Cohesion And Discipline in Legislatures ― Political Parties, Party Leadership, Parliamentary Committees and Governance

Given the rise and fall of parties, their mergers and separations, and the results in legislation, contributors to this collection of 11 articles examine the complexities of party relationships within legislatures, particularly focusing on the workings of parliaments but also considering other democratic law-making institutions. They begin with an analysis of cohesion and whether it equals discipline, with the idea of developing a conceptual delineation, followed by topics on cohesion such as its purpose and contexts, its effects on the success of presidential policy, its effects without discipline such as in party voting in the House of Lords, and its effects on legislative committees. Papers on the issue of discipline analyze its development in Eastern German state legislatures from 1900 to 2000, and in the parliaments of Canada, Germany, Belgium, France, and the UK, and in the imposition of government rules. The series closed with an analysis of contingent unity in parliamentary parties. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)