The second line of research inside the ‘‘black box’’ of the parliamentary party isto examine behavior in addition to roll call voting by which MPs can exert
inXuence within and some degree of autonomy from their party. Martin and
Vanberg ( 2004 , 2005 ), for instance, examine means by which parliamentary
committees and other devices can provide non-governing legislatures with
inXuence over policy choices. As can be seen, ‘‘opening up’’ the black box of
parliamentary parties is in its infancy, but these results imply that there is a good
deal more legislative party politics of the kind ordinarily associated with American
parties in their Congress to be found in multiparty parliaments. It may prove to be
simply that the vote of conWdence and electoral mechanisms that create party and
government discipline have made it diYcult to observe what Americans have
thrust in front of them in much more public fashion.
5 Conclusion
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There are a vast number of important themes that could direct a study of political
parties in the legislature, out of the legislature, or both. This has focused on a small
number of them. They were chosen because they have a common thread. That
thread is one-half of the democratic process, looking at the role of political parties
in shaping the beliefs and values of citizens and shaping their electoral decisions.
Their choices, in turn, determined which parties and their candidates won legisla-
tive oYce. In some cases, a single party formed a majority, in others it required
multiple parties to do so. In either case, theWnal step was how that majority
governed, in terms of realizing (or deXecting) the wishes of the public who elected
them.
This is but half the story, because the policies thus enacted shape the preferences
and concerns of citizens going into the next election, repeating the process. This
lacuna in coverage reXects the lacuna in analysis. However, ambitious politicians
hoping to remain in oYce pick policies at least in part with an eye towards their
best guess about public reaction, and so we, like they, anticipate voting for the next
election, imperfectly embedding that anticipation into the policies chosen. As
I hope this chapter made clear, there has been a great deal of scholarly progress
on this Schattschneiderian role of the political party in shaping democratic politics
in recent years, in the theoretical literature, in the substantive literature, and even
more in their combination.
Examining how government actions might shape public preferences is one way
to approach the problem of endogenous parties. A second is to consider seriously
political parties in and out of legislatures 571