voting history in the legislature is enormous, but putting together a record of how the LDP or the JDP voted in Japan's Diet (legislature) is doable.  So we care about party unity in voting because it makes it easier to track how well parties (and therefore, the politicians inside the parties) are sticking to their platforms.  If a party has high unity, that means that we can assume a politician such as Sadakazu Tanigaki has voted with his party throughout his career (the fact that he is the President of the LDP makes this even more probable).

In addition to worrying about what voters want, what special interest groups want, and what other politicians in the opposition party want, politicians in Japan have to worry about factions within their own party.  It seems that a party with many factions would have trouble maintaining voting unity.  And yet, the LDP managed to maintain voting unity in part through the use of committee assignments.  The LDP assigned politicians to committees that would increase the change of those politicians' re-elections.  This is an example of a principal being used to strengthen voting unity, instead of decreasing it (because this is not a competing principle).

Individual accountability is important, but collective accountability is easier to achieve.  Party unity is important in making possible collective accountability, and the use of non-competing principals to increase party unity in Japan has helped make collective accountability in that country easier to measure.






Fujimura Naofumi. 2011. Electoral incentives, party discipline, and legislative organization: Manipulating legislative committees to win elections and maintain party unity. European Political Science Review. Cambridge University Press.

Carey, John M. 2009. Legislative Voting and Accountability. Cambridge University Press.