Roll-call Voting Behaviour in Legislatures

Roll call votes offer rich behavioural information on individual members of parliament (MPs) and have been used to study many important research questions, also dealing with issues of representation. With the help of such votes MPs (and/or their parties) can be held to account. Thus, scholars have assessed broadly whether political parties act in a disciplined fashion and what affects the voting behavior of individual MPs, thus covering both processes of collective and individual accountability. The literature finds that evidence for such accountability relationships, is, however, also hampered by different uses of roll call votes across time and space.