"Cracking the Whip: The Deliberative Costs of Strict Party Discipline."

For instance, the existence of confidence procedures leads to the development of control mechanisms in the hands of party leaders to avoid dissent when the confidence vote emerges.3 Party cohesion, on the other hand, is not a function of an attempt by party elites to obtain legislators’ obedience. [...] Firstly, the former is a highly visible process, allowing it to become much clearer if the denial of re-adoption is a function of the candidate’s dissent against the party line. [...] This allows for them to subordinate the claims of their electors to the demands of ‘reason, justice and the good of the whole’ during the course of deliberation in parliament The emphasis on democracy’s epistemic dimension should not be taken to mean that this is all there is to democracy.9 At the same time, proponents of the epistemic approach rightly emphasize that democratic deliberation’s abil. [...] The role of legislators is to clarify for the external public the differences that exist between them and the reasons for them: The parliamentary chamber is first and foremost a place to ‘put one’s case’. [...] Once the stakes are raised by the possibility of the government losing the vote on a bill, more eyes lie on the debate in parliament.